Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] good evening everyone I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order since it's six o'clock great thank you all for being here tonight as we pilot this new community Forum meeting format and thank you to staff and to council members Benjamin and Wier and former council member friend for working with staff for over a year to bring this new meeting format forward to ensure we have a productive first forum I would like to highlight a few expectations for tonight although this is a new format we will adhere to our standard Community participation guidelines would you like to read them Miss Elicia or would you like me to I can read them ma'am thank you sorry about that everyone and good evening and thank you for joining us I will now share with you the public participation at city council meeting guidelines the city has engaged with

[1:00] community members to co-create a vision of productive meaningful and inclusive Civic conversations this Vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members staff and City Council Members as well as democracy for people of all ages identities lived experiences and political perspectives the following are examples of rule of deorum found in the Boda Revised Code and other guidelines that support these Visions these will be be upheld during this meeting our remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to City business no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person obscenity racial epithets and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct a meeting are prohibited

[2:00] thank you again for listening and thank you for being here thank you so much the meeting tonight will be facilitated by City staff and Derek okubo I will maintain the meeting such that all voices are heard City business is handled no one is intimidated and there is respect for all points of view the city council has adopted these rules of decorum so that business is conducted in an orderly manner if attend these obstruct the business of the meeting the council will take a recess and may clear the chambers of everyone who is not staff or a participant to make sure we are all on the same page I will issue one additional warning prior to taking a recess due to A disruption if we need to take a second recess I will ask the chambers be cleared please head into tonight with a spirit of curiosity everyone here is invested in our our community's success

[3:02] if someone says something that doesn't make sense to you assume they are just as smart and tuned in as you are and try to understand how their unique perspective brought them to a different conclusion I look forward to tonight's meeting and we'll now turn the meeting over to our city manager Nia Rivera Vander I hope you all enjoy the discussions and the opportunity to learn with council members tonight thank you so much mayor proam and just a quick welcome as well for me and the organization um I'm excited to see how this experiment is going to work tonight so just appreciate so much uh all of our community members both those that are seated with us tonight and those that applied and did not quite make it through the randomizer uh but just appreciate your interest as you uh thought to participate with us I wanted to lift up just the efforts it takes a huge village to put something like this together um and really Ryan henen in our

[4:00] um Community uh Communications and engagement department and Mark wolf in our city manager's office in particular but there are a lot of people behind uh them who worked on this as well including frankly all the people uh behind us in our audiovisual team and our it team who are hopefully keeping all those uh Gremlins who have been besieging us of late away and so with that uh we are going to start this Grand experiment and I send it over to Derek thank you very good thank you Nia um before I get started did our interpreters need to make a quick announcement very good thank you again my name is Derek okubo I am will facilitate tonight's meeting um I work with the national civic league it was um this meeting is a part of our one of our

[5:02] bigger projects called uh building um uh better public meetings and we've done this in in partnership with the city of Boulder uh the uh last year uh the national civically conducted a study and uh to learn more about public meetings and I got to give the city of Boulder a lot of credit I hear around the country all the time that we have to do better we we need more engagement we have to look at engagement with with our with our community in a different way Boulder is one of the only one that I have come across so far that's actually willing to look at doing things differently to do a study session that includes the active participation of citizens and residents of their community and so as a result I really think that Boulder has a potential to become a national model as far as doing things differently as far

[6:00] as how they engage their Community uh the report that we uh sent out earlier this year focused on uh different ways of doing business uh it with a bunch of different recommendations this is one of several Pilots that the city is currently moving forward on and uh that specifically addresses three themes that emerged from the report that we sent out earlier this year here and one is being heard and providing transparency in decisionmaking uh the other is interacting with elected officials at Council meetings and public um uh doing public comment in a different way um and also including equity and engagement in the processes so this forum tonight is specifically designed to increase opportunities for Meaningful engagement by responding to the community desire

[7:01] that was expressed to engage on Council uh decisions earlier in the decision making process so at your seats you see the agenda for tonight and what we're going to be doing in uh just a little bit the topic tonight uh that we will be discussing is economic development the economic development plan and program enhancements uh we will uh have a presentation from Mark wolf as assistant city manager and then we'll have some time for you our participants here at the table to ask some clarifying questions then we will break into small groups and the we will break into four groups uh at in those four groups there will be uh five community members uh two Council people uh two staff to record uh and um and there will be the discussion for an hour and then we will come back here

[8:00] and the we'll have a report out more clarifying questions and then talk about next steps so again I'm really excited too to see how this turns out and uh the staff have prepared very hard and again I I I praise the city of Boulder for taking the step to try something different that other communities are afraid to do um let's go through some introductions here and I'll start off again and we just keep them really brief I want your name your pronouns and the organization or role you play in the community so again my name is Derek okubo him uh he him his and I am from the national civic league and we'll go over here mayor protim and I'm mayor proam Nicole spear she her pronouns and from the city of Boulder naria Rivera Vander sheya uh City Boulder City manager and uh one thing yeah use the microphone so that

[9:00] the video can pick up your your voice and you have to press the button correct in order when you when you talk Teresa Taylor Tate I'm the City attorney for the city of Boulder uh my pronouns are she AA hello I'm Charlene Hoffman I'm the CEO of visit Boulder the convention and visitors bureau and my pronouns are she here I'm council member Lauren fulker pronouns she her and I'm also an architect in the community Mike Kaplan s uh person in the city all right thank Community thank you here I'm Carla grab I'm a resident of Boulder hi I'm Brian leowski I'm at the

[10:00] University of Colorado Boulder he him hi Greg Butler longtime uh resident of Boulder Rachel Garcia Boulder Small Business Development Center interm Center Director she Mark wolf Heim assistant city manager for the city Adana paa Luna she and I'm yeah a small business from Lun thank you Dan Capal she her and I'm a resident and small business owner in Boulder Taisha Adams She her pronouns Boulder City Council and small business owner thank you I'm Dan Powers he him director of Co Labs a nonprofit

[11:00] Consortium of the federally funded research Labs here in Colorado and Boulder David molar he him resident of Boulder Tina marish she her city council Carla colen president of the Latino chamber she hears Aya Henry Lester he hem I'm a resident of Boulder Matt Benjamin he him council member and small business owner Patrick Dorian uh he him his uh business Equity project and program manager for the city of Boulder Betina swiger CEO downtown Boulder partnership she her Michelle Rodriguez um peer support lived experience most recently

[12:01] volunteering with the community community Court pilot program uh John ter he his and I am the boulder chamber president and CEO hi Ryan shuart he him city council I Neil mcburnett he him uh resident of Boulder um Sharon King formerly with the spdc formerly a business owner resident of Boulder sheer Chris Jones Heim director of the community Vitality department at the city of Boulder Jamal business owner Community Connector Tara Wier Boulder City Council small business owner very good welcome everyone she her thank you for being complete welcome everybody and thank you for

[13:01] participating um very excited so just a reminder that tonight's forum is on economic development plan and uh program enhancements and so with that I'd like to pass it over to assistant city manager Mark wolf thank you very much all right good evening everybody uh thanks again uh we are very excited for the conversation tonight uh want to extend appreciation to NCL uh staff as nor mentioned Council and Community for joining us tonight um especially want to recognize uh Jennifer pinino the city's economic Vitality manager who is under the weather tonight um time timing and it's that time of year you know um so she can't be with us I just wanted to lift up her work she's a driver of so much of this work for the city uh and has had uh long-standing contributions to our local economy so I'm sorry you won't be able to see that in real time but I know she wishes uh she was uh here tonight she is uh behind a lot of the

[14:01] content tonight so I am stepping in uh for her especially during this presentation so if you enjoy the content it is all Jennifer and if you don't it's probably my delivery so apologies for that in advance uh a theme you will hear throughout this evening is that economic vibrancy or Vitality is an effort across many organizations while the city has played an important role in economic development that role has traditionally been in more of a support role uh most of the traditional Economic Development work has been carried out through our many partner organizations across the community many of our partners are here at the table this evening and also contributed to the content presented this evening uh we'll also be inviting their perspectives uh to to help share some flavor during the presentation and before I dive into the content I just wanted to extend deep appreciation for our economic Vitality Partners again um thank you for taking time out of your Thursday evening to

[15:00] join us uh but also for the Deep partnership that we enjoy uh with you that helps contribute to the vibrancy and Community one of the reasons we are having this particular conversation is because we were we are at a moment of inflection four and a half years after the pandemic began if we're reminded what covid is uh these days it's still still around uh but I I think it's important to to acknowledge that the impact of covid is still being felt to many of our businesses and it was the strength of this partnership that uh in its ability to quickly react to the pandemic share information Provide support that helped many in our business Community weather the storm uh but that impact is still being felt and we're going to talk through some of those challenges that we face and and how we might address those uh moving forward all right uh so for the presentation uh this evening most of it is going to be shared at at a pretty high level we want to provide some general context as to why we're having

[16:01] this conversation uh some of the economic conditions uh that we face today uh Brian lowski will uh help with that portion of the presentation uh and then we'll tee up the conversation for the small groups and again this is uh you have some of the background information but this presentation is is meant to get your wheels turning as you head into those small group discussions and we'll prompt a couple different questions these were uh shared in advance essentially we're asking all of you we'll share um some uh background information on where we see the economy today but all of you have experiences every day in the local economy we want to understand from your perspective um where there's particular issues that need to be uh addressed and also as we share out some some draft some highlevel uh strategies uh that we may look at in a new economic Vitality strategy which we'll talk more about um what's missing what would you add to such a strategy

[17:00] moving forward so those are two of the key questions um just plant those in the back of your mind as we go through the presentation all right so while some of the the content uh tonight is an opportunity to showcase some of the great work that is being done and uh you'll you'll hear some of that in the presentation as I mentioned it's also important to note that we are talking on the topic in part because of the struggles that continue to face our our business Community to that end uh uh Council uh established uh a priority uh during the um Council retreat in April that focused specifically on economic development uh uh plan and program enhancements uh looking uh at the environment after uh the pandemic was a big part of that and also updating a very old strategy we currently have an economic sustainability strategy uh it's great it was uh developed in 20133 the

[18:01] world looks different today than it did in 2013 we also uh as a part of that uh priority acknowledge some of the other conditions and emerging issues which we'll talk about and how do we react to certainly a plan or a strategy as an element of that but also how do we move quickly uh and nimbly to address some of the challenges that we currently face that relates to some of the commercial vacancies other issues that we're we're seeing and enhance the toolbox uh for e ecomic development strategies overall so we'll run now uh quickly through some of the current market conditions I think it's helpful to look at our overall economy just some quick points here um most so we have about 8,400 employers in the city mostly businesses uh that is over a 100,000 employees uh that's uh over 10 billion dollar in wages our largest Industries professional and Technical Services government manufacturing tourism related Industries

[19:02] Healthcare retail and information 90% of our employers have fewer than 20 employees so many we talk a lot about small business support the vast majority of our businesses are small businesses and large employers also play a critical role having providing 54% of the jobs in the city there's a high concentration of employment in advanced Industries Aerospace beverage manufacturing It software sof Ware life sciences and Broadband digital Communications more than twice the the national average in those High concentration areas and we enjoy one of the nation's most educated workforces so what have we seen post pandemic we've seen job gains and losses in different Industries the largest gains have been in the professional and Technical information and Manufacturing Industries we've seen the largest losses in accommodations and food service certainly reflects National Trends but

[20:01] we have felt that impact here Healthcare government retail Arts entertainment and Recreation we are all very aware of the lingering challenges for retail restaurants and and personal services I'm sure a subject that will come up tonight and it across all Industries what we are hearing um what we have surveyed throughout the pandemic and we are in the middle of a new business survey that there are rising uh costs uh for doing business across all Industries in community there's labor force challenges shortages Supply supply chain issues in certain industries continue to linger and and the rising interest rates had large impact obviously those are coming down but certainly still impact uh business okay so that's at a very high level and now Brian will help us a little bit more with the economic context all right thank you Mark and thank you to council thank you to uh staff and and to all of you community

[21:01] members that are here for this uh this conversation so I was asked to provide a very high level overview of where we are in the economy right now to provide a little bit of context and talk about the current conditions so I I think to start off um you know generally uh when we take a look at how the economy is doing right now uh things are fairly stable there were there were a lot of expectations that the economy was going to slow down uh uh pretty rapidly and that we could even be in a recession right now a lot of this chatter la last year and it really didn't materialize and um so while I'm going to present a little bit on how stable or uh perhaps how good the economy may be um I still acknowledge that there are unique struggles within segments of the economy and Mark touched on some of that if it's manufacturing for instance is is going through its own cycle right now uh companies individual companies are experiencing some struggles and individuals are experiencing struggles so I'm not really trying to diminish any of that when I share some of this with you so just very broadly us uh gross

[22:02] domestic product grew at 3% in the second quarter um that's a pretty good rate of growth and you might say well there's a lot of inflation in the economy this is after we adjust for inflation so that's real GDP growth it's real output meaning that we're producing more we're selling more within the economy and a lot of this is still driven by consumption so consumption was up about 2.8% um uh and so we worry about that we worry about consumption we worry about households and how they can sustain that growth but for the most part when we look at 3% we say that's that's a pretty good rate of economic growth and when we reflect on last year uh 2023 grew um just shy of 3% for the full year so we we never really hit that that downturn that we were expecting and we still hear chatter of a recession still but I think there's many reasons why um we're not headed for that imminently right um so I think Point number one here is labor market pressures are

[23:00] easing and for you business owners you might uh bulk it that a little bit and say I'm still having a hard time finding workers um but what what we do see is that the the pace of job growth nationally has been slowing so I put averages up here there's the the monthly numbers and then there's the annual averages for how many jobs we're adding per month in the National economy right so 600,000 in 2021 down to 377 in 2022 these are recovery years from the pandemic and uh we got back to Peak employment in 2022 2023 this expectation that we are back to Peak how can we add this many jobs we still added 251,000 per month and then in 2024 now we've slowed to 184,000 so far per month it's like well that's quite a Slowdown but for context back in 1990 and sorry in 2018 and 2019 we were growing about this many jobs per month so we're sort of back on that usual path um so how tight is the labor

[24:03] market this is we take a look at job open openings nationally and we take a look at the number of unemployed people nationally and so we sort of consider that crudely as a a measure of supply and demand for workers and um and so what the red line is showing you here is that uh we got up to the highest level of job openings ever in the country and uh and now those job openings have started to come down and it's converging with the number of people who are unemployed so there's still 1.1 job openings per unemployed person in the National economy so it still shows there somewhat of an imbalance um uh but it's it's converging so it's moving a little bit towards more of an employer Market but it's not there yet so that's one reason why I say the the labor market tension is easing a little bit in Colorado uh that Divergence is still pretty wide it's at 1 point1 .5 or 1.6 job openings for every unemployed uh

[25:02] person and it actually got a little worse uh last month so we we have we're in the top 10 for the uh the rate of job openings uh when we compare Colorado to the rest of the country so uh yes it's still a tight labor market it's not as tight as it was okay two I think it's important to note that inflation is is normalizing so um you you might go to the grocery store and say well gosh my Cal is still5 or $6 a box and that's true prices are not going back to where they were uh but now they're back to increasing at what we would normally expect prices to increase at right so we're between two and 3% right now and um Colorado just for context for 11 of the last 14 years Colorado has had higher price growth than the US overall uh so uh things uh got more expensive here and stayed higher for longer and now we're actually on the Leading Edge a little bit on the way down so um we get

[26:01] Denver Metro inflation data every other month uh last month Denver Metro was at 1.9% uh us was at about two and a half per. so we're actually uh coming down faster than the US and part of that is because we've had some slower housing inflation it's the first time I've said that in a long time slower uh housing inflation than the country and we've had some lower U fuel prices than the country overall so I I think that's generally good news that we're getting back to a normal uh path there interest rates are decreasing uh it doesn't mean that they're low but they're coming down and you can see it on this chart uh the the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a a percent uh last week and and so they're really controlling short-term interest rates uh but what you can see is that those long-term interest rates the 30-year mortgage rate actually followed suit and dropped so I think that's welcome news for homeowners and for um people who are looking to uh

[27:00] enter the housing market for the first time so there's I mean still 6% is a rate that's high and there was a whole generation of people that never saw 6% interest rates um so it's not good but it's better than uh where we were a year ago and two years ago so very briefly I'll talk about Colorado and the local area so we like to Benchmark Colorado to the rest of the country just to keep track of how we're doing and um for a long time we were in the top five top 10 for economic growth by almost every measure and now we look a little bit more average so uh 13th for GDP growth 27th for employment growth population growth we 17th and so on but there's a few measures here where we're sort of exceptionally High you know good or bad um average annual pay were seventh highest in the country and labor force participation rate were fourth highest in the country which speaks a little bit to the Youth of our state as well as perhaps the need to work in the state um

[28:00] because of some of the the costs of living here so um uh this this slide shows Boulders employment and population so first thing I'll point out here is uh so this is Boulder MSA or or Boulder County U because we we get this data on a very high frequency it comes out every month the local employment is is is hovering around the highest level ever so we've never had more jobs in this community when we take a look at um labor force locally and State wide we're hovering around record levels we've never had more people that raised their hand to work in the state before um unemployment is on the rise a little bit but I think it's a again that good sign for uh the supply of workers that you have a lot of people that are opting in who want to work on the right side it's showing population change and while it looks like the net migration piece so that the net of people moving to Boulder County versus moving away from Boulder County it's positive which is a certainly a good thing in my opinion um the the the issue that I see here is

[29:01] when we talk about three the net of three or 400 or 500 people moving to Boulder County that's a fraction of where we were uh five six seven years ago and and uh those those uh those migrants to our community are a source of labor today so when we think about trying to fill jobs we also need those people to be here to fill those jobs uh so net migration to Colorado and to this local area has really slowed over the last several years but we expect it to rise in 25 and 26 um so the industries that are adding jobs and and shedding jobs so Mark showed you some data through 2022 I believe and so what this is showing you is Boulder County uh in August of 2024 and what we can see is most Industries are adding jobs on the left side it's in thousands on the right side the percent change um but we do have four industries that are under pressure right now uh perhaps unique pressure trade transportation utilities which is really retail trade uh wholesale trade

[30:02] um the manufacturing sector and Boulder has a high concentration of manufacturing and and high-tech and uh also in food manufacturing uh the construction industry and the information sector so those are four sectors that that are feeling some unique pain in this expanding economy and um uh but Boulders Boulders employment growth when we take a look at it year-over-year in August about 2.4 % this shows you all 390 Metro areas across the country that's what each line represents and uh all the red bars are are Colorado's Metro areas so it's a little comforting to look at that and say okay so Boulder is in the top quartile nationally um and we're ahead of all the other Metro areas in the state so we we are outperforming but there there are some headwinds that um that we could face in the near term uh lastly thinking about taxes I think about this in relation to the beginning

[31:01] when I was talking about consumption and what some of those headwinds are so we can take a look at uh Colorado taxable sales that's what this should really say is taxable sales in Colorado and this is this is the state's tax base and so what you can see is coming out of the pandemic there is really a fast rise in taxable sales and then there's been a flattening and so when we take a look at you know July uh it was up about 1.9% that's that's pretty modest growth and when we think about inflation of 2 and a half% or so Statewide um that means that uh that that real growth is negative okay and then we can take a look at State taxable sales by jurisdiction around Colorado so I pulled the 30 largest uh jurisdictions in the state and this is what the state is collecting from these communities so the same tax base around all of these communities so it's a nice Apples to Apples comparison and you can see that the state was pretty slow 1 2% year-over-year and you can see where uh the city of Boulder is

[32:02] based on the state's tax base it was up about 1% or so 0.9% so underperforming the 30 uh jurisdictions on average uh year-over-year okay so just closing this out um you know we we do still see a lot of Tailwinds uh I I mention GDP growth consumption still seems to be pretty good nationally retail sales uh continue to grow but slower rate um employment growth sort of uh surprising economists I think that that this is continued but there are a lot of headwinds that we worry about right so inflation has been high it's coming down but um you know there's a lot of people that have have struggled through that inflation rise that we went through and the cost of living has become even more of a burden uh property taxes and insurance is uh difficult for homeowners for businesses uh and and for renters that that cost is being passed through to you somehow um

[33:01] High office vacancy rates are a problem really around the us but especially in our Urban uh corridors and Boulder is not immune to this um but we we see some of these other things like interest rates being high but coming down as as sort of of promising signs and then there's a group of unknowns we think about AI is one of these big disruptors at some point uh but perhaps not quite yet and um things like remote work are we really going to pull people back to the office um construction we feel like it's hit bottom is it is it going to start toh swing up again uh next year and with that I'll hand it back to mark thank you thanks Brian get my clicker back okay all right so a little bit more local context in terms of uh how we provide services so you've heard more of the here's what's going on in the economy and now this is a little bit about what we're doing now and where we

[34:00] go from here um so the there's a lot of words here but I think the the main point uh is that the city has what we call the sustainability equity and resilience framework it is really our guiding document for everything we do there are seven Community goals that are set forth um in that document uh economically vital is one of them and so uh that sets forth a vision for how we look at economic Vitality across Community we use that definition that's on on the slide and included in the materials uh to develop uh our strategies for how we we implement or how we strive for that vision and so that is really found in the Citywide strategic plan uh for those that don't know the city-wide strategic plan is is a newer thing uh we had not had a Citywide strategic plan uh in the past uh what uh we did was look at many uh

[35:00] forming documents many documents policy documents that were created uh as a part of uh alongside of community with engagement and developed uh a document that could help focus our work over a three-year period two of those strategies were very related to this economic vit economic Vitality work uh specifically related to building a resilient economy that focused on some of our core strengths uh promotes econ IC mobility in aligns with Community Values and priorities and then also recognizing some of the areas that we can continue to improve uh processes and and housing parking infrastructure land use and events that tie directly to some of our uh priorities and how we accomplish all of that work again is is through our deep collaboration with Partners our our greater focus on business formation retention and expansion uh flexible and Nimble approaches that build on our strengths and can respond to challenges quickly and then coordination recognizing that

[36:01] we're not alone um an economic uh Vitality often doesn't end at the city borders as well and we do provide a number of services to help support uh our business community and promote economic Vitality uh again this is done through through our partners business Outreach and assistance with a focus on small businesses an example of that the city is the the host for our Small Business Development Center so that that is a key part partnership in providing those Services Disaster Assistance diversity Equity inclusion and accessibility support economic and market research Education and Training coaching workshops events Financial supports so direct grants microloans incentives and Workforce Development so again some of these are direct City many of these are provided through Partnerships okay so we're going to run through just uh quickly uh you heard uh some from Brian so I'm not going to

[37:00] explain all of these but this is really to set some context on what are we seeing in the economy from a strengths weaknesses perspective and this will help um inform our discussions in small groups and then at the end of these I'll go through them relatively quickly I'd like to invite some of our economic Vitality Partners to to weigh in or just briefly kind of S Suggest anything that you you are particularly seeing that you'd like to point out our economic strengths you heard a lot of them quality of life in our natural environment uh we are a popular tourist destination that certainly helps from an economic perspective excellent public schools and Health Care access to multimodal Transportation Regional housing options we'll talk about on the downside of some of those options uh in a moment uh broad uh broad mix of Industries and jobs our research University and federal Labs the high concentration of advanced Industries reputation as an Innovation Hub our collaborative resourcer business

[38:00] environment and we have a well educated highly skilled Workforce on the flip side so some of our weaknesses cost of living including that housing that I mentioned the cost of doing business overall we consistently hear that as an issue the availability of industrial and warehouse space so that's a little bit different than the commercial vacancies that we're seeing uh lack of uh retail restaurants personal services in some of our employment areas Limited work force housing so again the housing challenge shows up there um traffic and uh Transit connections lack of diversity at both within community and Workforce lack of awareness of available resources that do exist the reputation for challenging regulatory environment I I'll give some kudos to Brad Mueller and his team for some of the recent improvements but certainly that reputation precedes us uh unfortunately in some areas and then uh broadband service The Limited broadband service options all right so what are some emerging

[39:00] Trends uh here to pay attention to from an e economic perspective we have more frequent threat of natural disasters more occurring in the threat of certainly something to keep in mind from a resilience standpoint uh aging population and Workforce uh decreased birth rate Brian talked a little bit about migration uh higher incidents of online shopping so that has an impact on our local retailers uh increase in remote working employment decline in retail restaurants and other industries that generate sales tax so that compounds our our city problems our city organizational funding problems uh increased uh costs for businesses and increased uh regulations uh for businesses and we're seeing some of these more recently and related to many of these some of the emerging uh issues the high commercial vacancy rate and the impact on economic activity within our commercial Districts The increased cost of leasing commercial space some of that is related to proper proper tax uh continuing Workforce and supply chain

[40:00] issues less access to Capital and financial resources for businesses uh we more frequent power outages again that resilience U conversation potential impact of Min minimum wage increase on businesses increase competition for businesses and workers from other communities uh less recognition for Boulder as an Innovation Hub more competition certainly in that uh realm shifts in our reputation and perceptions about personal SA safety and then many cities are facing the end of federal arpa funding and what that means from a city funding perspective and last there are many opportunities as well um Quantum technology home uh potential for private and federal dollars flowing into this uh sector of the economy uh the climate resilience Innovation engine again an opportunity for federal funding leveraging the federal chip zones and other Federal incentive programs our life sciences industry growth a festival may want to relocate and we're super

[41:00] excited about being a finalist uh for the Sundance Film Festival and perhaps uh helping with uh some sectors of our economy uh CU Conference Center and hotel being completed uh some of the recent work on University Hill and revitalizing that area uh diversity Equity inclusion and accessibility program so an increased Focus both in the business and government uh communities and then industry sector Workforce Partnerships and educational institution and business Partnerships as well okay so that's uh all of those uh and just briefly and I know we want to get to our small group discussion I I wondering if any of our we have time questions yeah great so a couple more slides just on the the strategy but on the on the trends piece just wondering if any of our economic Vitality Partners want to emphasize anything in particular that they heard okay I'll just offer a couple things so first of all we're sitting here um and we just went through a

[42:02] parade of horribles in terms of some challenges that we face but I start with sort of the the Yogi Bear line where uh you know it's it's so crowded nobody goes there anymore I mean we are a community that is still so desirable for business for residents um so we should always have that reflection um but it creates challenges for us so when we think about the cost of doing business in our community we should always be thinking about how do we not do any additional harm first um in adding additional expenses to um the cost of doing business and then thinking about then how do we reduce the cost of regulatory um processes Etc um but I just also want to emphasize that there are some just very exciting Trends um that we're seeing and that partly is associated with the the dynamic research and Innovation that we have um as a foundation of our historic uh strengths of our economy which brings to us great

[43:02] opportunities like the quantum Tech Hub which is one of those great um attractors for business associated with research that we have um as a center here that I think is something that we're going to want to build on and and uh build towards for the future so a couple of just things to think about when we're facing we tend to approach these things with challenges but we do have so much here in our our community to U be uh thinking about as a positive strength and to build on NE so much is that still on good yeah um so really interesting presentation you know I wish I had more of it in the intro packet because that was dense with great information thank you uh one thing though I'm surprised to not see um really as a major FOC Focus intractable though it is is AI I mean I think we all

[44:01] see the disruptive already impact of AI uh we expect way more of it in the future you know there are bright people in Colorado and at CU and and other places that have some ideas I'm really active and the Rocky Mountain AI interest group um Colorado just passed a law that is scaring to death a lot of entrepreneurs in the II space so you know I I wonder if anybody has thought about that enough to like tell us as a group anymore or you know I I just would welcome a little more Focus there thank you so much uh patina swiger with the downtown Boulder partnership um I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the opportunities that we're facing and one of the biggest takeaways I saw was the figure that um 90% of the Employers in Boulder have fewer than 20 employees and that really says that the majority of the business that's taking

[45:01] place in Boulder is small business um and I see that every day in our work um at the downtown Boulder partnership I know we've developed a bit of a reputation as being the Rodeo Drive for outdoor sporting Brands um and that's really important in terms of driving um tourism and um bringing in people who are looking at that kind of high-end apparel but there are approximately 80 restaurants in 2024 downtown and 72 of those are local owned and operated um there's 154 retailers and 114 are locally owned and operated um and there are 272 businesses total and that means that 221 of those are locally owned and operated so um I bring those figures and I Brian I really appreciated your information but it seemed like there was a little bit of a sort of Doom and Gloom around retail and restaurant and um I just want to highlight the successes of our downtown um I also want to draw attention to the opportunities that we have with our incredible Arts and Cultural Community here in Boulder um we

[46:00] have such a wealth of tremendously diverse art forms and art makers and I think that would be a really wonderful thing to um capture and Sundance Film Festival is amazing we also have a lot of local Arts opportunities that are happening that do a lot to support the local economy thank you re repeat that one more time Carla effort to get Su Dan FAL question is who leads the effort to for the Sundance Festival there is a group of us that are leading it but I'm the main lead for the Sundance Film Festival coming to to Boulder starting in 2025 fingers crossed I won't ask you that yeah other clarifying questions and go ahead and use the microphone and if you're on this row I'm going to have to have you stick out your hand this way so I could see you um this is a macro question but I always

[47:00] think of Cu as the kind of elephant in the room in terms of the Boulder Community and the boulder economy and how does Boulder as a city city factor in the huge population and economic engine from CU I might might add to that uh question and feel free for others to jump in just CU is such an important uh partner for us in a variety of ways certainly from an economic perspective um they're they're a huge player um vital to our the health of our local economy um you know the the city speaking just for the city the city and the university are linked in so many ways and so uh Beyond uh all the great um research uh functions um just just the number of folks the the people coming into work the students it's such a huge influence

[48:00] on our economy and um you know the city uh is is bigger and broader than just University as well and so it's super critical partner and um and you know we value that partnership and the economy is also much more diverse than the than the university in and of itself as important as it is Neil's question about AI we never went back to that anybody have anything to um answer as far as AI it's a it's a super good question um I I think we've thought a lot about it as an organization um but beyond that I don't know if any of our partners would would have anything from an industry perspective to be able to add go ahead is it Dan yes uh Dan poers with collabs actually building on the theme that John had mentioned I know within the various Federal Labs many of them being joint research institutes at the University of

[49:00] Colorado there are intentional programming and research projects that are bringing in artificial intelligence to help ramp up the otherwise uh rapid Discovery process that is already happening within those labs so in a very positive way the ability for different kinds of problems in bioscience and in Aerospace research and in robotics and in Quantum Computing are all being advanced uh very intentionally as much as possible with artificial intelligence so to the extent that they ripple effect of entrepreneurs partnering with those labs or otherwise starting businesses as they spring out of those labs that is a force for growth in new industry paradigms that ideally will serve our economic Prosperity here John goad couple things so I wanted to respond quickly to the question about the university um so I would say that there's a reason why Boulder in 1876

[50:00] took the midnight ride down to uh Denver to buy the land to build the University of Colorado and claim it here and that is because it is a key Cornerstone of our economy um when you think about um The Innovation that happens that comes out the research dollars when you think about the students spending um all of these things are generators for small business activity as well as many founding for the industries that are so critical to um Boulder's uh economic strength so just want to lift that up as as a key foundation and then one other issue that just I have to lift up and um I think it's just a a one of the general uh conditions of the mes that we're feeling around town and that is the office vacancy issue it was high on the list um it's clearly uh having repercussions in terms of the activity in our small businesses the restaurants retailers are feeling that impact um as

[51:00] well as the commercial property owners are are are feeling the pinch from it so I would say that for me that's an area of focus that we as a community need to get a better strategy around and look at all the options um to addressing and and filling those office spaces very good okay let's go with Carla and then I'll come over to you David thank you so much I just want to bring something up that sometimes um micro businesses get put in the same bucket as small businesses and that's not the case there is a huge difference and like Betina was mentioning they're a they have a huge impact in our communities but most of them are homebased or run by families and that it's not only small business but it employs four or five people within the same household so I just want to make sure that we all have that clarification because we see it a lot in the Latino and other underserved communities and that's a huge impact and then another thing that we've seen within the Latino

[52:00] chamber as an identity chamber serving the whole County and the surrounding areas is that in average and because we don't have demographics on um all the businesses register in the Secretary of State um and within municipalities the Latino chamber as an organization of identity and serving under serf communities Latino and bipac um community members we're only covering with the at the capacity that we are right now we're only covering 30% of the businesses um that that identify as bipac or Latinos so we obviously don't have the capacity but we are the only organization serving um as an identity chamers so that's that's a big impact on our community and we wish we could do more and we are doing as much as we can the best that we can but that's a big impact with migration coming uh most of the migrants that are coming to um the area are monolingual or feel more comfortable doing business in Spanish

[53:01] and most of them coming for from Central and South America need the necess have the necessity of the culturally competent and when they decide to become business owners it's that micro business uh that has not the capacity to employ people at a high r that we're used to um in the Boulder County area and obviously most of them cannot survive more than a year or two in business if if the capacity of employing people is is at a high rate David and then mayor proen spere I'm wondering what metrics are we thinking about to measure the extent to which the economic Vitality program is successful especially distinct from the success of the economy local economy because not all of the success of the economy can be attributed to the economic Vitality

[54:01] program that's a great question um I'll answer part of that I I think one thing that we've been doing over the last few years as a city is trying to use data better to make decisions right and so in some areas we were really good and in some areas not so much and so we've spent a lot of time thinking through what our intended outcomes are across all of our goals the Citywide strategic plan is a big part of that um we've taken strides forward but we still have a lot of work to do in in measuring impact of of our investments uh in this way part of our economic Vitality strategy um is to gather Baseline data to start and so that process is underway uh some of the macro data will be a part of that but we're also doing things like uh surveying businesses to uh get a baseline for what they're experiencing and so it's an opportunity to do a little bit of measurement then throughout the the implementation of a straty appreciate that question we do have just a few more slides

[55:01] okay you want me to finish that up or uh let's see why don't we w't you go I can also hold my question okay you could hold is it on this topic you go ahead ask a question and we'll go to the slides it's not necessarily a question okay go ahead laid out there I just wanted to underscore a few things that have been said by John batina and Mark about our tourism state in Boulder um lifting up that Boulder is a beautiful place for people to come we have so many assets and I guess my concern is betina's comment of these small independent um restaurants and um organizations downtown and John's comment about the increased costs for some of these places to um stay in business and believe it or not speaking you know as the tourism person for the community I don't want Boulder to turn into another bold or another tourist attraction the reason people come to Boulder is because we're we're unique

[56:00] and if we lose some of these independent restaurants and these small businesses that give us the flavor and the Special Sauce of Boulder I'm concerned as an emerging issue that some of these increased costs are going to jeopardize all the businesses that we have downtown so I just want to underscore um some support for our small business Community specifically the restaurants and the service providers who could be impacted by the minimum wage increase we all realize that um there is a part of our community that actually needs to make ends meet and I totally support that and and and understand that but what I'm concerned about is that we're going to make other businesses in town that are vital to our Vitality to not be able to make ends meet so I think there needs to be some more discussion on how we can compromise in that really great area for these specific sectors that we're dealing with thank you yeah these are quick uh it frames the second question that we're asking folks in their small groups so I just wanted to make sure we covered it um so

[57:01] these are draft Focus areas for a new strategy again Council um wanted to do this early in a process so these are not final Focus areas or strategies but we want to give you an idea of what might be in a strategy and so your feedback on these draft strategies uh is a big part of the conversation tonight so what might be in a new uh economic Vitality strategy to address some of the challenges and and take advantage of some of the opportunities that we've heard about out um we're looking at these perhaps in four different pillars of a strategy across Equity resilience vibrancy and Innovation inequity that could be uh women and minority owned business support So broader support than what we're currently doing Outreach and assistance for businesses Workforce initiatives and looking at our city procurement practices which is already underway uh resilience uh business disaster preparedness and Recovery climate conscious business practice support and supporting A diversity of Industries and retailers and Community for vibrancy the anything from amenities

[58:02] and infrastructure to our overall quality of the life commercial District vibrancy which we had a conversation last week with Council about tour tourism support and Partnerships business retention expansion and retra attraction uh Innovation uh supporting entrepreneurship emerging creative Industries uh startup and incubation exploring new tools and programs and continued focus on City process navigation and process improvements so what are some sample actions that might we might take in a strategy uh again sample being the key word here from from uh in the equity pillar this could be developing City contract and Supplier Diversity programs and policies expanding specific support for bipac and women-owned businesses and look at broader Workforce Development initiatives in resilience that could be strengthening uh business disaster preparedness and recovery programs we could enhance small business support

[59:01] programs some of those direct assistance programs and update our city-wide retail strategy in vibrancy we could um and and we talked a bit about this last week but exploring the Downtown Development Authority which could be an investment tool for for the broader downtown area explore and support tourism Improvement districts which is something uh on council's uh docket uh development uh of programs to attract business businesses to occupy vacant spaces so mentioned the uh commercial uh vacancy issue and last in Innovation support industry specific programs including uh shared spaces uh leverage Federal chip zones and other grants or incentives to support emerging Industries and last develop strategies uh to help attract and grow emerging Industries so again not uh comprehensive by any means but gives you a sense of what might be within an economic Vitality strategy so we could take just like one or two questions as far as asking U clarifying questions on what

[60:01] Mark just talked about as far as the draft okay thank you yeah I have a question I think it might be for Brian I'm just wondering in some of this macroeconomic data um how do we or does does the data account for people who have more than one job because we have so many people in our community who have to have more than one job in order to make ends meet yeah um thanks for the question so when when we get that month jobs report it's counting jobs it's not counting the people behind it so if if you've got people working at a hardware store and at a restaurant um they're counted as two jobs nationally we can take a look at a series called multi- job holders and we see that that's hovering around record levels right now but we can't see that information locally then there's one more series we can look at it's the local unemployment data and that's counting people it's counting households um so if if uh if if

[61:00] we look at that series um it's not double counting jobs it's only looking at people who are unemployed or people who are employed or people who are not in the labor force I'm going to go ahead and have us uh look at breaking into our small groups um on your name tag you have uh the room that you are assigned to um you will have uh uh again five people in your small group two Council people two uh staff people all the rooms are on the first floor and uh uh I will be I'll go around um and let you know the time uh once we're done there we'll come back up here for a report out um they have uh specific questions that they will be asking you um also I had strict ctions from my colleagues Matt and uh Nick to go around and take pictures because you

[62:01] guys are kind of making history tonight and so um I'll if it's okay I'll come in and just snap a few pictures while you're uh deliberating um so with that let's go ahead and break and we will uh come back here in an hour stretch here so we have what we'll do here in this last bit of the meeting is that we'll have report outs from the council members um we will um allow you to ask any clarifying questions we'll have you take a very quick evaluation and that includes those that are observing too you can take the evaluation as well um and then we'll talk just uh a minute of next steps and we will be done but I will honor make sure that we end 00 at the very latest

[63:00] okay as scheduled all right so how we'll do this is we will have uh each group report out let's have each group report out first and then if you have questions we'll ask when everybody's done there okay all right so if a question comes up write it down and and you could bring it up okay so with the first group let's go to uh Taisha and Nicole uh have you oh wait Taisha I think left okay okay so yeah you could go ahead and start oh okay so if on the report outs you keep it between five and 10 minutes that would be ideal okay so go ahead all right thank you um I'm going to summarize our group's uh first question responses and then Taisha will take it for the second one we'll chime in as needed as we forget things um so one of the things

[64:02] that came up in in our first question discussion um was a a few people talking about not hearing um environment in the plan um and you know thinking about how growing Economic Development can be very extractive uh tourism for example may have some significant environmental impacts and so there was a question around as we move forward how do we connect with and care for the planet um and thinking about the planet as integrally tied to our economy um we also talked about um Equity not really being lifting people up but having access to the same resources so how can we make our processes more inclusive um in a way that is empowering um so that it's not just about how we're growing some of these numbers but also how are we increasing people's quality of life um folks were also talking about um

[65:03] a lack of funding for sustaining some of the nonprofit organizations that contribute to the community um not just in terms of funding for programming but also funding in terms of sustainable funding for the staff that are carrying out the programming because a lot of times the programs that are offered um or the grant programs that are offered do not allow for people to uh support staff with that funding uh we talked a bit about um the difficult City processes that we have that make it really hard for businesses to navigate many things including uh some of our Planning and Development work um and how it's not just a a a question of how we're improving these processes for um streamlining or innovation sake but that it really becomes an equity issue because the people who are able to hire lawyers or

[66:01] spend a lot of time um figuring out these processes or who have six months to wait for an application to go through they are typically the people who are already well resourced um and we really need to think about how our city processes and the navigation of those processes ties into Equity so that it's not just people with the resources and money and connections who can navigate those those um processes uh out of that came an interesting idea around having a concierge contact at planning and development uh for businesses um and there'll be some other interesting ideas that came up uh in our discussion when we get to the second question um we from there talked a little bit about how um some of the Latino business owners or um others who don't have a lot of legal uh experience are coming to um the Latino chamber in particular when they have a bad contract that has been signed um but they don't have the resources to pay for um

[67:02] attorneys when attorneys are needed um from that came the idea of having a standardized lease for businesses something that would help streamline um this process and um have that within a small business support center um we talked a little bit about how to avoid uh businesses getting um saviors but really having support that is lift lifting up the businesses and and their um communities not by through through uh charity but really um by by equal access and how we're giving people access to um programs and and services and and funding that they're needing um and also just thinking about the life experience training that people have and the Knowledge and Skills that they're be bringing um to our community Beyond uh the work that they're doing um and let's see um and and just having more support within the cities for uh

[68:01] small businesses um so that it's not just the burden of the chambers to um support all of the the businesses um did I forget anything Taisha that stood out for you and that answering the first question okay then that is my summary of the first one I think we can move on to the second second thank you awesome thank you so much again my name is Taisha Adams and I was in the group and I wanted to chat about the focus areas and so one was and I think it was an overarching one um what are these Focus areas in service of what are the measures and metrics of success what are the tangible outcomes that we're trying to drive towards um is something that you know what do we want um Boulder to be and so if we want more restaurants that are independent we need to be explicit in saying what that measure

[69:01] metric is and where we're trying to go um in addition to that um we talked about just and when we talked about Innovation I'll go on each of the sections so from an innovation perspective the need for a big idea um something that really brings us together more broadly um and although you know Quantum is wonderful we also know that that's not inclusive of everyone um and so what is that big idea that can really bring us together in a in a meaningful and impactful way um under Innovation there was also a request to consider moving or maybe dovetailing the navigation and processes uh into the equity category as well recognizing that there are not only monetary but linguistic and cultural barriers uh to that process and so in addition to innovating on the process improvements itself uh also recognizing that um there's disproportionate access and outcomes in that area uh in the category of

[70:00] vibrancy there was a request to better unpack and Define the quality of life component and so recognizing that um historically our country uh and our economy has focused on growth unfortunately at the cost right of our environment and some of the other things that we realize are important to our community and so uh when we're talking about quality of life really unpacking what does that look like at you know education public education Public Health housing um food security so just being more intentional and aligned with our economic um drivers measures and metrics but also making sure that those are aligned with maso's law or the black feet law depending on um how long your timeline is and then for the resilience section although climate Consciousness is included there was as uh my colleague indicated a desire to be more explicit around that what that means and also the

[71:00] economic cost for a climate ready business so an example provided was moving from gas to electric right there's a cost there and it's a disproportionate cost um there as well so um although I appreciate uh an increase in Consciousness uh there also needs to be significant changes in practice and those practices are going to have a cost um and so there was some desires there from a recommendation on um what are the similar to just transitions for um communities that have been chronically disinvested and and over toxified uh sacrifice zones for example and those just transitions there's also another transition happening uh for those who may not be facing those conditions but will still have a significant economic impact uh for us to have those higher energy and water upgrades and then lastly for the equity component uh as I mentioned there was the desire to move the navigation over um but there was also also just a need for more data uh and I know we've been having that conversation quite a

[72:00] bit about you know what are the number of minority owned businesses how many um you know people are having multiple jobs and have multiple employers and it's very hard to be aspirational if we don't have Baseline data so that was certainly a request and um and sometimes there's an overreliance um on our business Chambers and you know this expectation that everybody our sbdc has this information or so and so has this information who's um you know whose responsibility is it to have this data and to update this data uh recognizing that businesses you know close or transition or all kinds of things happen so just the Integrity of the quality of the data was something else that was brought up um just trying to see if there's anything else I want to catch all of my pieces um Nicole anything addition from that and and I see our timekeeper is yeah if was that our 10 minutes I'm very monochronic so just a couple quick things I want to get on the record um one was around uh helping

[73:01] people understand our city budget better where the money comes from where the money goes as part of this economic Vitality work um another was thinking about how we can fix Federal problems um especially around small businesses and including um undocumented uh business owners in in this work um another was thinking about the changing demographics and how that may change our funding stream like sales tax um and there was a beautiful idea about having business connectors kind of like we have Community connectors and residents but uh business connectors to um reach out to some of the groups so thank you for letting me add a few things boom I'm going to add that in here and add the standardized leasing for commercial in multiple languages as another incredible example and closer alignment with the cuu Legal Center thank you very good next Matt and Lauren all right I'll start with the q1 and Lauren in our practice section knocked

[74:01] out Q2 like a home run so she she lined that one up well um we'll start with a couple of big themes that covered everything real quick um linking businesses and people and resources seemed to be just a theme that was quite ubiquitous uh the other one and I hear this when council members Spear and Adams talk about it and it was clear enough is the the word navigation or navigating is sort of used a lot and seemed to always be used as a means of a barrier it was a barrier to achieving success um and so I that was just a theme that kind of came through whether it be uh mean we've heard it all over so let me get to q1 um one of the things we heard was uh facing greater competition uh regionally uh was one of those big issues that are those conditions um what they have cost advantages some of our neighbors do um than we do and then there's also competition nationally because we compete at that National stage academically with our labs um and and certainly with some of our Tech businesses so so that competition um is certainly a condition uh to

[75:01] consider um and really what is our future economy uh what are the disruptors to today's um employment status um facilitating businesses navigating um emerging threats and opportunities um these are things again when you have small or micro uh they are so focused on just the dayto day do they have enough money for tomorrow that sometimes the longer term planning which builds that resiliency may not be present and so there's an opportunity um to help them navigate those threats and opportunities um and also again navigating resources um business incentives um to employ Mentor or support people with lived experience um was another big thing that that came through um and that's something that we have a bounty of supply for in our community and so um worth leveraging the assets uh that lived experience provide and those were a lot of the responses to number one and so I'll turn it over to council member folkz for Q2 thanks Matt um so for our draft Focus areas um

[76:01] we started with discussing microloans and mentoring um and then later kind of folded in apprenticeships trying to look at both how we can increase these opportunities and how we can pair them together to make them even more impactful um we also discussed tax credit assistance for hiring people with who have been for Ally incarcerated or homeless and also having a mentoring or coaching portion both for employers and employees to help um people better understand the value of those kinds of lived experiences um we also discussed families and small businesses moving East for cost reasons and how we need to double down on our focus on innovation in order to retain our current economic vibrancy and continue to make sure we

[77:01] understand and focus on controlling on better understanding what kinds of costs we as a city council or as a city organization can help people and businesses control in our community in order to help um maintain that small business vibrancy that's what we got for option two did I miss anything Matt no I think well uh one thing is the sort of vend diagram between Transportation mobility and familyfriendly attainable housing and how those directly impact our economic Vitality so there's a lot of blending that those all have but awesome all right Q3 um who needs to be engaged who's not currently at the table um we had EA um we also have uh CU but also our community colleges um we have Rocky Mountain equity and as much as we're talking about groups and we love our um business

[78:02] groups like downtown Boulder and the Chamber and Latino chamber we also want to hear specifically from those businesses themselves and hearing directly from them because sometimes um those unique challenges are things that we can tackle head on um and so hearing from them direct and also making sure that they know that they have a voice and that their voice can be heard directly from their to their can be spoken directly to their elected officials is also key um unhoused service providers is another group that we think would be important and then also hearing from groups that represent our increasingly aging population as well as our undocumented populations did I miss any all right awesome very good thank you for being so concise let's go to Tin next thank you for carrying the weight of the group by yourself yes thank you although we weren't alone we had groups of people to work with and I thank David Carla Betina Michael and Jamal for this wonderful

[79:01] experience I really appreciate all of the the things you had to say um so we started with the um the first question and we spent some time at a high level um thinking about how will this economic plan align with the city's goals and income sources and how do we focus on actions or ideas that will also support what the City's goals are so an example would be if sales revenue is a concern then are there actions we can take to protect that or increase that Revenue um we also um talked about internship opportunities between CU and the city um we also talked about the concept of greed uh and property holders in the city um and how fees are raised that make it difficult for some business owners um we did some talk about the history of downtown Boulder which was great just to think about the changes that have happened in the last 30 years

[80:01] and the different types of businesses um in the the downtown area and why are we getting there and that led to another question that was sort of a one an a two which was thinking about case studies in Boulder like The Crossroads Mall what did we do there um how did it change where are we now and thinking about each part of the city and did we get what we want after we were done with those planning um and development and policy and Zoning conversations are we happy with what we did in those um places so then in the second area um we spoke about um how it's more difficult to come to Boulder and work at legal pets and afford a house so we have to think about how can we um make that possible again are there incentives we can look at um we spent time thinking about how some of the words we're using um are complimentary but also involve tradeoffs

[81:02] so if we want to increase Vitality but also increase wealth of people and businesses how do we do that together and how do we find that right balance um we uh again want to define the words vitality and resilience we want to think about the city and its employees and practices in place to promote the local economy with than the city itself uh also thinking about the word Innovation which comes as I think Matt has said with disruption and how do we um balance that with preservation um and then thinking about just our whole portfolio of Industries uh do we think we're too um focused in some areas or do we think that because Boulder has built a lot of strength in certain areas we should continue to um recruit in that specific space so an example might be Quantum Computing and Tech hubs uh and then of course we talked about steps to refine the permitting

[82:01] Hoops the cost of doing business as well as a a really comprehensive platform with information for small business owners that um makes it much easier for small business owners to access help in the city finally we looked at partners and our partners that we thought about adding were the farmers market um commercial landlords uh partner cities that were competing or a co-option situation like Longmont um also Lewisville how are we impacting housing prices and surrounding communities as we bring in more highly paid employees um thinking about our retired population which is extraordinarily educated and motivated what role could they play in the future uh renters that don't have representation kgnu which has access to different audiences even throughout the day and the board of education so team is that good you're my

[83:03] backup all right thank you very good thank you uh and next uh Tara and Ryan first I'm going to start with an intro and say that this was a really special time for me and I think was pretty successful so can we Pat ourselves on the back Ryan Hench and Matt and myself no I'm just kidding it was what I loved about it personally was I got to know Rachel Greg I can't see that far Neil who who am I missing that was in our great group John okay Charlene and who else the point is is that each one of us oh and Greg Greg was incredible why I'm saying that is because even though I'm listening to everybody my mind is fading and I am having a little trouble focusing at this point with all these great ideas what stuck out for me was people's stories so

[84:01] when I go back home I'm not going to think about everything that all the council members said because I already forgot everything you said but I'm going to think about the stories of the individuals and that's what made this special right because now I can say well John really wants us to focus on second floor vacancies and here's why and he made it real and Greg says that I don't want to use names I'm is say somebody I'm not mentioning names who's very interested in AI for instance and talked about it a lot somebody gave us you know a perspective on small bipac and uh Latino businesses that we really needed to hear somebody had a business in Boulder and left because of many reasons which we'll talk about another time that but the point is is this was successful for me because we had an opportunity to actually have conversation with each other not against each other not yelling at each other but with each

[85:00] other to try to create Solutions and that's pretty much what I loved about it so now I'm going to give this microphone to Ryan who probably has all the details that I don't okay yes I I'll provide more of an Institutional view um quickly so also I want to acknowledge Eric Amador and Sam kman thank you for your work facilitating the conversation so on the first question on themes we had four uh we started with the with the discussion about homelessness and specifically unsheltered homelessness and how it is a um in one sense a a perceived drag on um what we're trying to do with our economy but that led to a discussion about how um that is also driven it is driven by a increasingly dualized economy um and there I think there was uh some points about lack of lack of housing lack of services is an issue but we fundamentally have a um a challenge in our economy of being able to serve serve everybody and um we need to take all that into consideration um so that's the

[86:00] first one second one um Rachel um talked about uh she introduced a really important idea about having greater attention to our biopot community and especially our Latino community and having more robust approaches for outreach inreach and um Community Based Services and I'll give a chance to be corrected on any of this um folks want to add things um third one we talked about office vacancies uh John raised this and we talked about around it quite quite a bit um and it I'll just leave it at that for now because it'll it'll come up in Focus areas and then finally we did talk about AI a little bit but we actually didn't get into a lot of depth but I think we all acknowledged wow this is a super important complicated discussion that we should create some more time for um so those are the themes I had and then for Focus areas um I think I think um in general there was an interest and acceptance of the framework Equity resilience vibrancy and Innovation um Rachel again kicked off a

[87:01] discussion I think about how this this really does need to be a a conversation that is both about the business community and also our Workforce and um John um then talked about how when we say business Community this is small business in all the different gradations but then also this the importance of our the the so-called primary businesses these large employers that become the customers of the smaller businesses who depend on them to survive so John made an interesting point that you know we were it was we we were inclined to go on these Deep dive discussions but really this is about needing all all of this together um so oh and then also another idea that just we one of the things we need to do is to drive more people and customers into the businesses that's one of the important things that we can do um and then uh last but not least Charlene just asked us to think about um or I guess asked us to instead of saying tourism say visitor economy that's that that connotes more what we're trying to do instead of saying tourism tour think about the

[88:01] visitor economy and that that canotes more of a um specialized unique Boulder and that we talked about that for a little bit I think that was it I don't believe on the third question we actually got to it on on who who we need to talk to I could give my opinion but I don't think that's um I didn't even know we had a third question Ryan what do you think I will say that we also talked about minimum wage and it was a really interesting discussion because we also talked about small businesses micro businesses and workers and um how complicated it is to get to that happy place and John mentioned doing no harm so in other words the businesses have already so much stress since the pandemic that we and they have so many things that are out of our control as Council um but there are some things that are we are in control of and what can we do to make make things better for the small and the micro businesses and when we think of micro businesses specifically of b bipac um Latino

[89:02] businesses as well so that was a really interesting discussion very good let's give yourselves a hand here before we go to the clarifying [Applause] questions so with that does any of the uh any folks have clarifying questions for the other groups um and if you do please uses the microphones I get I guess it wasn't really um questions for the clarifying groups but um Copa is a group that I thought should be on board and I say that for everybody Copa is um Colorado providers association.org you can find them they um are lived experience peer trainers to all levels so for for like everybody that's sitting sitting in here there's somebody that's had a unique experience that um bringing that to the table I guess maybe something for the

[90:01] chamber to have available um for business business owners and stuff um peer supports for for all the all the traumas you go through just trying to keep keep um in touch with the community and stuff um I say that because I I did my peer training through there um through MHP but um there's we we have quarterly meetings and stuff and I I think that's and for for that we don't have any services for the houseless or very many there's all roads brochure I advise anybody to pick that up in the local library I brought it to miss Teresa the other day we we have such a pleora of services um that are available to our houseless it's just about making sure that people know what's available out there um putting our money in the right places and making sure that the people are utilizing the services that that we're actually investing in that's all very good go ahead Jamal um always a Debbie Downer um uh it's been

[91:03] said multiple times and I just want to by various groups not just one group so I just want a clarification on like bipac you said bipac businesses and then you said especially Latino or what's the difference tell me there is no difference um the Latinos are included in the bip Community but the Latino is the fastest grow uh population in Colorado and many states in the United States um so we are all my my my question is though if we state it that way that's not inclusive that's not Equitable that's not all the things that we put on the board up here and so if we want to stay clear and concise to what we're trying to really do and that's just to move all boats up and be on a even playing field then we really have to watch our speech we we can't say we're inclusive but only to these and

[92:01] especially these I think there needs to sorry to interrupt you there needs to be an specification with the Latino Community because it's the majority and it's the fastest growing population and the one that um as of now is bringing the economy not only of Colorado but the United States up uh and and that's has to be very specific to to that um to that population I think that's division go ahead so I agree our language must be very intentional and we have to be mindful about it so we don't inadvertently become exclusive where we're trying to be inclusive and I do want to clarify that um at least in our group group when we talked about Cho and Latino entrepreneurs was around span Spanish speakers so if we can make sure

[93:04] we make that clarification moving forward there's bipo and then when we're talking about um monolingual Spanish speaking entrepreneurs sometimes there's different needs anything Jamal yeah there's monolingual in all culture so like it would be the native population as well so they there's natives here that speak monol language and we're not specifically uplifting them even though historically we have definitely led to their demise so I'm just saying just if we want to have an inclusive environment an inclusive community a really Equitable place we really must watch ourselves putting ourselves ahead of our neighbors and and because it just will end up where we are right now with someone else in the back and someone

[94:00] else at the top so if we really want to do what we're set out to do what what all the words were up here they were beautiful words I'm sorry she wasn't here to see her Brilliance but it was amazingly put but I I just really want to uh to really state that if we're really in this about inclusion and equity and having a inclusivity all the special buzzwords I'm sorry um then please please let's please let's watch our language let's let's be more inclusive with our language uh if we really want that to happen let's go I'll go with Adriana and then there I saw hand somewhere back here okay go ahead you go first yes and yeah I totally completely agree with that we need to be very mindful how do we use the language especially because and I'm going to talk from my experience with Spanish speaking communities our language can be very discriminated right this because it's a

[95:01] colonizer language so how can we reproduce the same violence that we are fighting so we I completely agree that we need to be very aware and not put in like like especially someone or especially a group is like how can we create equity and we know that Justice requires different approaches or maybe one approach from different perspectives to close the gaps and maybe some communities may have like wider gaps to close and then but it's not like especially for this because I don't know if I'm getting more confused I need the interpreters right now in there go but what I'm trying to say and I'm probably gonna say in Spanish and request in in request to help but I look well I'm gonna say in English to close the gaps like if you find equity and there's this

[96:00] drawing that probably everybody is aware that you have one steps two steps and three steps and that's what what is needed but it doesn't matter what is your background is what what are you doing what are you needed to close that that gaps right so and I'm going to quote a philosopher like justice is everyone for each person according to their needs and for each person according to their capabilities right so yeah thank you sorry oops I really appreciate the conversation around equity and inclusion it's beautiful I don't really have anything more to say you guys are much more understanding and qualified um I just want to make a quick comment there

[97:01] was something that Nicole brought up about how the tourism sorry I even correct it the visitor economy can impact the environment and I just wanted to mention that we are working on a program to address that um we got a little sidelined with the Sundance thing coming into town but we were planning on launching a program this year so look for for next year on how to educate people when they come into town how to respect and care for our environment um which is obviously needed and something that we care deeply about and the only other thing I wanted to mention is that when I was talking earlier about um not wanting Boulder to be a tourism traction what I mean by that is that I I didn't want to see Boulder turn into an ordinary City with brands that are um chain restaurants and chain things like that so I do support obviously the the tourism and um visitor economy but I just didn't I just don't want it to change from what it is because what draws people to Boulder is

[98:02] the same thing that draws our community to Boulder and it's the uniqueness of our town thank you go ahead J so just um one comment is I didn't hear people talk about taking advantage of the assets that we have for example utilizing the infrastructured advantages that we have in the airport is one example and and thinking about instead of that as a a resource that is of concern or maybe housing but maybe turning that into something that can be developed as a resource for business development going forward and I think there's other examples like that so just as we look toward um other elements of sort of the Vitality elements and the framework that we think about taking advantage of the infrastructure assets that we have the bike Lanes Etc that are things that are unique assets of our community that we can use as an element

[99:01] of our economic Vitality we have time for just a few more comments Taisha thank you um I just wanted to bring up a couple things I haven't heard one um we haven't talked about waste at all in waste management and so I just want to lift that up and would be wonderful to have some more stakeholders from our composting recycling um and zero waste communities um also agriculture you know I mean I I love food I love restaurants but I also would love to um have more of our a our food Growers um in these conversations as well um and not just have Heritage uh for our agricultural but but actual growing food and innovating in that way and then lastly the people for centers for people with disabilities um and just some of the accessibility um that we know we're not we're going to need for for those populations as well as for our aging um and older and Elders

[100:00] thank you go go ahead Carla um not in our group but someone here mentioned needing wanting to have a big idea and I actually had thought about that previously and I forgot to bring it up in our group and I was thinking about I lived in New York pre and post Bloomberg and Time Square that was a big idea um and it involved you know it made a huge difference in economic Vitality the population whatnot maybe that would be a fun thing to throw out to the community to get started and do a whole process on we're looking for the next big idea for Boulder so interesting point I also wanted to give a big thanks to uh the facilitators Erica all you

[101:03] [Applause] everybody you guys were so great that's all I have to say very good anyone one last comment okay can you put up that uh Q QR code what we'd like to do uh as we get to the wrapup is just to have everybody here um participants at the table um those who observed please uh go to the QR code and and take a few minutes just to uh evaluate as we wrap up here do we have any paper copies or of the survey do

[102:03] we okay Ryan will hand out those uh paper copies so um as far as the uh uh next steps uh staff will draft a summary of what they've would heard and learned in this forum and you guys were great you know as far as part participating and sharing all your points I have to give you all a bunch of credit uh but your comments will be documented and it'll be made uh available to council and the public um there's going to be more opportunities correct uh to uh engage on this economic Vitality work in the future um that'll be coming in the coming months right and uh as well as the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan so there's going to be more more engagement opportunities more ample opportunities for your input um let's see uh another comment

[103:02] here we'll be sure to keep participants updated on progress with this economic development plan uh including when the plan is reviewed by the council at that point they'll reach out uh with another evaluation reflecting on this entire process uh so know I just want to give you all credit I want to give credit to council um and all of you who step forward because you care about this community and you took the time to participate with such depth so I just give you all great compliments and and I I thank you for being how Community should be you know and can be so uh with that any other comments to close with no problem it was my pleasure let's see David had something real quick and then I'll have you close I'm imagining that as this sort of

[104:02] experiment uh continues you'll want to have new voices involved and that's very understandable but I don't want this to feel like a one night stand so there should be a way for people who really put a lot of energy in this to continue to participate as well as new voices agre yeah and I I'll just say quickly that from a staff perspective uh we're committed to making sure that this group is well involved in the progress of the economic Vitality strategy and will keep you in the loop so just very much appreciate everybody's uh conversation tonight participation I thought it was super valuable conversation so thank you I just wanted I just wanted to chime in also I I heard about this through the League of Women Voters and we have a

[105:00] very active voting methods group that talks about things like citizen assemblies this is not a Citizens assembly but you know I think that would be a very valuable thing I think Europe has had fabulous success getting through you know some of those naughty problems that that frankly with no disrespect to politicians it's hard for a politician to address but easy iier for an assembly that is just the citizens randomly selected in a way that is uh representative of the population to do cool things so you know I hope that this is maybe a great model for the study session notion but that for other kinds of problems we continue to look at uh you know bigger and and better solutions for hard problems DK can I just add something appreciate that Neil we are actually going to be embarking on a community assembly um with regards to our Boulder Valley compreh comprehensive plan engagement um and that's led by

[106:00] Vivian Castro um on our team here so we are we are we are Marching forth in that front and in that same realm as Matt will know we could also consider proportional representation on bodies like the city council so that once again even the council itself can really in in a way that you can demonstrate that doesn't that's not vulnerable to gerrymandering uh be able to represent the citizens really well fabulous thank you great well I'm just going to close with some final thanks to everyone who came out to join us tonight um and spent your Thursday night with us thank you so much thank you to Derek for wonderful facilitation um thanks to our yeah one more Applause thank you to our Council engagement committee for really bring this Matt and Tara thank you so much um thank you to council member former council member friend as well um and

[107:00] staff my goodness the amount of work that you all put into making tonight happen thank you this was an incredible experience as a council member um sounds like it was a pretty good experience as a community too and we are just so grateful for your willingness to innovate and bring this opportunity to us so thank you so much um as was stated this is just the beginning of many uh different ways of doing engagement so um I look forward to hearing from everybody again and seeing some of you and some of these other engagement opportunities that we'll have coming up so thank you have a good night I will close the 56