Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:28] e e

[1:28] hello I can hear you kaisha all right I can hear you I don't know if the council chambers can hear us I don't think so Aaron and Matt haven't looked up Dad joke they can hear us no oh oh no maybe they didn't Matt didn't raise his head when I said Dad we can hear you wait who's we can Matt he us because I'm giving some love

[2:01] we means everybody [Music] everybody yeah get this energy now because it's um eight o'clock here on in in beautiful Tampa Florida are you okay noria why are you not in there uh I have been asked to stay off my knee for another week for all of the

[3:01] um all of them for the council and the planning board we are making it work with some of us gone and virtual I think it's working all right while we hate while we wait N I sent you an email we've I've had some incredible conversation they had a great session on immigration um I look forward to talking with you and our Council colleagues and it was just really powerful I still can't hear the council room though the chambers I think they have us muted until the meeting starts oh okay

[4:06] they all right for a little levity to start the night how do ghosts stay in shape they exercise all right Elicia do we have uh Channel 8 ready yes sir we are ready to go okay I'm going to give other people one half second here to sit down

[5:07] all right I'm going to go ahead and gav Us in and get started on this Thursday no November 14th 2024 special meeting of the Boulder City Council and it is especially special because this is a joint meeting with the planning board so when to extend a warm welcome to our planning board members here uh as they join us and give them an extra thank you because this is their second meeting of the week they had a full meeting on Tuesday night well how long how late did that meeting go 11 okay we promis to get you out of here sooner than that tonight okay right so I'll note that this joint meeting is only being held for item 3A um and after that the planning board will adjourn and leave the meeting at the at the conclusion of that item so you really will get out of

[6:00] so if we can go ahead and have a roll call please Elicia thank you sir and again Welcome to our fellow planning board members we'll start tonight's roll call as usual with council member Adams pres Benjamin present mayor Brockett present council member focus is absent council member Marquis present Shu hard here mayor Pro Tim Spears absent council member wallik uh here and Winer presid mayor we have our quum fantastic and then I will turn things over to planning board Chair George Boon if you would like to call the planning board to order please thank you and I think Thomas is going to call us to order is that correct uh through do a roll call so thank you mayor Brockett um we'd like to call to order the planning board meeting tonight November 4 14 for the purpose of

[7:00] holding a joint public hearing was city council to consider a motion to find um that there is interest in considering a service expansion are we are we doing this right now or are we doing that when we get to number three uh well I was just going to invite you to do uh take a roll call before I had Alicia announced it but Alicia would you like to announce the item uh first before we do that plan board roll call yes sir very good we we will announce the planning board roll call which is item I mean planning board joint meeting item which is item number three on our agenda tonight under public hearings 3A is the joint public hearing with the planning board to consider a motion to find that there is interest in considering a service area expansion into the area 3 planning Reserve as part of the 2025 major update to the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan please be advised that this is a public hearing only and no deliberations will be held thanks that Alicia George you want to

[8:01] continue um sure so uh we'll go ahead and uh do our planning board roll call uh ml rbls here Mason here Laura here Mark here Kurt here Claudia here and George Moon I'm also here all right um I think it pass it back over to you correct yes please thank you George appreciate it um so before we get into the meat of the item just a couple housekeeping notes I will note that the microphones are sensitive and can uh get some feedback going with so many of us here so if you're not actively speaking if you can turn your microphone off please I'd appreciate it and then I'll just note that um on this item tonight um this is strictly a presentation by City staff and then questions by Council and planning board followed by a public hearing at that time we will uh each continue the meeting and return to our

[9:00] next meeting to do deliberations and make a decision so no decisions tonight but just um questions and public hearing and with that in mind I will go ahead and turn it over to our city staff to get things going thank you so much mayor uh and I'm sorry I am not there in person to uh be with you um mobility issues keep me at home but uh so happy that you're able to be there in person uh tonight's item uh I'm going to send it over to our director of planning and development services Brad Mueller to kick us off Brad thank you so much nura uh I am Brad Mueller I'm the director of planning and development services and what a delight to see the uh two groups come to together uh this evening thank you for your time and energy around that uh we have been talking about and alluding to the community needs aspect of the planning area Reserve Area 3 uh for

[10:01] quite some time ever since Council identified uh this series of um steps as part of a council priority a couple years ago while we are here this evening to not determ have you determine Community need but rather to uh decide whether or not to authorize staff to begin to do the background uh needed so that you could make a decision approximately a year from now about whether there is a need to go ahead and uh take the steps necessary to urbanize Area 3 so thank you for your time this evening uh I believe we're going to start with uh Christopher Johnson who's the senior manager for comprehensive uh planning thank you Brad good evening Council and planning board members I'm going to immediately turn it over to uh my colleague to my right senior planner Sarah horn and she will kick us off tonight hello city council and planning

[11:00] board members as KJ mentioned I'm Sarah horn senior Planner on the comprehensive planning team as you know I'm joined by Brad behind me Christopher Johnson to my left Chris Brewer to his left who is one of our um colleagues and um Consultants from AECOM we have Dianna Weber behind me in the audience from aeom and we're also joined by colleagues from various um City departments um who have been helping us with this process and they've been instrumental in getting us to this point we couldn't do this without them Sarah do you mind SC that microphone a little closer to you sure great is that better that is okay okay and as I mentioned we're here tonight to continue the conversation around the area 3 planning Reserve um Council and planning board must decide if you're interested in considering a service area expansion into the area 3 planning Reserve as part of the bbcp update that the comprehensive planning staff is currently working on following this evening's joint joint public hearing each body will consider a motion

[12:02] to continue their respective hearings to next week November 19th for planning board and November 21st for Council during next week's meetings both of you will deliberate and vote on authorization of step two of the service area expansion process the community needs study and just as a quick reminder and to orient everyone to the location we're discussing the area 3 planning Reserve is located just to the north of the majority of the city's existing service area which is the pale yellow and light gray on the map on the slide the reserve which is highlighted with the pink location icon um is located just north of us36 and is approximately 493 acres in size and of that 493 Acres the city owns approximately 220 of those Acres almost 270 are privately owned and the US Forest Service owns approximately 5 Acres there are three items in our agenda tonight first our Consultants

[13:01] AECOM will give a brief um summary of the urban Services study um the key insights of that study then KJ will cover the area three planning Reserve um expansion process um and procedures and finally I'll explain how we're planning to incorporate steps two and three of the expansion process into the bbcp update um and then I'll talk about immediate step next steps for both bodies so before AECOM reviews the key insights from the urban Services study I just want to remind everyone where we are now you can see the three steps of the expansion process outlined on this slide step one which includes the urban Services study um was a report considering current infrastructure capacity and potential on and offsite infrastructure costs and impacts the report was accepted by Council on November 7th um so Step One is now complete um Council and planning board you're both now at a decision Point

[14:00] according to the bbcp after acceptance of the study at the beginning of a bbcp update you must hold a public hearing to determine whether a service area expansion should be considered during the bbcp update which is what we're doing right now that's your focus tonight based on your decisions next week we may move to step two of the expansion process the discussion that is before you tonight is not about the design or use of the planning Reserve which would be further analyzed and discussed during step three on the right side of the slide if both bodies choose to move forward with that step in the future the focus of tonight is simply whether you are interested in proceeding with a study of community needs although Step One is complete we want to again share some of the urban service study's key insights to provide context to help you with your decision about moving to step two so with that I'll now pass it to Chris to share some of those insights uh Sarah thank you very much for the

[15:01] record my name is Chris Brewer I've been with aeom for 30 years I am an economist I usually find that I've to apologize in advance for that but just getting that out of the way um we've had a very clear set of conversations and discussions in the last eight weeks based on feedback from both of you obviously significant conversations with City staff to cut through any confusion and be as clear as possible about what are the clear policy choices we're trying to drive towards but also ack knowledging that there are things there's a sequence of events that have to happen to fully unlock Area 3 and that's going to take some time so I think statement one is clear enough there are fundamentally a set of off-site improvements to water and wastewater treatment systems to distribution pipe systems that fundamentally have to happen for area three to develop Chris do you mind moving the mic in a little bit I think the good news is that your existing cips already have projects which allow the

[16:01] conversation to happen meaning you're already thinking about projects that are putting you on a path to make area three developable so the real question is in the next six to 12 months how do those priorities shift again money is always a constraint but whether that means this happens in five years or 10 years you now have the the opportunity to make those choices concretely about how to move forward and I would also stress just based understanding of how the city has done these things in the past um while while a share of these costs would be new to the city you do have impact fees and ways of collecting new Revenue to fund and offset some of these costs so again you have some flexibility in terms of making those choices but again this is the Big Driver of development of Area 3 is unlocking the offsite improvements um fundamentals we've gone through the process it's very easy to speculate about what happens on Area 3 and we've obviously presented to you in the past different scenarios for housing units anywhere from 4,000 to 8,000

[17:00] housing units on the site but it really hit home for me when I thought about just appreciation and home values in Boulder from about what under half a million 10 years ago to just under a million now again 5% annual growth um just thinking for area three that home price or that apartment rent five to 10 years in the future is it something like 600,000 is it something around a million is it a million three those are very different numbers so it's a very difficult Dynamic to forecast particularly five to 10 years in the future but that being said what we really want to do is drisk conversation so what choices can we make to clarify things that we understand easily and clearly and allow us to begin to make those incremental steps so again how do we think incrementally about unlocking this area without exposing us to risk um the regulatory process we know is going to create the risk of speculation and we think speculation is ultimately a challenge because it could potentially get in the way of some of your policy goals goals again sustainability uh

[18:01] Energy Efficiency affordability these are all things you've talked about consistently we know they're important to the project so therefore understanding how we handle the regulatory process how we interact with property owners um speculation is something we have to pay attention to because it will start to unfold but last but not least you're in a unique position city owns half the property and that means you get to influence the process and think carefully and pragmatically about how it could be on locked if you choose to move forward in the coming weeks um we say that point because it's a pretty quiet place today um fragmented ownership a small number of property owners um the running theory is the prairie dogs are more organized at this point but we're at the beginning of a process and thinking about those steps really is what we want to get through today so as we go to the next slide again on-site improvements again a lot of debate about these costs I'll be very transparent here these are fundamentally on site infrastructure costs so streets sidewalks street lights

[19:02] cbon gutter in our view a future developer is going to be responsible through for the majority of these costs again that could be through their direct participation in the project it could be through collected impact fees um the policy decision you will eventually have to contend with is if you insist on above standard infrastructure so better than current best practice let's say we're talking micro grids additional green infrastructure there's a Poss possibility that you might have to help support some of those costs but again our view at this point is that the majority of these costs will be borne by the private sector as the project develops I want to be clear about that um we'll go to the next slide so this is probably the number that has gotten most everyone concerned we would stress that it is a range and it reflects the fact that you have choices and you have today again within your CIP a number of projects that are already beginning to help unlock the potential path forward for Area 3 but

[20:00] the point is you've choices in terms of how Area 3 ultimately develops and you can begin to have that conversation in the coming months to begin to make practical choices to decide if you can in fact afford to unlock area three um last but not least with Parks we'll go to that now uh I think the thing I would stress about Parks is not the idea of the cost of a regional park it's that you ultimately have a choice between between using the acreage you own to either deliver and maintain Urban Parks you have a performance metric for maintaining open space per capita so you have a choice to use the park land to achieve that or you can choose to take that land and use it for affordable housing that's really the choice you have I think if we think about purely the idea of the regional park that's a lower priority item versus the idea of well we either need to use this land for affordable housing or we need to preserve it for parks that's really the choice you have and you don't have to

[21:00] make that choice today so last but not least a lot of talk about ongoing revenues and expenses um and again we were on the call when we were talking about the Julian and I always know developers they tend to overestimate revenues and underestimate costs it's the way it is uh in our world actually when we think about our operating costs from a city standpoint so police fire City operating expenses as a general rule most of the city's costs are fixed okay on an annual basis you have a certain number of residents your costs relatively fixed they shouldn't change that much relative to population which means on average if we add 10 to 15,000 residents in area three your marginal cost of each new resident should in fact go down so our view is that these operating costs are actually a little conservative like again the marginal cost should decrease all things being equal now on the revenue side it's actually a challenge to forecast again

[22:01] are we talking houses worth 600,000 houses worth 900,000 houses worth a million to huge variability in terms of property tax potentials but the really interesting one is sales tax so again if we were in 2015 we would have focused on sales tax performance from retail space and that would have driven your sales tax potentials um we're now in a world with e-commerce where the vast majority of your sales tax could actually be captured at home which means your change in Resident numbers directly influences your sales tax potentials and we had a number of conversations with City Finance staff who were actually initially concerned about how aggressive the numbers were and we had a a long conversation about what the appropriate assumption was to be conservative um but it is a number that is in fact quite volatile and could actually be higher than what we're thinking at this point the bottom line from our perspective is that on an operating basis um again if we're adding densities at you know 40 to 50 units per acre again one of the scenarios um that should in fact be Revenue positive on an operating basis I

[23:01] would be surprised if it wasn't um the key thing for us is just how long the process takes and again you do control that process from a CIP standpoint thank you Chris uh I'm going to move on to the next section of the presentation which is really intended to provide all of you an overview of the overall uh service area expansion process I want to make sure every body has a common understanding of not only where we are currently but also what those future steps look like so the service area expansion procedure is uh explicitly described in exhibit B of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan uh it includes three steps that Sarah went over briefly at the beginning of the presentation they're detailed again here on this slide uh step one is to prepare that Urban Services study which is now complete uh and studies the feasibility and costs of expansion this helps to answer the question of

[24:01] could expansion occur step two is to evaluate Community needs and whether they would require an expansion in order to be met this is intended to answer the question of should expansion occur and then finally step three is to prepare an urban Ser or sorry a service area expansion plan which is really where you start to break out the colors and the markers and start drawing on a piece of paper to develop the vision the land use plan and the policies for expansion this is intended to answer the question of how expansion could occur in the future you can also think of this in terms of step one as unlocking the door to the planning Reserve step two opens the door and then step three is you walking through the door uh it's really important for Council and planning board to understand that the process that has been developed and that is outlined in the comprehensive plan related to expansion

[25:00] is is very intentionally sequential and multi-stepped it's really there to ensure that the potential Community benefits outweigh the possible negative impacts and that the city ultimately expands in a logical and measured manner accordingly each one of these steps has a specific level of detail and also certain limitations as to what is relevant and appropriate to be discussed at that moment step one the urban Services study does not make any recommendations on policy it is really just provide intended to provide an initial estimate of feasibility and the costs and serves as a foundation for future conversations step two is when uh the community need study is when the community and staff and policy makers begin to weigh the possible benefits and costs of expansion this step is intentionally integrated with and then initiated at the beginning of a Boulder Valley comprehensive plan update in order to put the planning Reserve into

[26:01] the context of the rest of the city's priorities and values it will lead to an evaluation that weighs the tradeoffs of expansion in relation to other approaches to address those identified needs and finally step three the service area expansion plan would establish the detailed vision and plan for the area this is roughly equivalent to a subc commmunity plan and would Define the land use plan the mobility Network and the policies that will guide future annexation agreements and development uh in terms of um topics including affordable housing parks in open space and the expectations of developers in the future next slide one final note uh here is just to reinforce the fact that you all have the ability to press pause at any moment throughout this process uh as we discussed earlier in Chris's section the offsite infrastructure improvements are likely going to be the driving uh

[27:01] critical path um driving force in terms of the timing for substantial development to occur and not necessarily the planning process itself so there may actually be some strategic reasons in the future to pause while those infrastructure discussions and decisions are made uh before moving forward however if you do wish to proceed uh the current comp plan procedures that guide service area EXP expion are laid out uh in an extended calendar that might look something like this so the community need study would occur concurrent with the Boulder Valley comprehensive Plan update as Sarah will be describing shortly and then at the end of the need study if there is a sufficient priority need that is identified to Warrant the preparation of a service area expansion plan that process would begin soon after the adoption of the bbcp update in mid 2026 now I want to point out the initiation of a service area expansion

[28:01] plan is a city decision the expansion plan then as I mentioned is equivalent in scope and complexity so to a subcommunity plan so we expect it would probably take approximately 18 months to complete and then the approval of the expansion plan and the change from area three planning Reserve to area two is both a city and county decision per the procedures that are found in exhibit B of the comp plan uh changes from Area 3 to area 2 can only occur during a midterm or major update so that means that even if the expansion plan uh were completed earlier than that the actual change from Area 3 to two uh could not occur until the 20130 midterm update that's based on the current procedures I will highlight that it is important for you to recognize that during a major update of the comp plan which is what we are uh beginning now everything is open to revision and

[29:00] reconsideration so that means that the procedures around the change from Area 3 to area two could be modified to allow for a change to occur sometime outside of a midterm or a major update and concurrent with the approval of an expansion plan that is a procedural change that could be considered and made as part of the comp plan update to be completed in mid 2026 and at that point uh I'm going to pass it off to oh actually I'm not going to do that I'm going to let Brad jump in for just a minute just a just an adjunct to the uh comment on this slide that uh Christopher is making about the procedural change from area three to area two uh a related but separate question has come up more recently about the timing need uh for that under the current procedures from the comprehensive plan uh that is a question that we're going to explore in more detail before next week so we won't be able to answer that today but we will we will have that subsequently answered for

[30:00] you thank you take it away Sarah okay thanks KJ and thank you Brad okay so um KJ alluded to what I will be talking about which is um the approach for step two if you choose to move forward if both of you vote to authorize the community needs assessment um staff's preliminary approach to continue exploring a service area expansion through the bbcp update process would follow the timeline you see on the screen we anticipate starting the process um in early 2025 and then finishing in early 2026 based on the subject matter that needs to be covered during step two of the service area expansion process which is community need staff have plugged the consideration of expansion as KJ mentioned into the bbcp update this will help us deliver a comprehensive process that considers the entire Boulder Valley

[31:01] context to ensure that the expansion process if it moves forward isn't completed in a vacuum and so other alternatives to meet priority Community needs might be considered so now I'll go over the preliminary approach um to the process I'll go over more detail did you this one sorry okay oh well yeah and then I just want to mention for this one um that we're integrating it with the bbcp process as you can see and we would start um to um weave it in um in phase two of the bbcp update okay so the first step of the community needs study um from January to March of 2025 staff would focus on in community engagement related to community needs um we would use existing conditions data that we're collecting right now to identify preliminary unmet

[32:01] needs and then we would engage the community Through Vision Values and focus area activities um to discuss preliminary needs identified by staff to add new needs brought forward by community members and to prioritize the most critical needs and then next from April to May of 2025 staff would begin a preliminary analysis of needs to determine if priority Community needs could be reasonably addressed within the current service area through policy adjustments or enhanced infrastructure um and also if needs could be addressed through the planning Reserve if that is the case staff would include a service area expansion as an option in the draft policy framework to be further explored through detail analysis in The Next Step during this next step taking place from June through October of 2025 staff would perform an analysis of service area expansion this would involve an analysis Anis of Sur service area expansion as a possible solution to

[33:01] Priority Community needs alongside alternative or additional options um that maintain the existing service area um we would also engage with the community to explore various policies and tools to meet Community needs including the service area expansion we would also weigh as KJ mentioned earlier possible trade-offs of these Alternatives and if service a expansion appears to be a viable alternative based on community feedback staff would begin to prepare analysis of the service area expansion the final task for the community needs study or step two would occur from November of 2025 to February of 2026 it would involve planning board and Council making a determination about moving to step three the service area expansion plan at this point staff would ref would refer unmet priority Community needs to Boulder County for review then um both bodies planning board and city

[34:00] council would hold public hearings to determine if the unmet needs are of sufficient priority to Warrant a service area expansion plan this would likely happen in December of 2025 or January of 2026 the determination to move to step three would be based on meeting three criteria that are outlined in the comprehensive plan which I'll discuss in more detail on the next slide if needs are determined to be of sufficient priority to expand staff would develop policies related to this um and they would be incorporated into the draft bbcp update the service area expansion plan would be prepared after completion and Adoption of the bbcp update which is anticipated to be late summer or early fall of 2026 and then as I mentioned just a minute ago the criteria that you you both bodies will use at the end of step two to evaluate whether or not to move move to step three include Community

[35:00] value um that expansion will address a long-term Community value as articulated in the comprehensive plan the second is capacity the need for a service area expansion cannot be met within the existing service area because there is not suitable existing or potential land or service capacity and the third criteria benefit expansion will benefit existing residents in the Boulder Valley and will have a lasting benefit from for future Generations now that we've covered what step two might look like and all of our brains are full of all things service area expansion I'll quickly go over immediate next steps you're now at a decision Point as KJ mentioned earlier you will vote next week on whether or not to move forward with step two of the service area expansion process the community needs study to drill down a bit more on the impact of this decision ision the diagram on this slide outlines the

[36:00] outcome of voting yes or no tonight as you can see with number one on the slide we're hosting um the required public hearing to determine interest in considering expansion as part of the bbcp update number two and three focus on next week's meetings planning board will deliberate and vote on your interest um at the continued hearing on the 19th and city council you'll deliver and vote on your interest at your continued hearing on November 21st if one or both bodies do not approve such interest the process will pause as KJ mentioned which you can see here with the yellow pause button um the next time service area expansion as KJ also mentioned can be considered is at the next update which is 2030 if the community need study is authorized staff will move to number four on the slide incorporating a planning effort into the bbcp process to solicit and identify priority Community

[37:02] needs this will be considered the initiation of step two of the service area expansion process okay and so finally the question you are considering tonight and next week is is there interest in considering a service area expansion plan a service excuse me a service area expansion into the area 3 planning Reserve as part of the update to the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan following this evening's hearing each body will continue a mo consider a motion to continue their respective hearings to liberate and vote on authorization of the community needs study and just a quick note before I turn it back over to you the hearing is open for public comment tonight but no additional testimony will be taking taken on this subject at the continued hearing next week week and with that I'll turn it back to you mayor

[38:00] Brock thanks so much Sarah and others for that excellent and edifying presentation it is a little complicated our heads are now stuffed with all of the steps but I think we've we've got it since it was explained so well so uh this is now a chance for Council and planning board to ask any questions we got a lot of those in ahead of time really appreciate those of you who submitted those and staff for jumping right on them and answering those complicated questions if anyone has any further questions uh that are relevant to our decision about whether to start the needs analysis please raise your hand and you can get those answered tonight Claudia Tina I have several questions and they're not really in order so please bear with me um the first is what current CIP projects um do we have scheduled that are relevant to this question of expansion either in the sense that they would be creating um

[39:00] needed capacity or that they are specifically designed to only serve existing needs in the city so could somebody please speak to the CIP what do we have coming up thank you for the question and just for everyone's awareness myself and Brad will probably uh initially field a lot of the questions and then distribute them out to other subject man are experts as necessary um what I can tell you right now is we do not have a a a a very specific list of th those projects that will take some additional analysis um and and really modeling of the water and wastewater system in particular uh to determine exactly which of those projects would have some crossover benefit to the area 3 planning Reserve what we do know is that there are a number of projects that are either in the CIP currently or within our longer term utility system plans that um are intended to provide additional capacity

[40:01] both for growth within the within the current service boundary East Boulder as an example um that could also uh provide some additional capacity in relation to the planning Reserve so unfortunately we don't have a real specific uh number Dollar figure or specific uh exact projects which will provide for that crossover benefit but it is something that is incorporated uh into the thinking here so far follow up on that is there is there any way we could get a a gloss on that topic before we deliberate next week I may have to defer to a utilities person if their Mr Joe tatui is coming down to the microphone

[41:01] can you turn I sensed it wasn't on good evening uh planning board and council members Joe tauchi I'm the director of the utilities department and um I'm joined by chrisville who's our deputy director uh of utilities and Kim Hutton our water resources manager so they can uh certainly add more detail but in our Capital plans for water and wastewater um we have major transmission lines in the water system there's the water treatment plants that deliver water to the city and then there are large diameter um kind of trunk lines that bring that to the smaller distribution uh system to the that brings water to the homes and businesses and so we have capital projects across the city for things like that in the Wastewater system there is the collection system we're currently doing expansion of capacity to all of the major trunk lines

[42:02] in the in that Wastewater system that will serve the entire city and some of those trunk lines would help in the uh area three also doing a number of uh upgrades at our water treatment plants and our wastewater treatment plants that will um meet regul regulatory requirements and also improve those system process so um Chris duville may have more to add but in general I think projects like that uh we have a six-year Capital plan and and uh Boulders in older cities so we're constantly upgrading our infrastructure it's it's the focus of our department anything else I got two more one of them's quick all right I'll do the quick one first and that is um just for context how many private parcels and owners um do we

[43:00] currently have out there in the area 3 Reserve that is a great question I will be able to find that answer for you so we can continue on and I we can come back to that in just a a few minutes fabulous thank you um and then my last question has to do um with the process for this community needs study as you're starting to think about it so um I consider a study like that to be um inherently value driven in a lot of ways in terms of who gives who gets to give input how we evaluate that input um and maybe even more so in this case because unlike the the bbcp where we have an existing document right this community needs study is essentially starting from more of a blank slate could you talk any more about um how you would plan on Gathering Community input or expert input in order to determine what we actually consider to be a need yeah that's a great question so our intent is really to fold the community

[44:01] needs study into the comprehensive Plan update so our our goal would be to utilize the same engagement strategy to reach voices that we haven't heard of or heard from traditionally um to engage uh those individuals so we can hear from them directly uh as part uh through the comprehensive plan but also in relation to this notion of need and particular the planning Reserve similar to any subject matter experts um we would we would do the same thing so really our goal is not to see this as a separate process but really just to folded into the overall comprehensive plan strategy and I'll just piggyback Again Brad Muer planning and development services although I wasn't here and many of us were not uh when those procedures were drafted our working understanding is that that was the intent of requiring that step two if it be authorized needs to take place in conjunction with the comprehensive Plan

[45:03] update thanks for those questions Claudia Tina sure um and just actually uh following up a little bit on Claudia's questions um the first is when we think about uh defining the community need and values do we think about um the like we've been given a an estimate of the housing that we need by the Dr Cog group and a different housing number presented by the demographer at the bbcb kickoff are those numbers that we'll be putting out there as like a community need or will it be mostly values driven well I think you know part of the comprehensive plan the challenge is that it's it's more art than science and so we will have a lot of conversations that'll be value driven and thinking about the policies then the really the vision and goals that we have for the city that also then will always be supported by data and Analysis and so it

[46:00] will be a balance between trying to utilize the the information that is um provided to us by by our regional Partners or developed within you know within our own departments and within our um planning planning team as well um but balancing that with the values so we you know we definitely it's going to be really difficult to boil this down to a quantitative measure of is that is there a need or is there not a need there's going to be a a really a value and a policy decision that's layered into it regardless of of what we determine so yes they'll be interesting um and valuable points of information but uh will they serve as a very specific threshold I would I would say no okay thanks and then the second piece is also except I think Brad Mueller would like to have it I'm sorry I'll try not to inter interrupt too much but I did want to elaborate uh council member since you alluded to uh some of the

[47:00] numbers at the kickoff that were presented by both the state demographer and Dr Cog and they were different sets of uh projected housing need uh in two different contexts uh the Dr Cog one was in the context of um fulfilling uh housing goals that have been identified as part of the state Statewide uh legislative discussion and we by definition aspirational in looking trying to increase density in areas of existing Urban Development whereas it was clarified to us that the um State demographers data was based on Trends and knowledge of demographic change over time so while they are different numbers um they are known to be different uh for for very purposeful reasons one is a policy driven one one is based on historic Trends and those two groups are talking to each other but it does illustrate too uh many of the points uh

[48:00] Christopher was making about this being more art than science and that's really part of uh what's baked into any comprehensive Plan update too is to try to tease out those values thank you so much for clarifying that and also for posting the um demographer session it is now online on the bbcp website if anyone else wants to hear about that and uh her description of how we got to those numbers um I really did like that we had some data to think about as a goal we need to achieve to meet the trends that the demographer had described um my second question is just sorry Tina before you go on may I may I cqu yeah of course TAA um I just wanted to have a followup just curious to know how um how many um units we already kind of have in the kitty just wanted to get reminded of that number I assume you're referring to how many additional possible units we have

[49:02] already planned for through our existing subcommunity plans yes okay uh yes I would say off the top of my head it is in the neighborhood of probably about 8,000 units total I think there's approximately uh four to 5,000 units that were ant anticipated over a 20 to 30 year time Horizon in the East Boulder sub sub community plan another 1,500 to 2,000 in Boulder Junction Phase 2 and then some additional um smaller scale to add a few more hundred in addition to those awesome thank you so much and it would be helpful to get that concrete number but I'm grateful for what you were able to tally off your head sorry about that Tina no problem um and then the the second thing is um is there a point in this process where we'll understand whether all the parcel owners are interested in developing their land so that we'd have a better idea of whether we'd recoup the

[50:02] fixed costs going into it or whether other developers would pay more to offset the cost that we're putting out to create the service I will also maybe lean on uh my colleague Chris Brewer to my left um but initially and this gives me a great opportunity to U answer planning member team's uh question from before that the uh the total number of private property owners is around 40 there's about 50 or so distinct Parcels out there um many of which owned by the city the federal government um uh but there's approximately 40 different individual Property Owners um to your question around you know at what time would we sort of understand the level of interest from a Redevelopment standpoint I think that that is going to take some time I think it's also very um uh very clear that not everybody is going to be interested in Redevelopment um there may

[51:01] they may have smaller landh Holdings that you know could be assembled into a single project by a by a third party um so I would say that um you know as part of the community need study that's probably less of an interest I think we're interested in hearing more about what the values and the needs are of the city um uh overall but but certainly we would begin to learn about uh the developer interest as this process continues to move forward and Chris I don't know if you have anything to add to that you know in general in our experience in these types of situations you tend to have three different types of property owners um there's a group that they they know eventually they will sell but they have no interest in participating in a project um there tends to be a second group that has more lofty expectations of what their land is worth they might want to participate they don't necessarily understand how complex the whole process is and how expensive infrastructure is and then you

[52:01] have a third group that tends to be very sophisticated very thoughtful and better able to understand how this will play out all right those are all the hands I've seen last call Mark I'll never miss the opportunity to ask a couple of questions um I can we get more detail before next week's meeting about the um implied CIP uh projects that will have to be foregone in order to do something of this nature well I uh we can attempt to try to identify some of those things but I actually think uh a lot of those decisions will be ultimately future conversations around what might possibly you know need to be delayed or reprioritized um so I you know it it

[53:00] might be difficult for us to at least say which ones would be delayed but we can certainly try to put together a a little bit of a of a brief list just to identify what those might look like as we have a couple of hundred million doll of projects already backed up and not going to be covered by the ccrs uh tax uh it would be good to know what it is we're going to have to be looking at in terms of of postponing um I'm I'm a little confused about the projections of additional sales tax uh to offset the the various costs of of moving forward um could we get some more detail about that uh in addition I I uh I'd like to get some more detail about the timing uh it seems to me we're going to incur whatever expenses involved first before the homes are built and the real estate taxes and the sales taxes are generated in years thereafter

[54:02] so we we're going to have to come up with quite a piece of change um in order to make this happen and i' like to get a better understanding of what the actual uh economics look like uh over time I just don't think it it Nets out that there's 600 here and 600 there voila at zero it looks to me like it's going to be 600 from us later 600 recovered uh and that's how you get to zero so if there's some um information you can give us as as to how these things integrate from a timing perspective that would be um very very helpful um uh a couple of references were made to maintaining uh service levels of parks um uh if someone could explain to me the basis

[55:00] for not including open space in our calculation of uh how much recreational space is available to our citizens that would be also very helpful um because uh you know 200 Acres of this parcel are uh intended for Parkland and were purchased to be Parkland um but the question is do they need to be Parkland um and next as you see I have can I just interrupt you for a second Mark are you as you're asking for things for people to get back to us before the deliberation yeah so good enough so we'll they'll come back to us on the SC yeah um uh and of course um I raised a number of issues um in a hotline I put out on Monday I'm I'm hoping that you guys will um respond to some of those of you know

[56:01] For Better or Worse um and um uh and lastly I I has there been any effort to identify what the goal is here in other words is it housing if it's housing what kind of housing is it market rate housing um which implies one set of economics if it's affordable and middle- income housing that implies another set of economics and raises the question of how you going to get there um given the the infrastructure costs um and the the other expenses involved in doing this so is it intended to uh simply get cash in LI or uh donation of a portion of of properties uh to the city so that uh BHP or some other entity uh can build on them

[57:00] how how do you uh navigate that and what are you looking at in terms of uh um enhancing the affordability of the project not just the number of units but the type of units and uh that that should be enough for a week yes yes it will be um I I will I will offer a a brief reply to your last question just that um at this point we we have not had that conversation around what is the ultimate goal here and what are the values we're driving for um purposefully we've tried to focus on uh really the sort of objective data around the feasibility and the cost and the purpose of the community need study and ultimately a service area expansion plan that's where we would get into those those conversations around what is it we are trying to achieve and then how do we do that successfully through policies so um

[58:00] I'll just I'll leave it at that for tonight than you and I'll note that there were a number of answers provided to the hotline as well in that email you all sent out a couple days ago so there some of that is out there too okay I had uh Kurt then Mark then Laura thank you well you kind of just answered the question that I was going to ask but council member wallet teed it up very nicely which is that I feel that there hasn't been this sort of goals big picture goals discussion so where where in this process do you see that happening well I think that would begin during the community needs discussion so that's where we would identify um a variety of needs I mean I think certainly everyone's mind is going to uh automatically go to housing but there could be needs like par needs or Recreation um uh you know other other

[59:00] kinds of needs in the community um access to food maybe it's a agriculture is a is a more appropriate use like that's where we will start to tease out the conversations around um the values and the needs that we have in the community ultimately then uh if we go through that process and we determine that there is enough need that we can't meet that within the uh existing City boundary and we need to consider the expansion then the service area expansion plan process as I mentioned is is very um analogous to a subcommunity plan so as as I I think all of you know from experience subc commmunity plans we is when we really dig into um and in this case with a essentially a blank slate in a lot of ways there would be some very very deep conversations around what does this place look like what kinds of densities are we looking for uh what is the appropriate affordability level how do we balance that how much

[60:00] parks in open space and other Mobility options and other things do we factor in to make sure that if we expand we do that in the right way um so I think we'll we'll begin to have those conversations through the community needs and and frankly just as part of the comprehensive plan process and then ultimately if we if we ultimately moved into step three that's when we would really Define that and document it and then that becomes a tool to guide future annexations and future development going forward okay thank you right Mark at the risk of maybe asking the same question but I think it's a little different um and this is more for Chris but anyone can answer it um in step one and going forward in step two how do you reconcile the need to use assumptions to come up with calculations you got to plug in numbers based on current usage patterns

[61:04] of water of streets of the way we build things the patterns in which people live with a potential vision of an expansion with very with potentially very different needs and very different use patterns that as a community we haven't necessarily uh provided yet yet so you know your your task with creating uh a set of numbers and but it's really hard to do that with a vision of use and expenditures that's very different from the community that exist on the ground today is that so several thoughts for you one um again being The Economist I have this unfortunate interest in Reading Lots of city budget files for lots of City budgets across the country and you see

[62:01] typical patterns um you tend to see water usage per person tending to go down over time because we're investing in efficiency all the time again you see typically that marginal cost of providing Services go down although not always with some Services fire and police tends to go up actually so you see these patterns and you expect to see them again I think in this case the real thing is when we do horizontal and vertical development studies for developers we're working in a time frame where we know we're going to break ground in three months six months 12 months and you have a relatively predictable connection from current trends to what can then unfold and then some of it's just up to the developer to generate the appropriate funding which then triggers all of the infrastructure and I think in this case again over the last six months but really to me it hit home when I saw that home value appreciation in 10 years where we're doubling our home value inside of 10 years which is a a specific challenge where that rate of grow is

[63:00] much harder to predict like what could the next five years look like you end up with very different outcomes and I think that's where for me it shifted to a fundamental focus on well what's our offsite cost what's that strategy is that affordable and then that takes us very incrementally to well what are the Property Owners thinking about and then you start to see a logical path forward in my mind okay just a quick followup we oh go follow up over here first if you can introduce yourself please sure Dianna Weber with AECOM I'm Chris's counterpart who's the land planner and to help directly answer your question when we first started the exercise we looked at Bolder case studies we looked at typical building typologies that you already have here in Boulder we then take a look at extrapolating that to your height limit of 55 ft so that gives us some bookends or parameters to work with so it's not just the Economist but it has some smart land planning in there too absolutely thank

[64:01] you okay and then just going back to Step One to the urban Services study scenario D got added in I I think based on some planning board and and Council uh input about wanting um to evaluate a a different vision and it seems like that scenario D got turned into more un units per acre for evaluation or did it actually include smaller and narrower streets um uh less water usage based on shared parks and and less individual open space and those sorts of things so did scenario D include that or was it really did it kind of get boiled down to more units uh density yeah thanks Mark uh we we actually used scenario b as the Baseline and then

[65:01] added the additional uh 89 90 Acres of Park land to be utilized for housing so um so overall it was an increase of units we we did not add those units onto uh scenario C which was the most intense at the time we used that sort of uh middle of the road scenario B is our Baseline um but overall other than other than that we made the same assumptions around the amount of smaller neighborhood parks Street widths other other things like that that would be incorporated into that scenario great thank you Laura um I want to thank staff and the consultants for all of the work that you have done very complicated subject and thank you for breaking the process down for us here tonight um I'm I'm curious what initiated us looking at potentially unlocking the planning reserve the planning Reserve was identified in 1993 it's 30 years later over 30 years later

[66:00] has unlocking the planning Reserve been considered by the city of Boulder previously or is this the first time that we're considering it uh I do not have the benefit of history of of knowing if or when it has been discussed in the past but my understanding is that uh at each beginning uh at the beginning of each comprehensive Plan update since 1993 there was a brief discussion around should we tackle the planning Reserve should we have a conversation around it um at the time the the very specific procedures that are in the comprehensive plan currently did not exist those were um those were updated and added I believe in the 2015 update um so what happened uh you know for 20 years or so was there was a conversation around it but it was very difficult to ever land on a decision so it never moved forward the uh the addition of creating the urban Services study as the first step um as I

[67:01] say was added in 2015 and that uh that essentially gave I think planning board and Council a much more tangible way to begin the process and begin thinking about it and have the information to be able to have a conversation um and so uh in at the 2022 Council Retreat uh that Urban Services study was identified as a city council priority project and and so um that's that's how it was ultimately initiated it uh it um it took us about a year to get staff capacity and get get organized in order to be able to u to begin that so that the project began um early U well essentially at the end of last year very early this year I'll just add to that if I may because I was on Council in 2015 for the last comprehensive Plan update and as if memory serves at that that time we decided okay we're not going to try to initiate a service here expansion this comp plan go around but we do feel like the process could use some updates and

[68:00] some changes and so that was what we tackled back 10 what is it now eight years ago or so is changes to the process and so now this time around we're saying well we have some interest and then looking at these uh the process that we defined back in what that we adopted in 2017 and if you want to go back much further I note that former council member and planning board member Mak Kohl's is our first Speaker tonight so if you want to ask him a question about the previous 10 or 15 years of History before that I'm sure he could answer that I might I might make it you might be on the spot but if I might follow up so it sounds like this interest in potentially kicking off a planning Reserve annexation and service area plan potentially if we go that far it was this city council or a couple years ago 2022 that initiated that is it appropriate to ask these seated city council members who were there why what was your thought of what we might need and why we might want to kick off this integration of the planning

[69:03] Reserve appreciate the question Laura um as as one of the you know few holdouts from from that Council or holdovers I should say uh my personal reason for supporting that was um you know if you took a word cloud of the common phrases used at Council you'd come up with housing crisis climate crisis and the word colloquy um so so it was really sort of Spawn from I know Teresa lik that um it was really spawned from like there was just an urgent need and we had already gone through that process with CU you South um and yet this was sort of the golden egg that was sort of Left for this city to decide something to do with and when we had a housing crisis I felt that's where we needed to start this process not knowing what it would ultimately be but we can't talk about what it can be until we actually go through this so uh as as the sort of metaphor was played out so we had to unlock it before we could have a substantive conversation about its

[70:00] potential and so we wanted to start that process to pay it forward for our community that was my justification for for why to start that process thanks for asking that and may I colloquy only if you say the words affordable housing crisis and climate crisis I mean my view at the time was was to look at this as a resource um for affordable housing um which was what we truly needed um and uh I I I will I'm not going to comment in any depth because we're not doing that today but you know the scale of the infrastructure costs was unknown to me um and I found it rather surprising um but it is what it is um but I viewed it as here's 300 acres 20 units an acre um you can build a lot of affordable and middle- income units uh it looks like that may be a

[71:00] little more challenging than I had thought good enough did you want to add being one of the other people that was there at the time it was looked at as because we own that land or part of that land anyway that it would be less expensive to it would be less expensive housing than normally would be because of that fact so similar to the airport actually except not the airport let's not say the a word tonight and other people have uh covered it well good enough okay I'm not seeing any other hands so oh wait Mason there we go yes sorry this is potentially pretty quick um so the community isn't defined in the documents as I saw this will and you said that this will work through the PVC or the Boulder Valley comp plan update um I'm wondering if there will be Outreach to people who work in Boulder

[72:01] but don't necessarily live in Boulder Valley to assess their needs yeah that's a that's a great question we absolutely anticipate trying to capture the voices and hear from people that are commuters I being one of them um and uh we so as part of the comprehensive Plan update that is that is a a goal of our engagement strategy is not only to reach the people that that live in Boulder but also those that may live elsewhere and work or recreate here um or come here to shop or you know whatever it might be um I will also just give uh you know a little bit of a um preview in that the community assembly that we've been talking about for the comprehensive plan that's also an area where we are considering if there is an opportunity to have a role for people that are not residents of of Boulder but to also be able to participate through that process so we're definitely thinking um trying to think outside the

[73:01] box and capture those voices as well all right good and I got Taisha the George and then Taisha thanks um quick question as it relates to as this moves forward or doesn't guess the question would be um are you going to be able to provide feedback relative to other things that might get delayed because all of a sudden the focus changes to this such as area plans and other things that that might be on the dock yeah good good question so um uh so there yes there's potentially some work planning issues uh or questions that would be raised if if this process moves forward um particularly related to the third step of the service area expansion plan after the comprehensive plan that would obviously take precedence um uh we will also so through the community needs process and just and sort of built into the the options analysis for the comp

[74:02] plan we will be weighing out the um you know the potential costs and benefits of expanding into the planning Reserve against other possible policy options that could you know yield similar amounts of new housing units perhaps in other locations of the city and and trying to weigh um you know weigh the options of uh providing additional density along Transit corridors as an example and the infrastructure that exists there in comparison to uh an expansion into the planning reserve and and we don't know where we don't know where that analysis will lead it may it may be one or the other there may be a both and option um it it's yet to be determined but but certainly we'll be trying to weigh out the relative um uh I guess appropriateness of expansion against other options that we have on the table as part of the comprehensive plan great uh

[75:02] tasa yes thank you so much um I had a question uh just two one is around Urban Agriculture and if there had been any considerations around I know that I saw in the reports the information around Grocery Stores um and uh I know that the city owns a thousand acres of land throughout County um but I was just curious if there had been additional considerations um or or collaboration with Colorado AG uh Department of Agriculture um to to better assess um again the the needs Beyond um Beyond housing Parks commercial space uh and open space the second question is around um energy and if there was any plans for energy generation in um in that area um particularly thinking about either Agro

[76:00] solar or solar um y those are my team great thank you for the questions council member um we we did not get into a lot of decisions around um the particular land uses at this time we you know we used a a fairly traditional assumption around the types of land uses in the area again just to generate a baseline set of costs and and potential impacts to infrastructure um again as part of this community needs discussion and ultimately a future expansion plan if that's ultimately where we go um we would get into a lot deeper conversations around what is the appropriate uh types of land use and I I personally think Urban agriculture um is something that uh would be looked on very favorably by the community and something I think people would be very interested in particularly if it's integrated in with affordable housing um

[77:02] and other Parks and Recreation types of uses I think there's a lot of great opportunities but um we have just not dove into those types of conversations just yet uh to your second question around energy generation uh similar I would say a similar response we we have not explore that in depth at this time but certainly again we expect that conversations around the sustainability and the climate uh resilience of a new neighborhood or a new area of the city that will be part of the conversation and we would fully anticipate there will be some conversations around uh Innovative and and creative strategies as it relates to energy um not only energy generation but also energy consumption in the area so how do we how do we make this uh the most um sustainable and sort of energy independent uh place as possible exactly thank you than you so much for that and I sorry I forgot my last question which was I appreciated the response to my

[78:00] question about wildfires as that was not considered in the assessment uh in the initial study um however I actually was talking about the water that is used to fight Wildfire so for example we know um that area reservoirs are often you are often tapped pun intended um to to you know quell um Wild fires in our area so I was just curious if that had been considered or how that will be considered recognizing um that we you know we can anticipate uh moderate and severe climate disruptions yeah another another great question uh so we we did not dive into that in a lot of detail at this at this moment if this process continues to move forward we we know that we will need to continue um to do additional analysis and I think that would tie in with a lot of the consideration of other questions

[79:00] tonight about what are some of the the true infrastructure upgrades that are necessary which of those are we already planning for and and and thinking about um and and we would incorporate that into into future future steps as part of the process okay and then last the last JK I apparently had more than the two um for the I forgot it Dar it it is what it is I'll have multiple opportunities thank you great and feel free to send something in via email after the meeting tag show okay so I think we've come to the end of our question period so we are now going to turn to our public to hear from the public in our public hearing if you could read the public participation guidelines please yes sir thank you mayor Brocket and again good evening everyone and thank you for being here I'll now go over the public participation at city council meeting guidelines the city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful and inclusive

[80:02] Civic conversations this Vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members staff and Council as well as democracy for people of all ages identities lived experiences and political perspectives for more information about this vision and the community engagement processes we ask that you please visit our website at bouldercolorado.gov servicesresume Revised Code and other guidelines that support this Vision these will be upheld during this meeting participants are asked I'm sorry participants are required to sign up to speak using the name they are commonly known by and individuals must display their whole name before being being allowed to speak online currently only audio testimony is permitted

[81:00] online only one person at a time at the podium unless an accommodation like an interpreter is required our remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to City business no standing in or otherwise blocking the aisles no participant shall stand or hold items such as signs or Flags in a manner that would block the view of another person no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person we ask that you not to fix items to the podium or deis or walls or other surfaces of the chambers signs Flags or other items used to communicate must be held by one person when displayed obscenity other epithets based on race gender or religion and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the meeting will not be tolerated and lastly in-person participants are asked to refrain from

[82:00] expressing support or disagreement verbally or with sounds such as Applause or snapping with the exception of declarations traditionally support is shown through American Sign Language Applause or jazz hands again thank you for joining us and thank you for listening thanks for that Elicia we have five people signed up to speak two in person and three virtual each person will have three minutes our two in-person speakers are making Kohl's and Terry palmos in that order can you turn the okay light lights on sorry you're good to go okay good evening everybody my name is mon Kohl's I live at 17th in Mapleton I want to talk to you tonight about looking forward about the length of time that is in the built into the process that staff has

[83:01] suggested here between now and when we might get to some housing in the planning Reserve blue cities and blue legislators at the federal level are notoriously bad at executing on construction projects the Biden Administration infrastructure plan was past three years ago this month set aside 7.5 billion dollar for electric chargers for cars to address climate and as you've all seen in the papers three years later only seven have been built in the entire country as a blue City we have these same types of problems this slow process the hospital site on Broadway was purchased 9 years ago for $40 million by the city and the

[84:01] Council on which I served did that and we were hoping that we would get new units for people to live in but there's not a single residential unit there in nine years 50% of our renters are cost burden bvsd student population is declining schools more schools are likely to be closed young people are leaving and frankly the buildings that we have built are not well received or well-liked by people they are typically rectangular blocks that nobody would really nobody can think of living there for a long period of time Adu reform took us three years in Boulder occupancy reform took eight years and after the state acted this year look on both of those issues looking back at the long

[85:02] Bolder process we had makes our processes look not just silly but really laughable so I'd like you to put this project on a fast track if there's reason to delay let's at least do a pilot project let's take a portion of this area and I asked Alicia to distribute these brochures which the palmos has put together a couple of years ago but their property is relatively close to the Sewer disposal plant let's do a pilot to show how we can build a new community that is high density that is walkable that's part of a 15minute neighborhood it will require the city to put in protected Pathways and bike Lanes to get there thank you appreciate your testimony now we have Terry

[86:04] palmos hello good evening I often joke with my friend Mak that when you talk about planning in Boulder you have to use dog years you know it it runs a little longer than than originally planned but anyway with that said good evening my name is Terry palmos uh 2775 Iris Avenue um my family has owned 23 acres of land on the southern edge of the planning reserve for over 50 years it was bought the year before I was born and now my kids are are going to college our property is bordered by existing housing to the East and West City Park land to the North and the recently annexed property to the South where 83 town homes are proposed to be built over the last 20 years the city has done a great job of facilitating construction and purchase of smaller de restricted for rent apartments unfortunately we haven't had the same success providing permanently affordable

[87:00] middle inome family housing AKA The Missing middle there are many reasons why but mainly there aren't any large Parcels of inexpensive land within the city and that's what's needed to build this type of housing we believe the planning Reserve is the only feasible location where deed restricted middle inome family housing can be built I've heard discussions about the potential High Cost of infrastructure and water needs and various other concerns associated with going into the planning Reserve as I mentioned our property is on the southernmost Edge surrounded by existing development and City Parkland geographically it's really separate from the rest of the planning Reserve given its unique location we could consider our 23 Acre Site as like mon said a pilot project something where we can explore middle inome affordable housing it would require significantly less infrastructure plan efforts and could provide a much faster solution to our missing middle we respectfully request the city

[88:00] council and planning board take the next step and allow staff to do the community needs assessment to better understand the opportunities available in the planning Reserve let's take the next step and see where it takes us thank you all for your time appreciate it thanks Terry I actually I have a question for you so do you feel like um with the ownership situation that you had that you would be able to provide deed restricted middle-income affordable housing without outside subsidy um I do believe First Response is yes it all depends as we all know when we're when we're balancing the affordable housing market rate equation right how much market rate you have compared to how much affordable you can have and what type of market rate you have and what type of affordable you have but with us we're a little bit unique we were we've been in the real estate business in Boulder since the 60s really since the 70s I grew up in the business forever we have 23 Acres privately owned local developer Boulder through and through

[89:00] born here raised here the whole thing so if there's an opportunity to to do something that's a little you know as a test pilot as a pilot program we're here and we're open-minded and we're available and we're happy to work with everybody here to get something done sooner than the very long process that we heard about I understand when you're talking about 500 Acres it's a very long process a lot goes into that but our site really is boxed in I mean if you look at it there you'll see it well I'm sorry cut you off but that was a little more limited of a question in that but that's good thank you for your answer I appreciate thank you thank you guys pardon me eron could I ask just a quick clarification sure so hi Terry yeah nice to see you um hey sorry no worries Terry was on Hab when I was Lia is on to Hab so nice to see you um when you say you could potentially provide middle inome affordable housing are is that like as a percentage of what would be built I'm assuming you don't mean 100% of the

[90:01] property would be yeah it would it would I mean without a lot of the affordable housing game as we know is financed in a lot of different ways there's there's cash and L funds there's ltac funds there's all kinds of different funds that can go into the equation and how to pay for it so depending on all those variables you know that that determines how much affordable housing you can build um my gut is telling me that we would need to balance affordable with market rate because typically the market rate plays for the affordable thank you okay great uh we're now going to go to our virtual speakers uh there are three of them they are Janet Heimer Lyn seagull and Lisa Spalding so Janet you're up hi I'm Janet Heimer and I'm here tonight because I am in support of Area 3 planning Reserve being used for affordable housing I have lived in Boulder since 1969 and have many friends particularly

[91:02] those friends of color who have had to leave Boulder because of the lack of affordable housing in my opinion we have become a very elitist Community if I had not bought my house in 1987 I would definitely not be able to afford to live here my my daughter who was born and raised here can't afford to live here she would love to be able to buy a house where she grew up she loves the outdoors and lifestyle of Boulder and as an older adult I would love to have her live close by so she could help me when I needed it I recently saw a condominium that was two bedrooms two baths 12200 Square fet listed for one MO 50,000 and the HOA fees were 682 a

[92:01] month I'm sorry but that to me is outrageous we must make decisions to increase the chances for affordable and middle inome housing if not now then when I have heard it can take a long time for this piece of property to go through the proper channels we can't wait that long we need to speed things up and to have that process be as fast as possible and make sure that the housing needs which are Urgent in this city be addressed now thank you thank you now we'll go to LY seagull if you want to s solve a housing crisis you don't solve it with Mo's housing you don't in a closed loop system like Boulder it's saturated it's

[93:03] an inelastic market so stop all of this commentary about how this is affordable housing you know what middle how missing middle is on at 20 2206 Pearl it's $1,726 a month for 300 square feet without a parking space that's the missing middle and that's three years ago so now it's 2 to 3,000 80 to 120% area median income that's the missing middle so you know people that own prop land there they want to get into that you know what the planning Reserve is for and I've been around here 40 years watching this the plan Reserve is for emergencies it's for agriculture it's for solar it's for when we have a

[94:00] third world war because we're bombing Gaza that's what the planning Reserve is for that's an emergency that is what the planning board planning Reserve is for and I've been watching this a long time and I know what you're going to do I know what all of you are going to do it's so obvious more housing more housing more housing you just don't get it more housing does not equal more housing it just means more people it just means more infrastructure it just means more budgets not being met and you know I had to stay at the Comfort Inn up by the homeless Center for 5 days because I had to leave my house because Boulder County decided I had to because I'm like a

[95:01] terrorist in my own house where there's two bedrooms for me to stay and my housemate can already stay there 21y old from Munich he can stay there but not me because I called out David hashimi with Energy Smart on the fact that he dropped one of their main vendors that they're giving out for for you know um Energy Efficiency retrofits he dropped them because they wanted to the the county wanted to put up that solar job with Stellar the name of the company in adverse conditions that would violate their warranty and subject them to potential damages from the customer and Boulder County was unethical in doing that and I called it out so I got hit with my my retrofit and my bike was stolen today what are you doing about that in front of the County Courthouse thank you for your testimony

[96:01] your time is up our last speaker tonight is Lisa Spalding Lisa Spalding speaking for plan Boulder County plan Boulder County agrees with council member Wallock analysis of the area 3 planning Reserve Urban Services study and his conclusion as we mes we're not putting words in your mouth that the annexation is not financially feasible at this time we have looked at several other aspects of the possible annexation and conclude that it would be premature and misleading to focus on the planning Reserve when there are so many other developments on the table right now the only Community benefit of annexation that has been identified publicly is the potential to increase affordable housing however our current affordable housing regulations only increase our shortfall without an alternative approach Boulder citizens have no reason to believe the

[97:02] development of the area 3 planning Reserve will help us reach or maintain an appropriate number of affordable housing units current data shows that we have more than enough potential housing units in our city for any reasonable population growth plans for between 8,740 and 9,740 additional housing units have either been approved are in the development review pipeline or are in areas annexed for future housing including the East Boulder subc Community Plan the transit area Village plan the CU South annexation agreement Williams Village and alhim Balsam familyfriendly vibrant neighborhoods the planning reserve and a possibly decommissioned airport would bring the total to between 22,600 and 20 3,700 Boulder's current population is around 105,000 and decreasing an

[98:01] increase in housing of this magnitude assumes population growth of over 50,000 people unless our objective is to increase our population to 150,000 or more people we have more than enough potential housing units without totally eliminating established single family neighborhoods are considering annexing the area three three planning res erve at this time we have a finite amount of land and we must ensure that it benefits our citizens the recent Federal Election is certain to introduce significant economic and political volatility across the country unless it is absolutely necessary we should not rush into opening more of our limited land to development that we may not be able to manage properly if you decide to proceed with the potential to develop the area 3 planning Reserve please carefully analyze all financial and social impacts then let the citizens vote on whether or not we want this for our future thank you

[99:01] and there are more details and numbers in the letter that we sent you thank you all right that's our last speaker um so thanks to everyone who came out and spoke to us this evening I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing so that brings an end to our business for this evening so uh George I'll turn to you to take the next step sure um I'd like to ask for a motion for the planning board to continue the agenda item for Tuesday November 19th 2024 uh for deliberation of an action for the proposed service area expansion into the area 3 planning Reserve as part of the 2025 major update to the BBC uh comprehensive plan uh no additional as as as already reminded to us no additional comment will be taken on November 19th regarding this item um could I have a motion from a planning board member so moved I'll second that great um should we take a a quick vote uh ml yes Mason yes Laura yes Mark yes Kurt

[100:05] yes Claudia yes and I'm also a yes I'll pass it back over to you thanks so much George all right so similarly I'm going to request a motion to continue the public hearing to our November 21st meeting for Council discussion and action on the proposed Service uh area expansion into the area 3 planning Reserve as part of the 2025 major update to the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan no additional public comment will be taken on November 21st regarding this item so moved second we got a motion of a second can we get a roll call please Alicia yes sir thank you we'll start the roll call for the continuation of the public hearing with council member shuart yes wallik I Wier yes Adams yes Benjamin yes mayor bronet yes and

[101:01] council member marus yes the motion to continue the public hearing to the next city council meeting November 21st is hereby approved unanimously thanks so much all right well planning board colleagues it's been a delight to have you here with us this evening so much thanks so much for joining us and we look forward to the outcome of your November 19th deliberations I'm wondering if they need a motion to adjourn or to call an adjournment we can I I'll call an adjournment for the planning board thank you very much great and I think with the amount of reshuffling we're going to uh need a few minutes so I'm going to call a recess for 6 minutes we'll be back at 7:42

[102:22] e e

[103:22] e e

[104:22] e e

[105:21] e e

[106:21] e e all right well it's 7:42 so as promised I will gavl us back

[107:03] in and uh welcome our our new attendees uh thanks for being here and let's go to our next item please Elicia yes sir thank you our next item on tonight's agenda is item number four Matters from the city manager 4 a is the update on the city's engagement strategic framework thanks so thanks so much Alicia uh our next item mayor uh Council had uh a desire and so happy to be able to bring it forward to learn a little bit more about um how the city engages uh with our community uh and certainly there has been a lot of work done in the past on that effort so with that I'll turn it over to our director of communication Sarah Huntley thanks naria good evening Council I'm Sarah Huntley the director of communications and engagement and we want to thank you for this opportunity tonight to be able to provide an

[108:01] overview of the work that our team's been doing for the last seven years we're going to make it as quick as possible but we have a lot to share with you tonight I want to just point out that while we represent a centralized engagement effort this work is also supported by many other colleagues across the organization um we do this as a part of our shared commitment to good engagement tonight we're going to cover the context and content very briefly of the engagement strategic framework really drilling into two Focus areas making sure that engagement is Meaningful and inclusive we're going to share a little bit about the capacity building efforts that we've been building out over the last years to support the city-wide approach we're going to share a little bit about Lessons Learned and best practices and then probably the part that's going to be most interesting is the path forward for continuing to involve our engagement

[109:01] programming before I turn over to my teammates I do want to ground us together first in one principle that I think guides all of us in our work the city of Boulder and each of you serves within a model of representative government this means that at the end of the day through a combination of City Administration ation leadership and your policy direction we're making decisions that impact our community that's a significant responsibility but we aren't alone we have an amazing Community here in Boulder and they want to be involved they want to challenge us to consider different perspectives and solutions to problems and they want to make a positive contribution to their local government since 2017 we've been working to create a culture and processes that makes this possible with that I'm going to pass over to Ryan who's going to talk a little bit about our engagement journey

[110:01] in the reader digest version thank you SAR and good evening Council my name is Ryan hinin he him and I serve the people of Boulder as Community engagement manager I'm eager to begin with a bit of context uh that shares you know this journey over the past few years it it really begins uh with Community input and in 2015 Council was hearing from community that the way the city was conducting engagement was not working um that there was not a lot of trust in in the process the city pulled together a public participation working group of of council and staff and community members uh who really identified some of the the key problems um looked at some of the the core principles of best-in-class Engagement and really came forward with two recommendation ations you know one the city has to change the culture of community engagement and utilize a comprehensive decision-making

[111:00] process and so to move forward with these two recommendations City staff developed and launched an engagement strategic framework uh in November 2017 that really described meaningful and inclusive engagement and you know brought together staff and counseling community on the same page about this work uh the city also created new positions uh dedicated to this culture change a new engagement team began within the city manager's office to advise and build capacity of colleagues across the city organization and then in June 2020 a new City Department uh communication engagement was created uh to best leverage the ways that great communication is vital to and enhances Community engagement and thank you um and then this uh engagement strategic framework really recognizes is that our city government makes better decisions and creates more responsive programs and resources when the community we serve has meaningful voice and so this

[112:02] framework talks a bit more in detail about that meaningful inclusive engagement ensuring that that's transparent that it's consistent appropriately scaled and really focuses on reducing barriers to participation so I'll I'll turn to my colleague now Anala who will illustrate how staff builds capacity uh for this engage engagement throughout our city and good evening Council my name is anela Maria ortia my pronouns are she her AA I am the community engagement senior program manager I am I used before I joined the city I was part part of the engage language access team that supported Community engagement spaces and it was through that work that I decided that I wanted to join City staff to continue to improve and U polish our engagement work H I joined the city in main 2022 and since then I have been responsible for

[113:02] coordinating and facilitating the engagement Coordination Committee this is a space that brings staff from different departments um we currently have 32 active members plus 10 supportive staff like Sarah and Pam Davids and Amy Kane making sure that that space um has a secure space for conversation part of the goals that we have in the ECC is to accomplish a consistent Citywide implementation of the engagement strategic framework we also want to make sure that staff have the opportunity to learn understand and deploy best practices and Innovative strategies to better serve the community and we want to provide a space for coordination communication and sharing of of lessons learns wins and challenges in a supportive space for all staff conducting engagement part of the work

[114:01] that we also do to build capacity for staff is provide trainings we have the gearing up for Community engagement training that happen twice a year in this space is a three and a half hour training that introduces staff to tools resource and supportive spaces that we have for them when doing engagement H after the minimum wage engagement campaign that we just went through H we actually had two c h two city of Louisville staff members join one of our trainings to learn about our work we also had Library staff now from the library district wanting to learn and participate in our EC space as well part of the um tools that we also offer and the guidance are H we have a dedicated space it's called the Outreach Outpost and it's in

[115:00] our internal well intro web and it's a resource library that is available Citywide so not only for members of the ECC the engagement Coordination Committee but for anybody at the city ER we offered a variety of of tools in that space a few that I would like to highlight is we have uh an engagement plan template that walks stuff staff through um a detailed plan for Meaningful engagement processes we also have a recently developed document called start here when you're doing engagement that really highlights from the high level um documents like our uh s framework all the way to day of event Logistics we have also a captured a lot of resources related to language access protocols best practices current lists

[116:00] of um vetted professional interpreters and translators that are available for staff to collaborate in their projects um another thing is we also provide trainings in collaboration with many of our Community Partners in 2024 we had trainings facilitated by the center of Center for people with disabilities as well as Rocky Mountain equality formerly known as out Boulder um we are very proud of what we're creating in this space I want to recognize that we also have a lot of work to do in terms of building capacity for our staff in order to have a consistent deployment of best practices and engagement work but I feel very happy and proud to be part of this team and I look forward to continue to do work alongside community community and all of us here present tonight thank you thanks so much an Hela one of the things I just want to point out about

[117:01] the capacity building that's so important is that when the public participation working group began capturing feedback from Community what they told us is that the experience community members have very dramatically depending on what department they were engaging with what project they were engaging on they didn't know what to expect because things were very different depending on the team that organized the opportunities so we really are trying to school everybody in what our commitment looks like and what that means when you're actually planning opportunities and making sure that we're centering um both the um principles of ensuring that people feel like their voice matters and also that lots of people can feel welcome been included so um I've been asked to drill a little bit down into some of the best practices tonight we really could have

[118:01] chosen an endless list of things to discuss with you but just based on some of the questions you've been asking lately we thought we would um talk about one example related to meaningful engagement and one around inclusive engagement um so hopefully in the interest of time you'll feel those you'll agree with us that these are worthwhile things to drill down on so next slide I'm going to talk first about the meaningful engagement and why we lean into our engagement Spectrum to make sure that engagement is Meaningful and then my colleagues are going to talk about inclusive engagement so first the Spectrum you can see it on your screen I don't think it's new to you I think most of you have seen it before but this tool was rolled out with our strategic framework in 2017 and it's been really helpful as a way for us to evaluate the many many topics the community might

[119:01] want to help shape and Boulder in the communications and engagement Department every single member of our team Works within this spectrum so our communication folks are largely inin sometimes a little bit in consult and they're pushing out information that help people understand and participate in their local government whether that's through programs and services or decision-making processes information sets the most important vital Foundation no matter where we move on the Spectrum after that our engagement side of the house then helps us make strategic decisions about where on the Spectrum the engagement part should fall this spectrum was created by the International Association of public participation many organizations that support excellence in government including the national league of cities and the international city and county Managers Association train its members in the iap2 Spectrum it's well regarded

[120:02] across a variety of cultures internationally in recent years a version of this has also been used by organizations that are working to really Center Equity to help individuals and historically excluded communities know what they can expect understand the value proposition of participating and to address the risk of disillusionment and fatigue the Spectrum recognizes first that not every decision warrants the same level of participation and second that there is an ethical obligation to ensure that both community members and decision makers which are often you on the council Das are clear about their potential for influence many City projects will remain at the same level throughout an entire engagement process but as we've leaned into the Spectrum we've seen that there are nuances sometimes we might have a project where multiple decisions are

[121:01] being made along the way that informs the next phase and so those parts of the project might be in different parts of the spectrum other times we might recognize that there's a specific set of community members who are going to be more impacted so we might engage with them a little bit higher on the Spectrum it doesn't really um the combination of levels works just as well as having one level across but the most important thing is that we have clear communication and Alignment as staff that are planning engagement community members who are participating and those of you who are taking the feedback on where we are and what the promise looks like we've learned that while it can be tempting to choose the highest level of the spectrum collaborate every time this is not actually considered best practice this level of Engagement takes significant time and resources I know we've stood before you and said we need

[122:01] more time if you want more voices more than once it can lead to community fatigue especially in smaller populations and most importantly it commits you all to implement the community recommendations to the maximum extent possible so that's a pretty hefty promise that we're making there are certain times and Boulder where collaborate is needed and we've really benefited from the richness of that kind of Engagement but good engagement is also possible at the other ends of the spectrum so we provided quite a bit of detail in your memo which we've Consolidated on to one single slide for the purposes of this presentation but we thought it might be helpful to show a recent engagement that falls into each of these levels and just talk quickly about how we determine which level it should fall into so um one that comes up in the consult uh level is the um 2023

[123:02] engagement work around the community Broadband partnership as you all know we've been talking about Broadband for a number of years but this particular phase of the project wasn't designed to ask people if we should make Broadband a community and Council priority or city priority we'd already made that decision but the team that was advancing the work needed some more specific feedback around a specific set of questions to be able to really make sure that we were focusing our time and energy in the right places so you had already provided a direction that this was a priority work we really wanted to Center on the how for the work and how to make sure that if we bring this kind of asset into the community that we're ensuring Equitable access so we used um the engagement to collect some key pieces of information to design the overall strategy and you'll actually be hearing

[124:00] very soon a couple of meetings from now I think on what some of the recommendations and outcomes are the second one um an example in the involved level was Boulder Junction Phase 2 and I know many of you were able to participate in some of that engagement and had some really positive feedback to give to the staff team as often is the case in the city this project like the previous one was built off work and engagement done previously the goal was to update the most critical aspects of a Transit Village area plan that was adopted 15 years ago council did not ask staff to start all over again to develop a new plan but we did recognize that some conditions have changed and so the direction in the scope that was given to staff was to do a limited engagement around the current and future needs through an amendment process so it was a finite process the involved level allowed us to engage in a series of conversation so not just one touch point

[125:02] but with really with those most impacted by the decisions and staff was able to adhere to a relatively short timeline to bring those important voices to the Forefront the last example we have for you is um one of the more robust engagements we've done recently which is around the B Municipal Airport Community conversation and we chose to be in collaborate in that space because it became pretty clear as we were scoping the project that this was no traditional airport strategic Plan update in fact there were some interest in community of talking about whether there should be an airport at all so that automatically became a much more complex conversation and it was really important that we slow it down a little bit and engage in processes that brought in a lot of different voices and perspectives um you all really directed us I think to make sure that the engagement was really

[126:00] robust around this so we designed a process that included a community working group and many other methods of reaching the cross-section of community and through that engagement although we don't have a decision yet because we're waiting on some other facts and information both opportunities and concerns really were able to be elevated and there was a vision created with a range of options that might be available so that's an example where we really took more time in a very deliberate process to make sure that when it comes time for you all to make a decision you benefit from lots of different perspectives and lived experiences so that closes out our sort of Deep dive into the Spectrum and why using the spectrum is a way to make sure that engagement is Meaningful I'm now going to um ask my colleagues and one of our community connectors to share with you a little more about the community connectors program some of which I know

[127:00] you're familiar with but then mostly out of that we're going to talk about some of the key lessons we've learned through our Community Connector participation and Leadership about Equitable engagement but first i'm going to ask Adriana to share just a little bit of perspective with you about how far we've come since she originally participated in the program thank you Sarah well hi everyone my name is Adriana paa palasio Luna I us pronounced she herea and as you know I'm part of the community connectors in Residence and I'm also part of the project Community connectors which is like a different role and both are very meaningful and very interesting of my um perspective my experience here I'm I'm a Mexican woman mestisa um part of the artist Community Spanish speaking Community migrant uh Community um micro bus community so a

[128:02] little bit involved in many communities here in the city and because of that I have been able to connect as you know the community connectors we are kind of like a bridge between Services projects programs that the city has with many communities that we are part of and I what I have seen is like how the people is very uh eager to share their perspective right because there are many voices that have been historically there and it is very nice that we are now getting ears to be open to listen to the all these voices right because it's not that sometimes when I hear like excluded or less represented I believe that we are represented we are not excluded but we haven't been heard or being included in the right ways right and I think

[129:02] that's something that we have um build been supporting to build that trust that connections where the community members when they have like a question or they have um not only when we go to our communities and say oh well the city is working on these projects or these programs and your feed feedback will be very important but now is the community members that are reaching out when they have questions or concerns and they are trying to see like figure it out like where to talk with somebody in the city or how to engage more so part of our activities have been uh doing some trainings with work Community a training that the community connectors in Residence we design and now we're moving to a second phase uh to provide more elements and resources and tools for our communities to engage more directly with the city and so I find that it has been

[130:00] very meaningful for our communities to connect with the city and being able to provide this feedback and as Angela men Angela mentioned before um there are some challenges still to work on um but that's the the richness of this process right the dialectic process that like going to reality and then reality providing feedback and then rethinking and going back and like having all that movement together right and with the city the community connectors project is more like a specific projects like I was part of the uh Boulder Junction phase two and right now I'm also part of the phase two of the Civic area so it is a little bit different but also is still um like that involvement to connect with our communities and I can mention um that something very important of having this space is that the more we connect

[131:02] with many communities the more strong we can create and better projects so I really appreciate that we're working on this together before um Ryan takes over I just want to also point out as Adriana mentioned she's a member of our Arts community and she's been really helpful and instrumental and help helping us bring Arts into engagement sometimes with her own beautiful work so I just want to express some gratitude for that thank you thank you Adriana and as as Council knows uh the city of Boulder has been a leader in partnering with trusted community members to make engagement more inclusive through this model Community Connector model um each of you have a Community Connector manual uh at your seats and the me Mo also shares you more information about this this program um and a recent update from Community connectors in residents and so we didn't want to use that time to to repeat that information but do as Sarah said bring

[132:02] up some of those key lessons that we've learned through partnership with Community connectors um first we know and and have learned that when we Center historically excluded communities in our engagement processes this makes engagement easier to access for the whole Community right for example when we simplify the language of of content ahead of say for translation that content is then more digestible for all participants we've also found that co-creation uh of Engagement processes that meet people where they are and where Community input helps to identify and address uh barriers to participation that increases depth of participation uh for communities and for example uh back to the airport community conversations uh the city hosted several engagement sessions that were very specifically in the community rooms of Vista Village and San Lazaro uh manufactured home

[133:00] communities uh where people lived right instead of inviting uh folks to an unfamiliar space across town um on the next one next slide here we've also learned that Curiosity creativity and art can really support participants in in you know their input or or feedback and as Adriana mentioned um you know in the building power and raising voice voices sessions that Community connectors have uh they begin dialogue around Community strengths and Community needs by encouraging participants to sketch out you know what what is their ideal Community what may that look like what are some of those aspects and next the the city has has long gathered quantitative data through surveys and questionnaires and feedback forms and we recognize the need to present qualitative data the the stories The Narrative uh alongside this quantitative data uh for example engagement exploring an increase in the minimum wage uh which you all recently

[134:01] considered really included economic analysis and questionnaire results and themes from small group conversations uh that really pulled the the themes and and notes uh that capture the lived experience of our community and lastly we're we're eager to limit engagement fatigue uh by really leveraging previously uh heard recent Community input and for example when engaging the community on the city's uh first ever racial Equity plan you know staff did not start from scratch but we really started from a draft that was based on what we had heard from Community uh in in recent years we really allowing feedback to begin from a much deeper Place uh when those sessions began and we do recognize that we'll have many more Lessons Learned as we continue to Evol evolve our engagement practices uh a bit looking forward into some of the short-term um action items that that our team is moving forward

[135:01] with we recognize there's a lot of work to do as we continue to strengthen that culture of meaningful and inclusive engagement first up uh increasing the city's emphasis on data uh Fidelity and process evaluation our engagement teams committed to strengthening our data collection and our evaluation practices making sure that we're able to consistently measure and improve the experiences of community members and policy makers um making sure that we're exploring better ways of presenting that qualitative and and quantitative data together um sharing a more holistic perspective right that helps put you as policy makers in a better position uh to make decisions uh that have an impact on on our community um staff plan we do plan to take a significant step forward um in this work with our 2026 Community survey um that's really intended to to gauge a CommunityWide perspective on City Service uh delivery and performance in

[136:00] the past this has been in partnership with uh PCO uh a partner and in the next iteration we really plan to to seek expanded budget and and scope for for this work to allow for a companion qualitative approach uh that can come U also with the quantitative approach uring that we're hearing more from our historically excluded communities and we plan to issue that RFP uh for this work in the second half of of 2025 um next up re-evaluating the City's online engagement platform um we do intend to to Really assess um and and address some of the the current and emerging needs for this platform be heard Boulder and we've really seen that it it has generated much larger numbers of participation than sometimes an inperson and engagement session may allow and we're not seeing that necessarily increasing participation for some uh communities less likely to to engage and and for

[137:01] example our our renter Community lower income residents and we've seen that with this platform language access barriers remain even if that content is is translated and so again in 2025 we're planning to put forward a a request for proposals on RFP to really evaluate uh different online platforms uh that may better serve our our evolving needs um next up innovate through uh Boulder Valley comprehensive Plan update I know council's familiar with much of this um but we have this great opportunity to try a few new approaches with engagement very briefly some of these include hosting a community assembly uh partnering with Community Based organizations to gather feedback from specific communities and betting artists in various facets of Engagement to to Really collect reflect and embody Community input next up is continuing to to evolve and and grow our community connectors model including an Outreach pilot over

[138:00] the next few years um continuing to um build on momentum generated with emergency response connectors that that's been active uh since 2020 and sunsets this month we're planning to leverage existing arpa funds in 2025 and 2026 for this pilot that really continues Direct dialogue with historically excluded communities that shares city services that shares engagement opportunities uh and that navigates sort resources as as needed and then lastly updating the city's engagement strategic framework um work is underway to detail progress uh to date as well as outline the continued work ahead we really anticipate that some of the more foundational elements are are expected to remain but want to make sure that there's an updated document that provides an opportunity uh to ensure the the content and the commitment remain fresh uh and that the lessons that we've learned you know some of which we've shared briefly tonight can really be formalized uh in that

[139:01] document and I'll turn to Sarah as we move to close thanks we have one final slide so we called it a coming soon slide because it's building off feedback we just heard from you all a couple weeks ago and we don't quite have the pathway figured out yet but wanted to acknowledge the question that some of you have been asking about feedback forms and The Limited sample sizes that we're getting um we want to acknowledge that even on some of the forms we've had on be herd Boulder that have gotten like 1,500 responses which is unheard of in some communities is still a very small percentage of our 105,000 population so we we absolutely understand the concerns at the same time we just want to make it clear that we always use a WI variety of techniques and no one technique is going to comprehensively hear from the whole Community even the the statistically

[140:00] valid representative randomized surveys we do the some of the sample sizes are small so we really want to think about um how to reach the missing middle and as part of our framework update we're going to create sort of a toolkit cheat sheet that EXP explains the different techniques we use in combination with one another and what their pros and cons are to help the community understand and hopefully help councel understand you know it's same problem that we have with in-person engagement is we might host an open house that 30 people come to and they're sharing their perspective and it matters it's a point of time perspective but if that's the only thing we did you're only hearing from 30 people so we really think we have to do a collective cohesive engagement to hear from different segments we are also willing

[141:00] in addition to this toolkit if there's a KN of five for Council we'd be happy to host a lunch and learn to discuss the various techniques more and really drill down into that question you had about limited sample sizes but that would be something we'd have to plan for the future so I know we have exceeded our 20 minutes by about 14 or 15 minutes but this was seven years of work trying to boil it down so we're happy to um toss over for questions conversation however you all would like to use the time this evening thank you Sarah and thanks so much to all of you for being here and I want to particularly thank Adrian anela for all the extraordinary work you're doing in the community connectors program the language access and it's really really amazing work so I'll look to my colleagues to see if we have any questions for you I saw Matt and then Tina and Tara my eyes are

[142:02] perfect well thank you guys for presenting this update um and compressing a whole packet into one slide is uh you're setting a terrible precedent for your colleagues I must say um so if they're listening they they've now know where the bar set um I have a couple questions um first is with regards to the toolkit um could perhaps the engagement committee take a peek at that before it goes to council just to give a little bit of touch from the engagement committee or do you find that that's appropriate I just think that some of these engagement things and some of the stuff that we've been working on may may help sort of shape that for how it ends up to council sure so we're happy to bring any of these materials to the council engagement subcommittee I do want to just remind folks that that committee scope is how Council can engage best with Community not necessarily the city but the tools we use can overlap both those needs so I think that would be fine no it's a great distinction but I think there's also a

[143:01] lot of inter interplay with how those occur with how we engage with Community sometimes fills a gap with some of the where where engagement in other forms may not happen and sometimes you want to marry those up really closely so that would be that would be great thing the other uh the other question I have is actually a question for Adriana I was hoping you could maybe take a little bit of time and explain and tell us about your experiences as a Community Connector um you certainly exemplify what the dedication and commitment is for Community connectors so I would certainly just love to hear what's your experience been like well as I mentioned before um I find it like very meaningful to be to have this space where we can connect with information and then bring it to our communities that right because even it has been like a learning process for me it starting with that right like what

[144:00] resources are available how can you access for information how can you connect to services or resources so every time that a Community member reach out to us um or to me in this case I I reach out right to ran or any of the team and like oh we have this um concern what can we do how can we advise our communities so and then when the Community member feels that they have been hurt and in other way they maybe were able to solve an issue and he has been like having problems with their heat in middle of the winter or having issues with the police and not being hurt and learning even how to make a complaint if that's necessary and things like that so it has been a very uh strong learning process for myself and

[145:00] that makes it realize like how important is uh to have all this information for all our communities because it is a very we know that information is power and privilege and how can we make it affordable and accessible to everybody because the more um the more information the community has well it will be more proactive more um yeah we will work for better life for everybody because then you can talk about what are your concerns how to solve them how do we partner in everything right thank you that's great I got um Tina terara and Taisha three T's in a row yeah thank you for the overview um I just had a comment about um thinking if there are conversations going on on how community members could sign up and get alerted proactively of any survey or engagement opportunity that's happening

[146:01] without having to visit the website or read different departmental emails um I've noticed that sometimes surveys are on beard but sometimes they're actually not they can be housed in different places so it's sometimes difficult to be able to spend the time to go through them so that's just one um question I have about whether that conversation's going on I think that's a really interesting suggestion and one of the reasons that you're seeing some things happening in other platforms is because we've recognized that the be herd platform as it currently exists has some limitations and really hasn't evolved with best practices so part of the solution is looking for a platform that can address all our needs where people can go to one place but I suspect there will always be sort of things happening in The Ether and so having some way for people to get alerted is a really interesting idea that we'll take back to our comm's team so I'm going to give you some thoughts and I actually want your

[147:00] opinions on it so it's a common question um my first I'm just going to tell a quick story my H sometimes I I say to my husband Robert I want your opinion on something and then he gives me in opinion and then I do the opposite thing why is that because I just needed I needed somebody's opinion to see how I felt about it do you know what I mean but he did not take it well which brings me to Iris and the airport so I guess my question to you is is I did not feel that Iris was the best ever Community engagement because a lot of people gave us their opinion and we didn't we used that opinion but I came to the conclusion that we should do Iris but we had a lot of enraged people a real lot to the point where I finally asked people to call me and one by one I just spoke to them about my opinions and listen to them and they listen to me so

[148:00] I I I guess my first question about Iris would be do did the people who you engaged know that we were always going to do something there because a lot of the conversation was I don't want you to do anything there so how does it FR how is it framed in that particular engagement that and do you ever wonder why or do you disagree with me that it was that it wasn't the best and I'm not blaming you I'm just saying it for me it was a difficult time and not helpful sure thank you I'd appreciate the question um and I think with with any engagement process there's there's room for for growth and right we're always learning from from what that engagement process may be and how we can strengthen that moving forward um I do think that one thing that we do try our best to do consistently across the city uh is make sure that our

[149:01] community has faith in the Integrity of the process um whether they agree with that outcome or not um and that's something that we do um ask in the community survey so we're able to track that over time right because we want to see that growing over time and to see more um you know faith in the Integrity of of the process and so you know as as much as we can for for any given engagement process you know we try to be clear about um you know here's here's the decision that we're we're working to make here's what that process looks like um we want to make sure to to hear input and you know we want to make sure that community members you know do feel heard even if the the the policy or the decision at the end is is not mirroring you know their exact opinion for that specific topic can I just to add some some context since it's on our wordcloud

[150:02] um Iris and the airport were fundamentally two different processes but but I'm just saying but in general they're two different ones right so Iris was decided because it was part of can we were going to be doing safety improvements and so it was on a consultant inform form level whereas the airport there was no decision being made so that's why that was at a more collaborative level so the they're just fundamentally different in at at the core and so outcomes are are going to be different as a result of that yes but cing off of your colloquy I got a lot of calls from the uh Community working group airport people that were in it that said they thought it was terrible they thought it was unfair they asked me to do something about it so in the same way I feel like the airport I'm mostly saying if Community engagement sometimes has issues do we then look at it and say how can we do it better because I didn't

[151:00] think the airport the people on the working group a lot of them didn't think it was a good experience either so ter and I I want to offer a caution here that that we're talking about engagement in general I don't think we're here tonight to drill in real deeply into specific projects um but maybe a quick answer on what terara just offered but I'd rather I'm not doing that on purpose I'm just saying in general how much is too much engagement is there such a thing is too much engagement what do we do and we have negative feedback from the engagement that that's my general question thank you Tara and I think there's always risk sorry Brenda ritow I'm the co-manager of the engagement team with Ryan um and so far a silent partner tonight um but just wanted to acknowledge that there's always risk that Community is unhappy with the outcome right like every decision someone in the community or large swats of the community might be unhappy um and one thing that we've

[152:02] really tried to lean into over this past seven years is the expectation of the ability to influence the decision and that's what I heard you asking about Tara is what do we already know as Matt said we were already going to do this because it was part of can and so I'm hearing you say that how clear were we about the community but we also know that often when we engage on decisions like that that already have a background of decision behind them sometimes the community feels like it might be an opportunity to relitigate that initial decision and we'll come at it from that perspective no matter what staff does and that may be a lot of the feedback you were hearing specifically and so anything you all can do to help us clarify with Community where we are in that massive decision making wheel right like here's the decision being made

[153:00] today um as you have those conversations that just helps back us up it helps us to have your your powerful voices say that part of the decision had already been made and that's not what staff was trying to do with this process I just want to end with I'm not I'm a big fan of community engagement but I'm also a big fan of if something goes right to actually look at it and say how can it be better so just to answer the second part of your question like what do we learn from these things one of the things we want to do with our data Fidelity is have a much more robust evaluation process for people who participated in these projects we obviously can't Implement that for all 80 projects that are engaging Community but next year we're going to choose a pre- and post evaluation for Council priority projects um and really see if we can get feedback from people who actually participated so we can make it

[154:01] better the next time and the more concrete they can be in what they liked and didn't like the easier it will be for us to iterate thanks for that all right I got Taisha and then Ryan all right thank you so much I am the one who asked for this so I am just really really grateful um although I'm hopeful that there's more regular or at least annual check-ins because sounds like it's been a couple years since you've given a a nice comprehensive overview of community engagement uh our community engagement practices I wanted to say thank you for just the dynamic offerings of going directly to community and um inviting community in in a variety of different ways um I'm really excited about the evaluation as you can imagine and I am hopeful that whoever is contracted has a significant amount of racial and eth and ethnic representation in leadership not in the person who just

[155:00] ask the questions or does the coding um I'm also really grateful of the acknowledgement around historical stakeholder fatigue as I call it um and the need to align as much as possible um I have a variety of questions so I'll just start off on that one which is around that hyal stake historical stakeholder fatigue um so I'm at the National League of cities uh I was talking with somebody about being the third African-American to ever serve the first being when I was born in 1974 um and she said oh you shouldn't say that because you know your accomplishment I said ma'am this has nothing to do about me and my accomplishments I am lifting that up because that means there has not been a single African-American person who has made a decision about our city prior to when I was born on this Council and so um you know that's why I'm really excited about our Community Connector program um it's not a nice to have um it is a reflection of the historical um

[156:02] discrimination and barriers to making decisions to serving not only on city council but on our uh on City staff um and um in know even in our volunteer roles so again just really want to um ground Us in why we're doing this um just from a racial and ethnic uh perspective um and again um really eager and excited to continue on that um so I have a question around feedback loops um so I've noticed that you know going back to historically you know we get questions all the time and you know we ask and give feedback but then nothing happens or um you know some things happen but some things don't and so I've noticed some inconsistencies um um in um or or rather in a protocol of feedback or followup with um those who have provided feedback I still reflect on that incredible

[157:00] beautiful spreadsheet that the climate team presented that provided questions from the community or you know whatever that public exchange was and then they had responses for each one including responses around things that they weren't able to do or wasn't in their Authority um and so again just was curious about um um that process of um you know you're collecting feedback but what are you doing to then share back to those community members Who provided feedback on either the acceptance of the feedback provided or the limitations in implementing the feedback provided thank you for the question um council member Adams yes so feedback loops is critically important to the meaningful engagement piece right like if people don't see their voice even represented in the report outs never mind represented in the final decision it's going to undermine credibility and so we've been working to try to develop capacity across the city around the expectations and the one you gave about

[158:01] climate is really a best practice of basically listing every single comment or theme sometimes if you have hundreds and thousands of comments like with the open space um strategic plan work they did a few years ago there were thousands but at least themed and then what I like to say is if not why not so is it being incorporated into the draft recommendations and if not what's the rationale for it but I also want to say that that takes a lot of extra time and staff resources and some smaller teams have really struggled with being able to provide that level of detail so we need to figure out what the sweet spot is between being too vague and too thematic so people don't see themselves repes represented and really detailed and focused on each and every comment and it it's still a work in progress for us and um it's helpful for me to know which examples you have found the most

[159:01] meaningful as decision makers because that helps us figure out what level of detail is the most appropriate one of the things that we hope to be able to do a little bit is perhaps use some of the AI technology with very careful human supervision to tag some of the comments so that we can see the themes that are recurring because that process in and of itself takes hours and hours right um so you thank you for that I will caution us on the use of AI particularly for the racial bias I encourage us all to consider lifting up um unmasking AI which uh does a fantastic job of outlining the limitations of generative artificial um intelligence actually um just had I was at the cause graduate fellows presentations of their research and there's actually a researcher that is looking into this very issue um of the racial bias of AI so again have some

[160:03] significant concerns around that but um again appreciate the the coding and of course the level of effort but again I just want to remind folks the level of effort um that it takes to be in a community that you had no say over for the majority of its existence so um I'm hopeful that we can find some meaningful Pathways um I'm also wondering about the feedback I notice sometimes that um Community Connector feedback is in our Council packet or is a part of um some of the reports that we get on different um projects and issues and again just wanting to get some consistency um because you know going back to the racial Equity plan there's a goal around increasing access not just to staff but to council memb MERS as well so um although I appreciate all of the efforts and Communications directly to staff um I also um want to make sure

[161:00] that we are creating opportunities for Community connectors and our community members to meet with us directly so and again obviously that can happen individually but I also appreciate the formalized um aspects around that um but in general just really grateful for the Community Connector program um I also noticed the well-being program for them and I was curious if it would be possible to extend some of those offerings to our Boulder Police oversight panelists who also um I can speak from experience experienced uh T tertiary trauma in the hours and hours of police videos and footage that we have to watch I am actually um working and looking into that uh piece for our police oversight panel separately but thank you for bringing that up awesome I you know I figured while I was here um I also love the building power raising voices and it made me think of the incredible work by our Latino chamber of Boulder County that did a whole a seat at the table training for um community

[162:02] and Business Leaders that are interested in serving on boards and commissions I was curious for that building power and raising voices session if there were any um conversations or um invitations to um deepen participation with our boards and commissions as that is a an acute area of need per the report I can answer that uh well the building Power Racing voices like the first part is focusing on how to understand the government in a non-governmental language right and now we're creating the second version that is more focusing on how to engage more directly how can participate and we have like like sub subjects um like a main frame that we are designing and co-designing with um an advisor kind of

[163:02] thing right an advisor well yeah we're collaborating with an A A A oh uh student yeah it's a a graduate student um at CSU who's a former staff member um who SP spent 25 years um dedicated to to the city of Boulder and has um really pioneered many of the inclusive engagement techniques uh that we are still in practice and so we're partnering with her over the past few months now yeah and we are working on having these soft themes and one is like how to participate in boards or how to engage in different ways with the city depending on kind of by request of the community that we're going to be engaging with this training uh we we will have like a main uh subject and then more specific what what they can choose what are they more interested on

[164:02] wonderful thank you so much I'm really excited about that work again the messenger matters uh so you know having a variety of different messagers is really powerful and and again thank you for that work um I had some questions on language access and so I was curious in the evaluation that is upcoming if there will be if that will be inclusive of our language language language action access plan and our implementation effort so specifically around the identification of linguistic needs and uh the assessment of the tools that have been developed so that's a specific subsection of our work um we do have a language access plan which is separate that includes a evaluation of the linguistic needs and the sort of tiered approach we're taking to meeting those um we'd be happy to provide more information on that um so I'm sorry just

[165:00] point of clarification so there is an evaluation of the language access plan and the quality of its implementation no we have a language access plan that was just developed in the last 18 months 24 months or so that we're starting to implement we have not yet done an evalu a of that plan okay I didn't realize it was I forgot that it was so short um does that and I didn't have a chance to dig deep into that link um I was curious if there is a glossery of key terms and kind of plain language um is one of our tools you know just the common you know Ami and some of these other terms that we use I was just curious if we had a a glossery of plain language of terms with plain language definitions well I do know that many of the projects are helping design um glossies that are

[166:00] specific to the project so that they are feeding a one larger glossery H we're focusing in Spanish and then Nepali and also I do know that there are Al some terminology in the language access plan that is spelled out there in terms of like our leps like limited English proficiency user and some of the terminology that the language access plan uses so those are two different spaces that are capturing terminology okay awesome thank you and thank you I had a question about non uh or or rather other languages besides Spanish so it's very helpful to know that you all are working um to in uh ensure that we all have or are building out U materials in uh Nepali and Taisha I'll just uh check in here we we are a little bit over time so I don't know how many more questions you have but um let's see I just have um one and a

[167:04] comment so the last one is around collaboration with County federal and state agencies that are also seeking feedback on similar topics from the same historically marginalized communities is there collaboration or is there a you know opportunities to deepen collaboration I know that was something that had been raised as a concern by marginalized meeing members that I've talked to I could add a little bit to it I think that there's definitely a lot of growth in that space I feel like we have been able to identify collaboration opportunities in the past maybe more because of the individual connections that staff have and and the knowledge that they have of different projects and resources and other positions in other agencies but I feel like we don't have anything that is formalized in that space we have had conversations with the

[168:02] community too about the importance of developing a space that help us capture what engagement looks like regionally unfortunately in the P well we had in the past something called Suma Latina that was a a really helpful space that we had that was managed by Boulder County that was really benefiting not only government agencies but or nonprofit organizations in terms of planning and collaboration around engagement projects unfortunately that was a space that um I don't know they funding and some other issues of the county happen and no longer exist but we are aware that they are thinking about bringing it back and I think it will be a great opportunity for the city to connect with that space again as we did in the past H recognizing that just the management of regional engagement uh landscape is a huge lift for any one

[169:02] organization to manage thank you thank you so much those are all my questions thanks taasa Ryan you can clean us up here thanks I have a one question and one comment uh first council member Adams thanks for lifting up this important work and Sarah and team I'm grateful I'm proud of the work and I know that you're making our city stronger um and just quickly uh Brenda thanks for your invitation to council to be clear about the engagement type that we're expecting I think that's something good for us to keep in mind and to maybe consider a process step as we go forward um so my question this is a little conceptual and you can actually say answered another day if it's too conceptual but um I'm thinking about the engagement framework um the IC IC um abbreviations as as one common way that I hear about our our sort of typologies of our work I also think um in in a practical way that I often think about maybe a different axis and it's it's the type of decision

[170:01] that we're making and specifically how broad versus more tactical and just to use an example this is transportation because i' closer to it but this is please read nothing into any policy here but just conceptually you can imagine we might be talking about doing something to an intersection and getting feedback on that we might be talking about a wider Corridor that includes that intersection we might be talking about the function of the whole network which includes multiple corridors we might be talking about our whole approach to Safe Streets or we might be talking about do do we just want to um come up to speed with modern practice of what our national experts tell us to do and I'm I'm just sort of thinking conceptionally that at any time um when we're talking about something in that that crude Spectrum I've just outlined we we we might elevate it to to a higher kind of a discussion or we might not or at least I guess I'm sort of thinking how I I would personally approach this kind of a conversation and I'm just wondering if

[171:01] this is um the kind of kind of a framework or something that our team thinks about with respect to are are there is there a place in that range where we want to occupy mostly or or it's like a sweet spot that um Community connectors does the best work or is it more like you just sort of can work anywhere or how how do you think about the where we want to be on the breadth versus excuse me the narrowness and then or do you seek direction from Council for example one something like that so I think in general the complexity of the decision is part of why we look at the Spectrum and that is a absolute factor and the more specific you all can be with us about wow what you're looking for can help us in terms of community connectors think it depends on whether you're talking so our community connectors in Residence which is our sort of most senior level they really are looking at systems questions and so

[172:00] those broad questions about how our systems operate and how they could operate better really go to that group when you're talking about the project connectors they might be drilling down to one of those more tactical questions for a particular project so we use the Spectrum based on the complexity and then where we plug in community connectors involvement depends on that complexity as well if if I may too I I just want to say you know I love the question um council member because it what it highlights for me right is the complexity of Engagement there are times right the the need for engagement comes at all level there are times when it starts with council members because you're thinking about a main a big policy question there are times where it originates with within the organization because we are thinking about big operational changes there are times

[173:00] frankly when we're thinking about how do we approach and ask our connectors for assistance because there's something in our systems that isn't working and we need to figure out and frankly we could use and benefit from Community to tell us why is this broken and it's not fixed right and that is one of the reasons why we look at the Spectrum because engagement really needs to come in and out at very different levels there is no one size fits all and no we must always begin here and end here because we come at this at very different ways and I just appreciate the team who is so thoughtful about taking an issue and really figuring out where does this sit now where are you asking what type of question is it and thinking about where do we go from here cuz it is a complex issue oh oh sorry if I could I'll add to that um and I'll just bring out one of my favorite um chorus messages right now

[174:01] which is that we're not doing any any engagement in a vacuum most of the time right every project has come out of something else um even our strategic plans are built on the history of how we've done that work and we've been listening to our Comm Community for a really long time right and so where we are right now is really trying to mine what we've heard previously recognize what those gaps are in what we've heard previously and that's often where we turn to our connectors to advise us in how to fill some of those gaps but not starting from scratch and we're just trying to tell staff that all the time right now because I feel like they they know that engagement is good and that they want to be informed by the community and it feels like they have to start today to do that so we're trying to create warehouses of information where we can pull in previous engagement

[175:02] from other processes that aren't transportation to inform a transportation process for example right so with the Boulder Valley comp plan we're pulling in budget information we're pulling in downtown information we're pulling in osmp information you know everything that's come in the last 10 years we're sitting down and sifting through before we decide what else we need to know and that helps with fatigue sorry could I add something to that in I think it's more in terms of recognizing that in for example that picture that we're looking at in the presentation those are all people that could be potential Community connectors that could be potential board UNC commmission partitioned bands that potentially could be City Council Members so I think that we also have the responsibility and engagement with the community like directly to build the community's capacity to step into

[176:00] leadership roles so I think and and the the reason why I thought about this is because you're talking about transportation for little things and big things and right now I'm supporting the 30th Street and the North 30th Street preliminary design project and something that we included in the presentation was a breakdown of the decisionmaking process in general for transportation projects so that people understand that every Transportation decision has to go through all these layers includ including the board including Council including all the documents that we have already set in place so that people next time that they engage with the next Transportation project they they understand the structure of the decision and we're also helping the the community builds its own capacity to step into leadership roles and hopefully we get to have some of these communities participating in boring commissions and maybe they'll be sitting at your seats next

[177:00] time we look we look forward to that thank you I love the vision and I'll just make my comment and close um so I just wanted to uh say I would love to attend if you do end up doing a brown bag to dig into any more of this if if there's appetite and in that um sense there two topics i' if we can would love to touch on one is on more on this matter of the missing middle and how how do we um and I'm thinking one one example is parents with kids who are in school who do not have a lot of time to do these things and I um I was really proud of the work that staff did with Iris and um you know I was feel like I was trying to shake trees at some of the school saying hey you parents want to come out here and talk about this and and um I know there was an incredible amount of work that was done to make that happen um in any case um beyond what you can actually make happen with direct engagement of course there's a there's other ways to to get at that so I'm very interested to um learn just learn more about how how we approach that and then separately um our I don't

[178:03] know if we have a policy or a plan on how we use social media to to outward Communications on emergency related um Communications um how we choose to be where we are and that sort of thing but I would love to have a discussion if that it's appropriate at at such time and and I would welcome not addressing that tonight but parking it to address the potential lunch and learn signaling my interest yeah that's all I have thank you so much all right well that wraps up our questions and comments except that I'm just going to say um thanks so much to you all for being here and for the extraordinary work and Sarah we've been on this path together for many years since 2017 and I remember the early days were kind of confused we weren't sure where it was going to go and of course there's always room for improvement but oh my gosh it's come so far so thank you for all of your extraordinary work over all those years a great thanks so much mayor absolutely so fantastic work everyone uh really appreciate all of you

[179:02] and with that that's going to wrap us up for tonight I can see people's eyelids getting heavy so I will go ahead and close us out and gavel us to a close 54 p.m. good night everybody