Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[5:31] slash boards Das and- commissions appointed members can now participate in person or virtually for hybrid meetings and members also receive a free RTD ecopass to enjoy unlimited rides on RTD trains and buses if you have any questions please contact the city clerk's office at city clerk's office bouldercolorado.gov or call 303 4413 0008 and with that I will go ahead and gavel this meeting to order

[6:00] Elicia if you can do the roll call please yes sir thank you and good evening everyone and thank you for joining us we'll start tonight's roll call as usual with council member Adams present Benjamin present mayor Brockett present mayor protim farts present council member marus present shuart here spear present wallik here M Wier present mayor we have our Corum thank you so much all right well our first item is item 1A which is the Dr dick jesser day declaration to be presented by council member wallik Mark if you could please is this good is it on yeah all right we're honoring tonight

[7:00] the incredible life of one of Boulder's most incredible residents so buckle up this is going to take a few minutes Dr Richard Dick jesser has served as a pillar of the University of Colorado Boulder Community the Behavioral Science community and the city of Boulder for nearly 75 years with this declaration the city council acknowledges honors and celebrates Dr Jess's extraordinary service to his country as a US Marine Corps veteran to his community as a volunteer with the Rocky Mountain Rescue group to the university in several pivotal roles spanning seven decades and to his family loved ones and colleagues as a father husband friend and Mentor Dr jessor born in Brooklyn New York good choice was attending the City College of New York when he enlisted in the Marine Corps the Marine sent him to Yale University for one year before he

[8:01] completed basic training and later survived the battle of iojima the deadliest in the history of the US Marine Corps the courage and fortitude that Dr jesser displayed in his military service preceded an inspiring and highly accomplished academic career marked by those very same qualities after iojima Dr jesser was discharged from the military in February 1946 and completed his ba at Yale University his Masters at Columbia University and his PhD in Clinical Psychology at the Ohio State University he came to Boulder as an assistant professor at the University of Colorado in 1951 where he dedicated his career to the advancement of the Behavioral Science field early in his career Dr Jesso realized the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to studying important social problems in the mid1 1950s he co-founded The Institute of Behavioral science or IBS at CU Boulder

[9:02] and served as its director from 1980 to 2001 Dr jesser scholarship has served as a backbone for Behavioral Science research as evidenced by his 2003 designation as a highly cited social science researcher by The Institute for scientific information in recognition of the significant and Broad influence of his work additionally the CU Board of Regents named Dr jesser a distinguished professor in 2005 a testament to his outstanding contributions to his discipline and to the university he is the longest serving CU faculty member in history dedicating 70 years of his life and scholarship to the university Dr Jess's commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship was foundational to his decades long advocacy for the creation of an IBS building to encourage collaboration across Behavioral Science disciplines on

[10:02] campus after the university committed to constructing the building Dr jesser decided to forego his entire salary and benefits package for five years to close the final $1 million construction budget Gap the board of region recently approved the renaming of The Institute of Behavioral Science building which was constructed in 2010 as the Richard jesser building in recognition of his REM remarkable personal and and academic contributions to the institute in addition to his many contributions to the Institute of Behavioral Science Dr jesser was a steadfast advocate for greater diversity and higher education during the 1960s and early 1970s Dr jesser researched and authored a report which later became known as the jesser report offering recommendations for diversifying the student body and the representation of race and ethnic minorities among University

[11:03] faculty Dr jesser has also served the community through his passion for climbing upon moving to Boulder Dr jesser developed a lifelong interest in rock climbing and high Alpine mountaineering which he has pursued across the globe through climbs in Europe South America and South Asia as well as in the US in the 1950s and 60s he was a volunteer backup for the Rocky Mountain Rescue group and all volunteer professional Mountain terrain search and rescue organization in celebration of Dr Jess's 100th birthday on November 24th 2024 the ribbon cutting ceremony for the renaming of The Institute of Behavioral Science building in his name on January 28th 2025 and a return trip to iima in March of 2025 to meet fellow US Marine and Japanese survivors and to honor those

[12:00] who never left the island alive the Boulder City Council declares December 19th 2024 as Dr dick jesser day in honor of Dr Jess's incredible contributions to the city the city council recognizes Dr Jess's unwavering commitment to improving our world and encourages all Boulder Community members to look to him as an example of the service Integrity compassion and dedication that make the world a better brighter place thank [Music] you thank you so much [Applause] for say anything I just have a couple of comments I'm just overwhelmed being here

[13:03] uh I spent the bulk of my life here in Boulder raised my two children uh have my distinguished Professor sitting next to me my spouse who has been with me on all my adventures in these later years uh just to give you a sense of History here when I came I had to have a job interview and it of course was with the president of the University something unheard of in these days and when I walked into his office in O in uh macki uh he said he looked at me and he said young man you look too young to be a professor I'm wondering what he would say now if

[14:02] he were here uh and literally Dean DED who was also in that office took me to the window and said young man look at those flat irons that's part of your salary and so it's been a long time and uh I've run through was it 19 this is your 19th I I I've run through I should say I've served under 19 CU presidents so I've seen uh a lot of change in CU since I came but it's been an amazing University in an amazing young City so I'm thrilled about the opportunity you've given me to tonight thank you so

[15:03] [Applause] much I uh I see we have some dignitaries from Cu uh would either of you like to say a word or two okay thank you and dick on behalf of the University of Colorado Boulder uh I want to just congratulate you on a 100 years I want to congratulate you on over 70 years as a faculty member I don't think I can get there uh but so congratulations to that I mentioned this before that we all know about Dick's wonderful academic contributions but also his contributions as one of the best citizens of the University we could always count on Dick to chair a committee whether it's a Jess a report or another juster committee or another committee and dick again on behalf of the University of Colorado Boulder our

[16:01] faculty staff and students [Applause] congratulations thank you so much Phil Phil there weren't chancellors here when I came uh it's the new office place and this is Phil Deano one of the best chancellors the university has has ever [Applause] had thank you so much all right that was inspiring um thanks so much Dr jesser for joining us here today from your extraordinary accomplishments as a boulder resident over the decades very much and Chancellor D Stefano pleasure to have you here and Lorie call you as well thanks for representing the university all right um we are now going to go to item 1B which is the national homeless persons Memorial Day declaration presented by council member

[17:01] Benjamin wonderful um could I have Annie from together and Shannon from Haven Ridge join me on stage please thank you for being here thank you um so I've got one declaration um but we're going to have another one made that honors Haven Ridge as well uh for you guys as well so but I had one made so um little clerical mixup mostly on my end but we will roll with it but thank you both for being here um so we're here to recognize National homeless persons Memorial Day um many of us on Council were just over at the um Bandshell earlier this evening to honor and sadly recognize a bunch of folks that have passed away um who are friends and neighbors who are unhoused and it was quite a moving experience to be present for that and sadly it's something we have to do every year um I think the

[18:01] only bright light is that that number has decreased since last year um but we have a lot of work to go and so honoring this keeps those folks front of mind um and hopefully we continue the great work that you guys are spearheading the winter poses extreme hardship for our unhoused community members including vulnerable youth who face heightened risks without stable shelter at the same time the spirit of the holiday season provides an opportunity for affirmation and renewal regarding our commitment to end home December 21st has been designated national homeless persons National persons Memorial Day by the National Coalition for the homeless and the National Health Care for the homeless Council and is so recognized by cities Nationwide to safeguard and support our community is a yearound duty and in this season of generosity and sharing we are all encouraged to commit ourselves to promoting compassion and concern for one another specifically including those who are unhoused the city shares immense gratitude for the many organizations

[19:01] Boulder Community is working with to end homelessness and support unhoused people together is one such organization committing to ending youth homelessness through a variety of programs that support young people in unstable situations through positive relationships safe housing behavioral health support education and employment assistance and critical life skills so they do not experience homelessness in the future in Remembering those who have died during or after and during a period of home homelessness and with the city's commitment to provide the housing and services that individuals need the cause of ending homelessness is kept urgent we the city council of the city of Boulder Colorado declare December 21st 2024 as National homeless persons Memorial Day so I want to turn it over to Annie to say a few words and then also Shannon great thank you I want to thank the city and city council for holding this space and honoring our unhoused community memb MERS who we lost in this

[20:00] last year specifically when we think about Youth and Young adults experiencing homelessness it's a very critical issue here in Boulder and it's often invisible so you young person that we work with says we're really great at being chameleons um we're here in the community in the library on public transportation universities um and it's important that we know that if we can address homelessness when folks Are Young with housing and Supportive Services we know what works that we can prevent adult homelessness in many cases in fact over half of chronically homeless adults first experien homelessness under the age of 24 and most often they first experienced it when they were children so the work we do is really about changing the trajectory for our community members here in Boulder um so again thank you for the space this past year

[21:02] tragically we lost three of our community members together Cody Zariah and Aspen um their names were red this afternoon at the band shell and it really is a somber reminder that for our unhoused youth in this community it really is a matter of life or death connecting them to the Housing Services that they need so thank you for highlighting this critical issue and it's important that we not only honor the folks that we've lost that we continue our commitment to make sure every young person here and the city is valued empowered and safe I'll turn it over to you I don't know if I can follow that but you said it very well and I just want to add that the homeless Memorial that we had today is not just for the unhoused community it's for all of Boulder Community and I invite you to come next year

[22:01] unfortunately um it's a great place to to interact with unhoused community on a different level in a different way it's very calm it's very sweet it's unfortunately it's very sad um you'll get to meet people like myself and like and like you I forget your name I'm sorry Annie Annie who who are literally boots on the ground from the agencies that help and support and shelter our unhoused community so please next year just think maybe think about it um we also lost three from from our shelter and it's been a very rough year for us and I have a feeling it's it's not going to get any better it's actually going to get a little worse and I just want to thank the the city and the city council members for providing that safe and inviting place for us to be able to have the the homeless Memorial and to honor those who have passed away this year thank

[23:03] you thank you guys so much yeah thank thanks so much to both of you for joining us today and it really was a powerful Ceremony this afternoon okay uh is now time for item two which is open comment Elicia if you could go over the public participation guidelines please yes sir thank you and good evening again everyone the city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive meaningful and inclusive 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

[24:01] please visit our website at bouldercolorado.gov Services productive D atmospheres now the following are examples of rules of decorum found in the boulder Revised Code and other guidelines that support this Vision these will be upheld during this meeting 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 allowed to speak online currently only audio testimony is permitted online only one person at a time at the podium unless an accommodation like an interpreter is required all 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

[25:03] threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person we ask that you not AIX items to the podium or the deis or walls or other surfaces of the chamber signs Flags or other items used to communicate must be held by one person when being displayed obscenity other epithets based on race G 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 expressing support or disagreement verbally or with sounds such as Applause or snapping that is with the exception of declarations traditionally support is shown through American Sign Language Applause or jazz hands thank you again for listening and thank you for joining us thanks for that

[26:00] Elicia and I would very much ask that people be respectful of all speakers and stay quiet during all people's um time speaking so that everyone may have a chance to be heard um as everyone deserves a chance to be heard and uh there is currently a sign being displayed that is not being held if you all could take that down please and also remove the item from the chair so that somebody else could sit there if they would like to thanks so much for that you do have to hold the sign if you're going to display it appreciate it okay um everybody gets two minutes to speak um I will be strict about that two-minute time limit so as to be fair to everyone and our first three speakers are mck Kohl's Eric gross and Evan rabitz so so if people switch from Cars to bikes as our warming Planet says we

[27:02] must we have to build the infrastructure that will support a car-free living this understanding is the impetus behind the 15minute city that has been under discussion for so long the mayor of Paris has made the defi this the defining feature of her 10-year Service as mayor of the city of light we've created our city at the core as a railroad town when the train used to come up water stre Street to the depot and the trolley went up and down Spruce beyond the core however we've created a Suburban neighborhoods with the default Transportation choice being a trip in the automobile but fortunately we have a tight Urban growth boundary six miles north to south five miles east to west easily navigated by bicycles and ebikes we can build a beautiful neighborhood in the planning Reserve even though it is at the edge of town will it be Suburban single family and

[28:00] car dominated that only takes us further down the path of expensive housing where Mobility by car is required or will it be dense with multif family housing that is Affordable and attainable by Frontline workers building the planning Reserve at three to five stories connected by protected paths and bike Lanes to lies and Safeway and schools will create 15minute neighborhoods not only for the planning Reserve neighborhood but every place along those Pathways and bikeways will also become 15minute neighborhoods to make this happen we have to tame the motorist that lives inside every one of us demanding streets and free parking this Council has shown it has the foresight to take us to this new place let's continue on this path together thank you thank you before we go to to the next speaker um one thing I neglected to mention is we did at our

[29:01] last council meeting discuss that we would um follow our rules of procedure which state that if council members have any statements to following open comment that we would do that at the end of the meeting rather than immediately following public comment so just wanted to let everybody know about that we do still have one sign that is being displayed without being held if I could ask you sir to please uh hold that or that that would be the one there you go okay so if we can now have Eric gross Evan ravitz and Ria Yom I'm Eric Ross the term anti-Semitism has been so overused that it now feels meaningless as a Jewish American I know speaking against a country and a government cannot be anti-semitic just like speaking against people who defend illegal L theft and genocide is not anti-semitic anti-jewish sentiment can be real and harmful and every Lev of government in the United States speaks against it at the same time anti-muslim

[30:02] and anti- Palestine sentiment has been a far bigger problem for several decades and virtually no voices of authority speak out against it if you pursue a proclamation condemning anti-jewish Behavior I implore you to include protections for Muslims as well why because Muslim and pro Palestine residents of your city are actively being accosted and doxed online for their attire or views attracting harassment and threats to their safety I am never subjected to anything close to the level of threats hatred and public vitri all my Muslim friends are and in fact the only derision or hate directed toward me has come from zionists I was disturbed by statements in recent meetings that this issue is not relevant to City business or that certain people feel inconvenienced by reminders of a genocide and war crimes that have been condemned by virtually every Authority in the world and even admitted to by Israeli soldiers as reported just today in the Israeli newspaper haret this issue is incredibly important to how Boulder will be viewed in history when

[31:01] South African apartheid was toppled Nelson Mandela personally visited and thanked the US cities that spoke up and boycotted South Africa boycotting the Israeli government and economy is not anti-semitic it is the duty of every World citizen who wants peace and wants to disempower warmongering genocidal regimes I also boycott the American economy to the best of my ability due to its warmongering and crimes against humanity does that make me a bigot against America of course not calling BDS anti-semitic is itself anti-semitic because it supposes all Jews must support genocidal policies of the Israeli government your time is up but thank you for your testimony a play quiet please okay and our um I'm gonna have to ask that sign to be moved thank you all right be okay quiet please quiet all right let's give other people a chance to speak we have Evan

[32:00] ravitz Ria Y and Laura Kaplan waiting for the presentation there we go I'm Jewish and feel safe here but no one will be safe anywhere now that the US state and Boulder governments are controlled by the multiply indicted Thug Netanyahu we pay you to represent the majority last meeting 30 of us asked you to divest from four companies that Supply the Israeli military and for a ceasefire resolution six asked you to do nothing you represent the small minority also shown by polls why remember Elliot flaten all right be quiet please be quiet please I wasn't hearing any interrupting no no interrupting of any kind quiet please remember Elliot fladen the lawyer who

[33:01] all last winter led the pro-israel sign waving and spoke several times his Facebook has these photos of Governor polus taking him and his daughter skiing at the same time was polus paying off flaten to stop you from working for peace when polus was elected to congress we hope his wealth would make him independent but polus knows his place and promotes drill baby drill and kill Israel kill polus controls Council through your ambition our mayor and Council were the only ones in the state to back his attempted takeover of local zoning I'm skipping down I want my time back you can have 10 extra seconds no 25

[34:00] like I've been denied I worked on this for hours so I'm skipping to the the Crux of it John Lennon in Working Class Hero said there's ex seconds top they tell you here hey quiet quiet in the audience there's room at the top they tell you still but first you must learn to smile as you okay time up your time is up time is up time is up time is up quiet [ __ ] every oh no obscenities that is Absolut not acceptable not allowed and not acceptable we need quiet in the audience we need quiet in the audience I'm going to call a recess if we don't get quiet all right quiet in the audience we're going to call a

[35:11] [Applause] recess racist piur dare City paranoid

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[53:19] Elicia Elicia do we have uh Channel 8 ready to go all right I'm going to us back into session right so open comment is still going to continue we have cleared Chambers here in council chambers um but we still have people in the building who can come upstairs and speak um as they're called one at a time so our next three speakers are Ria Nom Laura Kaplan and Aaron Brooks and just I ask for everybody's patience while people come up to the podium

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[55:00] hello my name is Ria and actually I'm going to start by taking my glasses off because I'm so disgusted by you guys honestly every single day every single day I wake up and I see children like my niece and nephew slaughtered their heads missing their lims gone their parents wailing in the streets and then I think of the Muslims in this country bullets fired to our houses to scare us hijabs being pulled you're being followed in grocery stores I call that islamophobia but I haven't heard you guys talking about it much there's 4 million Muslims you need to do something maybe a little bit at least pretend for

[56:01] the sake of whatever you care for pretend cuz the same way you care for those people you should care for us too cuz unfortunately I do hold a passport you can't Deport me I'm I was born here I'm just like you guys so your rights are my rights we are equal sometimes it's hard to comprehend but we are my skin is just a little bit darker I just happen to cover my hair but the blood that runs through every single one of us is exactly the same think about that and think about all the children that share the same blood as you that you're sending billions of dollar to slaughter that's what you're doing doing so shame on every single one of

[57:00] you shame and I'm glad I can't see none of you guys your time is up but thank you our next three speakers are Laura Kaplan Aaron Brooks and Daniel Howard good evening members of council Laura Kaplan here a member of the city planning board but I'm representing myself only tonight it's nice to see you all so I'd like to talk about the city's climate action plan I want to especially uplift the hotline conversation initiated by council member Shu hard I

[58:00] could not agree more with Ryan that there are two things that are foundational to achieving our climate goals number one compact land use and number two an effective transportation system that decreases Reliance on cars sorry there's a lot of conflict tonight um so it was fantastic to read the staff reply to Ryan's hotline I was figuratively pumping my fist as I read it um but I'm going to quote just one sentence and that is the benefits of density are well understood by land use planners as beneficial toward climate goals and that value has been baked into the city's policies and regulations for decades so yes this is Crystal Clear when you look at the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan we the city are very intentionally the center of urban growth and there is a Rural Preservation area around us in the Boulder Valley that we live with harmoniously we're part of one Fabric and we all play our roles so it's

[59:01] great to see that staff recognize this connection between our compact Transit oriented walkable bikable Urban Development pattern and our climate strategy so we do also need to talk about the airport in relation to greenhouse gas emissions um the city's latest greenhouse gas inventory shows that Aviation fuels from the airport are the number four biggest source of greenhouse gases in our city and that's about 8% of our emissions from 2023 and that is frankly astonishing for fa city um for a facility that so few City residents actually use rarely or never for most of us now we have heard representatives of Boulders Aviation Community sorry I will send email okay our next three speakers are Aaron Brooks Daniel Howard and Graham Hill

[60:17] sure yes please thank you I've been taught well that um by my grandfather who said that that your word is the only thing that you own so use it wisely apologize for any pain I have caused our community members I am sorry these tropes took away from my intention and my original message and caused harm I also wanted to clarify one of the comments that said that I had apologized previously um for um anti-semitic comments and I wanted to clarify that I did not apologize for

[61:01] that considering that we do have skin in the game and blood on our hands I wanted to just clarify that I did not say that there blood on our hands I said blood on my hands now I'm not going to accuse anyone of dishonesty and unlike many who are here that do not live in Boulder I will not call any of you or anyone else here disgusting names but I truly wonder if Miss Adam's apparent obsession with Israel seems to be consistently clouding her memory as shown in these videos for someone elected to serve our community she seems to spend an En ENT amount of time discussing and posting what often amounts to propaganda about Israel the blood on our hands comment was discussed at length last meeting earlier this year Miss Adams AP apologized for posts she had made on Instagram that some considered to be anti-semitic then she bizarrely claimed to have not made this apology I'm not sure why apologizing for hurting con consents and admitting to doing so is so difficult this pattern is quite troubling and I hope the community

[62:00] considers how this negatively impacts our city council and our community of 107,000 people as a whole in terms of other issues as well I would ask my fellow voting community members does this Behavior pattern represent the trust and and transparency needed for Effective governance thank you all right our final two in-person speakers are Daniel Howard and Graham Hill uh good evening council members I'm Daniel Howard part of urban environmentalists uh speaking on behalf of myself and not the US government uh next slide um this talking about the comat action plan and how that you know ties in comat uh land use policy and uh housing and how housing policy is in fact climate policy uh there's some great resources that uh could share with with you through the slide deck emailed afterwards um but you know highlighted here for example is Boulder uh City an

[63:01] area around uh the GH missions like per parcel in census tract and you can see the central border area is the most climate efficient compared to the uh uh wild Urban interface and other exterior boundaries of Boulder in our surrounding cities as well where a lot of our residents commute in from it's important to realize that we're interconnected with our neighboring cities as well in terms of how growth impacts not only ourselves but neighboring neighbors as well in this space so um I could speak a little bit about uh uh wild interface risk and wildfires but um don't necessarily of time in two minutes next slide um so to focus specifically on some few issues so energy and VMT for example uh multif family dwellings tend to have less energy use for household for the envol r red stock dashboard that you're welcome to explore in your own time um it's as we allow maybe permit and encourage uh higher density housing this uh achieve some of our goals related to ghg emission reduction as well as also reducing VMT mileage uh

[64:00] next slide uh and then that for another common concern is water use per capita it's actually known that significant lower uh water use is done for multif family compared to single family there's actually been in the case in Denver a uh lowering of of water use despite the massive uh significant population increase uh in that City compar to us I could also talk more about Urban heat island but uh don't not have time for that next slide um you know there's some interesting uh uh others uh you know ways which you can think about Urban B and how they impact our other neighbors um but um I don't necessarily have time to go through all this but I'd be happy to discuss later if you have time thank you thank you our last speaker in person is Grill and then we'll go to our virtual speakers

[65:05] okay I hear gr Hill is not present so we will go to our first three virtual speakers who are Amy Kaufman Luan Meyers and Foster Goodwill mayor I do not see the first three speakers online tonight all right our next three virtual speakers are Hannah Davis Lind seagull um and Michael Mills hello my name is Hannah I'm part of the environmental Advisory Board though My Views tonight are my own and I'm speaking about the climate action plan that you get to hear more about later um first off I want to thank the climate department for all the amazing work they've done and I really was impressed with the plan and what we've accomplished in our entire region and are really grateful I want to encourage staff to look at uh two big system

[66:00] Solutions I didn't see included so the first which you've heard a little bit about is compact land use combined with sustainable transportation and um I think that this should be called out directly in the cap and it'll make our work easier when it comes to look at the bould Val comp plan and our use of land use and uh development Le loose planning when it comes to reducing emissions um backed up by claims from ipcc and RMI and other big science-based organizations the second is there's no mention of Food Systems which is the second largest source of our community's consumption-based emissions according to our own Community greenhouse gas dashboard so I've spoken to some of you regarding the plant-based by default approach which I continue to urge you to support across our city food purchasing but there are many more bigger levers that the city can do to reduce our impact when it comes to food system systems um and cities like Austin and Berkeley an arbor New York Denver and

[67:00] many more are starting to include these in their climate action plans and I see this as a really big opportunity for Boulder so I'll follow up with email with specific resources of how um the city could approach this and happy to answer any questions um you guys have about food systems and later conversations and just thank you all for your service and your time thank you now we have Lyn seagull m Mills and adelene Marquez uh oh that's right yes please ask her to come up okay we'll come back to her all right Michael Mills you're up thank you council members for this opportunity my name is Michael Mills I'm a member of your transportation Advisory Board and Community Cycles advocacy committee but tonight I'm speaking only for myself I'm also a recently reti ired atmospheric scientists having spent my career in Boulder working at CU andar

[68:00] and Noah contributing to recent ipcc reports tonight I'll address two critical topics reaffirming Vision zero and integrating compact land use and transportation choices into Boulder's climate action plan on Vision zero this resolution is not just a commitment it's a moral imperative we all felt the tragedy of four deaths on Boulder Street this year which were highlighted the urgency of action Virginia Nolton in January a 2-year-old girl in May Julianne Hurley in September and Jennifer Newman also in September were all killed while walking or cycling by drivers on our roads the 2-year-old in a parking lot projects like Baseline Road 30th Street and soon Iris Avenue show that we can make streets safer but progress is too slow the proposed resolution empowers staff to use modern practices streamline project timeles and better engage the community it also strengthens our case for external funding and Partnerships Expediting Safe

[69:02] Streets projects is essential not only to prevent more tragedies but also to align with our climate and Equity goals which brings me to compact land use and transportation choices on which the science is clear these strategies are among the most effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions compact land use shortens commutes reduces car dependency and reports Transit key components of a resilient and Equitable city as the IPC and others have shown these measures also unlock co- benefits like improved air quality lower infrastructure cost and enhanced Community Health Boulder climate action plan must prioritize these strategies to lead on climate action thanks thank you uh can we bring up ly seagull now and after that it'll be adelene Marquez and Richard

[70:07] Sachs of all am I ready now okay yeah um for where's the timer 5 oh okay two minutes um okay first um I got the wash dryer but um Nicole the thing was on for eight hours today that's using one hell of a lot of energy like because that part is electric where it's rolling the clothes around for eight hours there's sometimes problems with new technology that's supposed to be more energy efficient this is a heat pump hot water heater okay um it's like structural adjustment policies you don't know but your bill goes way up and other people on this car program had their bill go way up because the the um money

[71:00] was uh higher because they're blowing cold they're blowing warm air out and then cold air out they measured it 100 degrees when it's warm blowing out and then 50 degrees when it's cold blowing out it's the same thing with my air source heat pump hot water heater um it has to be vented out you know this Lauren it's like it sucks warmth out of the air embeds it in the water and then blows cold out Boulder housing partner used these things and they didn't vent them out they can't they're for affordable housing places where you have limited space okay um oh boy um my bike was stolen at the county when I went to testify against David hashimi with a with the energy smart program because 10 years ago I tried to get an energy retrofit and I found out that he had

[72:00] dropped my contractor that was possible because they wouldn't put up a solar install under adverse conditions and David insisted on it and the the your time is upy time's up okay uh next three speakers adelene Marquez Richard Sachs and Rachel Nam Mori hi can you hear me yes well I am deeply disappointed by the comments made last meeting from Mark terara and Matt um y'all keep stating you will not revisit the SE fire well I asked you to protect CU students as you started this meeting recognizing CU Boulder people a student recently wearing a hijab and having a freedom of speech sign was harassed um and po posted online in an anti-semitic page where Aaron Brocks um was there and continues to

[73:01] harass students and he was talking about building trust um reminder that the US State website says that criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-semitic having the dangerous precedent of confusing what anti-Semitism is and that definition is not okay I haven't heard heard any of you talk about islamophobia in our community which is very prominent last meeting a person equated Arabs and Muslims to jihadis someone should have called her out on her islamophobia but council members stayed quiet you say that we're banging our head against the wall well I think that City Council Members not wanting to see responsibility of what you can do at the local level and how you're complicit in genocide is you bringing your head against the wall and this is a local issue that affects us all here you can I best from Caterpillar contracts you can protect your Muslim Students you can protect your Jewish students you can

[74:02] make sure that anti-Semitism is not being equated to what it is not former Israeli defense minister stated that Israel was becoming a corrupt leprous and Fa fascist mic State we are tired of seeing decapitated babies people getting burned and you all still do not see the connections of how our indigenous people are suffering so shame on you shame on you shame on you all right our last three speakers are Richard saaks Rachel norty and Mindy Miller hello this is Richard Sachs can you hear me yes okay uh do you have the PowerPoint up or um yes okay and is that

[75:04] visible to people yes okay I'm sorry it's not visible to me it'll take me about 10 seconds to uh pull it up if you want to go to a different speaker and come back to me or if you can wait I'll do it I'm I'm sorry um I think now is your time to speak we've got the presentation up on our side okay um well first of all I'm very sorry for all the obvious um o open wounds that are going on here um it breaks my heart to see that because I've been part of the Boulder Community off and on for 40 years now I'm a retired college professor um I want to focus on the second third and fourth um uh why don't we just go to the fourth uh uh and I'll pull it up on mine I'm sorry I

[76:00] drove across town when you guys cancelled I was at my son's house um so I've been a uh non-practicing reformed G most of my life and I've married two different Chas and have five wonderful adult kids from those two ended marriages but I want to focus on the essence of my my understanding of what it is to be Jewish and what Jewish people can and should be offering to the world and I think that's a message that has not been made and so if you look at the fourth um if you look at the fourth I'm sorry it's finally coming up on my laptop no it's not yes it is um here's the essence when we die when we go to heaven or wherever we're going to go the question

[77:02] is not were you Moses but were you yourself were you Richard sax were you Daniel y silver and if I could just share with the group the final paragraph we're not asked to be the Liberator of our people that's given to few we're not asked to bring down a new Torah we're asked to do what we do best provided what we do is for the common good to teach to heal to raise children to encourage them to love them so they will become thoughtful in caring adults in a measure as we love and as we share and as we work with the institutions of supportting the community and measures we offer ourselves to the common good we represent the hope of the world my mom of blessed me memory was at time is up but thank you for your testimony you can always follow up with an email if you'd like all right our last two speakers are Rachel nort and Mindy Miller mayor I do not see Rachel online

[78:00] tonight you don't see uh Rachel Nam Morty okay so then we'll go to Mindy Miller hi am I on yes hi um I'm Indie Miller I'm a boulder resident my kids grew up here went through bbsd I have one daughter at CU who's been dealing with the Hostile and unwelcoming environment there simply because she is Jewish I'm deeply saddened by the vital and hate I've heard and seen at these meetings over the past year and a half especially as they've been directed at Jewish members of council it seems to be politically correct to spew hate when it comes to the Jews criticizing Israel is not anti-semitic but holding all Jews accountable for the actions of a government 5,000 miles way is this kind of rhetoric fuels Jewish hate and the statistics attest to that we're seeing

[79:01] in it our Public Schools where Jewish and Israeli students are being bullied simply for existing this is unacceptable as members of the Boulder City Council you were elected to address real issues facing our city the endless divisive dialogue distracts from the work that needs to be done how are we progressing on priorities like climate action homelessness Wildfire mitigation and economic development how much are these critical efforts being delayed by the current focus on unproductive conversations what important conversations on the city's most pressing issues are being pushed to the back burner because we've used an abundance of time on a topic that has no bearing on City business I support the First Amendment and I understand that everyone has a right to express their opinions in front of council but when this kind of toxic hate becomes normalized in our public discourse we're in dangerous ter territory we can do better than this and we must thank you for your time your service and your

[80:00] attention to these important issues thank you and with that that concludes our open comment speakers I'll turn to City staff to see if you have any responses uh no specific responses just always thanking our community for coming to speak and I know many of the comments related to The Climate action plan that we're going to be discussing later today so thank you and uh no responses from the city attorney's office okay thanks very much and then a reminder if Council have um any comments they can be made under matters under item 8 but if anybody has any clarifying questions for City staff you can ask them now I've got Taisha yes thank you so much I didn't have a question about what constitutes Council business is it only the matters that we are discussing or matters that we have the authority on not just the resolution but uh you know some of the other anything that we have the authority on I just wanted to get clarification on what constitutes

[81:00] Council business when we're hearing from our public and from our constituents and residents and all those who live work in play here thank you thank you for the question council member Adams um can you get more into the mic please thank you for the question council member Adams uh my answer would be both would be uh anything that's discussed and anything that Council does would be Council business thank you very much you're welcome very good not seeing any other hands raised um Elicia can you take us to the consent agenda please yes sir thank you our consent agenda is item number three on tonight's agenda and it consists of items 3A through 3 any questions or comments on the consent agenda I got couple over here T Tina I do have just one or two concerns about 3F I'm assuming that I should wait until second reading Aon before I uh discuss

[82:00] them yes and you're talking about the the first reading for um this is density and intensity standards in residential neighborhoods yeah if you um I think the time for discussion will be a second reading okay thanks thanks Tina yeah um I just want to make some comments I made some similar comments at the last meeting about um uh n the consideration of motion to adopt resolution 1358 um and just explaining that I'll be voting no uh because I don't um I'm not yet convinced that this is the right um mechanism for us to show or re or show renewed support for any particular action and um I would like and I'm hopeful that we as a council talk about what um we're using resolutions for and whether we need to do them for each of our priorities um or whether there are other opport unities for instance when we did the prioritization last winter um we may have wished to have used one of our 10

[83:00] priorities to um broaden the vi the can um priority to a broader Vision zero priority so um and my concern is also that just I would prefer not to see us go down a path of making a series of resolutions to reaffirm work that were particularly passionate about and it's all good work um and the final thing I just want to make it very clear I'm not voting against Vision zero I just am I this type of mechanism I don't think is good governance and but I'm I'm very looking looking forward to a discussion about how we do Elevate certain pieces of work that we want um the community and the staff to know about but perhaps in a different way right and just to clarify that's resolution is regarding reaffirming the city of Boulders commitment division zero okay uh I actually had Lauren and then Mark um I just wanted to speak to item K real quick which is the landmarks board

[84:00] and historic preservation some modifications around time frames and approval expiration dates I really appreciate um this being brought forward when I first read it I thought it was our 10year landmarking um program update and I that made me a little nervous and I was really hoping it would go farther but as a standalone item I'm really excited to see this it's a much needed change and thank you for bringing it forward and I'm going to cqu on that uh Lauren is because that's um removing the appointment of a planning board member to the landmarks board and I think they tallied up in there how many hours that would save of time and it was dozens and dozens and I remember from being on planning board that was a really significant commitment so I thought this was a nice streamlining effort nice nice work everybody um Mark um I I also want to um express my um skepticism about uh doing resolutions to state that we really mean uh we really mean it with respect

[85:01] to programs we have duly enacted and are um carrying out um I don't think we do this um for any other resolution um I don't think anybody in the community doubts our sincerity in carrying out the vision zero program and so this is sort of a belt and suspense Defenders uh process uh I'm not sure it does any harm um but it's um not something that that I you know I I wouldn't want us to be um doing resolutions to affirm our uh commitment to open space policies um I I just don't think that's the way we ought to go again um the world is not going to end if we pass this resolution um but I I I just don't see it as uh good governance since we have already

[86:01] passed Vision zero and V and staff is carrying out Vision zero and I don't think there is anybody who questions uh questions that so again this is a a methodology that I'm I'm uncomfortable with all right and Ryan you want to say something real quick and then let's move to a vote briefly just because it came up so I appreciate my colleagues conscientiousness on on this issue I'll talk just to the um comments from Tina and Mark just a reminder uh so the proposal came after the death of 38-year-old Jennifer Newman I'd ask my Council colleagues if there's anything we could do as a body to meaningfully accelerate progress and through some discussion came to what um what we did offer um I do think it meaningfully uh lifts up the work and help staff in the ways that I Outland in the hotline which I won't say again now um so that's what's before you and I also just want to thank Valerie Nur and others who helped put us together so thank you all very good right Elicia if we can go to

[87:01] our rooll call vote please do we have a first and a second I didn't hear it you know it would help to have a motion before we voted I wonder if anybody like to make a motion make a motion to pass the consent agenda second we've got a motion in a second is that better that's much better thank you sir follow procedure right all right thank you we'll start the consent agenda um vote for items 3A through 3 with council member Wier uh yes Adams yes Benjamin yes mayor bronet yes mayor protim fards yes council member Marquis yes but no on n on N thank you

[88:00] shoard yes spear yes M wallet yes but no on N thank you sir the consent agenda items 3A through 3 are hereby approved unanimously with Den noted exceptions for item number three an thanks very much now can we go to our public hearing please turn my mic off too fast all right our public hearings are public hearing is item number 5A on tonight's agenda and it is the second reading and motion to adopt by emergency measure ordinance 8665 amending Title 9 L use code BRC 1981 to implement Senate Bill 23- 290 and locally permit natural medicine business business es defined in the state bill as natural medicine Healing Centers cultivation production and

[89:00] testing facilities and setting forth related details thank you so much and on this item we're going straight to Carl guer thank you good evening council members before you tonight is ordinance 8665 which relates to natural medicine uh the council will recall that we discussed this on August 1st uh where we requested Direction on on how we should move forward with an ordinance on this topic so that's why we're back before you tonight uh Council passed this ordinance on first reading on December 5th uh I'll point out that uh council member Maris had offered some questions uh that we've answered and we've attached those to the memo in in attachment G so the purpose of tonight is for Council to make a decision on the ordinance to either approve deny or modify uh ordinance 8665 uh we're recommending an emergency ordinance in this case which requires two votes of council uh the reason we're we're recommending that is because uh the state is accepting licenses for

[90:01] natural medicine businesses starting on December 31st um they could theoretically start issuing licenses after that date it's likely that they won't until probably about February or March but just to get some rules on the books and to make expectations clear from a zoning standpoint of our business licenses can be issued uh that's why we're recommending that the rules be in place before that time so I'm going to go through some of these slides a bit quicker than I did on August 1 since we did go through a lot of this information on August 1st I think everyone understands what natural medicine is it's psilocybin or syosin that's derived substances derived from mushrooms for medicinal purposes only it's meant to to treat um behavioral issues like depression anxiety any other kind of mental health issues um it's been found to be effective in in a lot of different types of treatments and it was legalized at the state level so a lot of these definitions come from the state Bill there are some other substances that are listed in the

[91:01] definition um these are things that would be considered by a state board in the future I think in 2026 and may be legalized in the future at the state level so just a little bit of History um there was that vote back in 2022 proposition 122 which is called access to psychedelic substances it was passed by Colorado voters so that led led to the the natural medicine Health Act of 2022 and ultimately in 2023 the Colorado natural medicine code uh which was passed through Colorado Senate bill 23-29 so that set up the whole licensing certification framework it set up a board of an Advisory Board of about 15 members that would advise on this as well as all the definitions and set up kind of the framework and then that's gone into a more um detailed State rulemaking process that happened this year year uh which concluded on July 25th uh and those new more specific rules were actually adopted on um o

[92:00] October 21st hey Carl I believe the people would like to know who you are actually I wonder if a formal introduction is in order uh my name is Carl Gyer I'm senior policy adviser with the planning and development services department so an overview of State legislation um it allows persons that are over 20 years old to possess share or cultivate um the siloc cybin um without payment there's no renumeration it there's there's no retail component of this um so the state legislation as I said sets up the certification permitting and registration requirements uh it also sets up a thousand foot distance requirement from Child Care Centers preschools elementary middle and junior high schools and residential Child Care Facilities that's something I'm sure we're going to talk about tonight because the state rules do allow that to be waved um so we do have some maps that we can share um again a lot of

[93:01] specific regulations that relate to cultivation manufacturing testing storing distribution Transportation very extensive regulations uh at the state level so when it gets to local governments um it basically says that cities or jurisdictions can enact ordinances or regulations that govern the time Manner and place of these businesses pursuant to the state rules but it does also say that localities cannot prohibit The Establishment um of or prohibit any kind of natural business establishment prohibit the transportation of any natural medicine through the jurisdiction uh and it does not allow um cities or jurisdictions to adopt ordinances or regul regulations that are unreasonable or conflict with the state law so this is just some of the headings that you'll see if you go through the rul making you can see it's very extensive again I won't go into all

[94:00] these but it does relate to a lot of different topics when setting up a business there facilitators have to get a state issued license there's there's surveillance safety requirements handling requirements what how you can use chemicals things of that nature just going into the details of natural medicine businesses um there's basically four that are listed we have them in two different categories a natural medicine Healing Center is is kind of like a therapy office so we have a picture of kind of how that uh looks and operates and then the three other ones are more of a light industrial nature so cultivation product manufacturing testing facilities again with this particular State bill there's no retail component to this so I'm going to go through this a bit quick quickly as well since uh we talked about this last time or passed legislation um earlier than Colorado so they they say that you can

[95:00] opt out in Oregon that's not the case in Colorado um and it so it g some communities have opted out or voted to not um allow these in their jurisdictions but a lot of them allow them a lot of them consider them as Medical Offices or light manufacturing um as we're proposing tonight uh they also don't allow any local Licensing in Oregon uh which is not uh the case here in Colorado we've talked to a number of different jurisdictions across the state the ones that are highlighted have indicated similar approaches that Boulder looked at as far as um allowing them as Medical Offices um for the therapy type use or The Healing Centers and then light manufacturing for the cultivation um testing and um manufacturing facilities although Denver just recently announced on December 10th that they would have a local license requirement that they're developing for the first quarter of 2025 they're not waving the distance requirement um

[96:00] they're not putting any hours of operation and otherwise rely on state law so when we discussed this with Council on August 1st um staff's original proposed approach was to not have a local licensing regime for natural medicine and to regulate Healing Centers as medical offices and regulate the other facilities as light manufacturing we also had proposed a thousand foot distance requirement from residential that was not supported by uh council at that time so we've not moved forward with that uh in the ordinance we were asked by Council to to do more Community feedback so we've been keeping people aware by using the pnds newsletter uh we've been meeting with industry experts and attending some of the roundtables that were hosted virtually uh by Denver and the state on this topic a lot of the concerns that we've been hearing are the cost of sessions it's not something that's federally allowed so at the Insurance gets a little bit tricky so that's why the cost is High um access to service Services is something that's of concern

[97:00] hours of operation we've heard is an issue you know if they're restricted in you know evening hours it makes it hard for like people to be let out you know early if there's like a pressure to close there are State rules that make sure that people are in you know good um they've gone through their whole session and are safe to leave the operation so that's why hours of operation is kind of a tricky topic IC and also we're hearing a lot of concerns about you know access of those under 21 years of age the impact that that could have um on our community's youth we also convened a focus group um composed of some um cannabis licensing Authority uh Advisory board members but only in their own capacity not representing the board um some state or County officials some experts uh most of them were supportive of the state approach to take like a regulatory approach to this and they agreed with the uh keeping them as medical offices and light manufacturing

[98:00] some of the folks felt that we should be more lenient than we were proposing like waving the requirement for for schools or considering them through a a land use that that's more uh pervasive in the city allowing them in all residential zones we also did a beard Boulder questionnaire um again this is a a questionnaire it's not a statistically valid survey we got over 100 respondents on it for the most part respondents were split between whether or not to allow to do local licensing or not it was 44% to 44% um a slight a majority of folks 55% to 60% of the respondents supported the the the approach that we had proposed about considering them Medical Offices or light manufacturing uh 44% indicated opposition to allowing Healing Centers in residential zones uh but there was a slight majority 51% that said they should be allowed in residential zones in some form they were split between

[99:00] whether it should be by right or with use riew we've also used the racial equity in instrument on this particular project uh one thing that's that's come up like I said with the late night hours relates to indigenous people's use of siloc cybin and that it's traditional to have it at nighttime so that's why there's been some concerns about restricting late hours um we've also looked at a number of different studies about whether mental health issues impact a higher percentage of people of color there's some that say some studies that say yes some that say it's about the same but that people of color struggle with access to um help and and financial uh issues that make it even more impactful to them so I think basically through talking to folks and meeting with the community connectors and residents the the thing we've heard most is just allowing access not being too restrictive uh enabling these businesses to get set up um the community connectors and residents did support allowing these in residential zones and

[100:01] generally supported the approach that the city was proposing but they did have concerns just overall with the whole um State legalization of it and what that means for the more you know traditional use of of the product so I'm now going to jump into the components of 8665 um it's pretty brief it's about two pages basically includes a new definition of natural medicine business that links up with the state regulations we've had to update our def definition of medical office so the highlighted text is the new text so it basically considers a natural medicine uh Healing Center as as a medical office um per the recommendation of planning board we've allowed natural medicine Healing Centers to allow overnight stays the same as we do with addiction recovery facilities which are also under the medical office definition and we've added this uh narrative to the light

[101:00] manufacturing definition that includes the cultivation testing and Manufacturing facilities this is our use table so if you want to see how medical offices and light manufacturing is currently regulated that's what's being proposed um it would not Healing Centers would not be allowed in some of the lower density residential zones as medical offices are not allowed in those zones so like the RR RL one or rmx2 but the other residential zones it is allowed through use review and then it's allowed pretty broadly in in the other zones except for um the industrial zones in the industrial zones the light manufacturing uses are an allowed use there's a couple other zones that allow industrial uses as well when we look at the thousand foot distance requirement that's in the state code you can see it actually um excludes a fair amount of the city um so this was of concern to the planning board based on largely based on the number of child care facilities that exist in Boulder so

[102:00] you can see a good part of Boulder would be um ruled out per that but again the state law does allow it to be modified or waved so after a discussion with planning board their recommendation was to approve uh ordinance 8665 with the following modifications so amending the definition of medical office to allow overnight stays as I just talked about and then creating a waiver to that thousand foot distance requirement and that's how it's reflected in in the ordinance before you tonight uh our recommendation is that uh staff adopt the ordinance tonight um on emergency uh to get the rules on the books uh if city council wanted to start with that light uh regulatory approach that's our recommendation uh however if city council wanted to take a more cautious approach or make changes uh we could bring another ordinance back on third reading with some changes that might change like say the distance requirements or concentration requirements or considering local licensing could be brought back later in

[103:04] 2025 so this this is the suggested motion language we have for Council that concludes my presentation happy to answer any questions thanks so much for that Carl we have um questions for staff on this clarifying questions mark Nicole uh what would the map look like uh if the uh excuse me the distance restriction were 750 ft we don't have a a map of 750 ft but we have this map shows 300 versus 500 so you could you know look at the one on the the right and it would be a a broader distance okay and just to clarify in this map only the zones that are colored are zones that would allow these um any of the zones out it would be dis corre right thank you that it Mark

[104:01] Nicole I just had a question about um the medical office designation um currently in that designation are there medical offices that might dispense something considered medicine like I don't know antibiotics or maybe like Tylenol or something yes and and that's that's why we came back back with the recommendation to to treat these as Medical Offices because obviously there are a lot of medical offices there's a lot of different types of of medicines that are prescribed there that we don't necessarily get deep into with zoning I think this is a little different in the sense that it's a state you know approved you know medicine versus Federal but yes yeah okay thank you all right uh yeah Tina and then Taisha yeah for the um overnight stays are there any other um questions or any other Zoning for uh for those types of medical offices or sighting or they treated exactly the

[105:01] same as a medical office that doesn't have an overnight stay I'm trying to understand the question so the only ones that allow overnight stays are addiction recovery fa facilities and so you're going to treat it the same as an addiction recovery facility okay um and then I just want to clarify the statement that this isn't that you can't get money from Distributing mushrooms in the non-medical license Avenue my understanding is if you provide a service that you can sell the service with the mushroom and then get um money for that uh that I'm not entirely sure about we might have to defer to the attorney's office H penwick with the city attorney's office yeah there is a personal use allowance under state law that decriminalizes personal use of natural medicine and as part of that decriminalization there's an it allows

[106:00] for Bonafide to support services and um I forgot the other terminology um I can look it up to to have services that are provided and being paid for concurrently with the providing of natural medicine but there couldn't be any compensation for the providing of the natural medicine and that's outside of the State Licensing scheme right but they can happen concurrently and the service is not defined by a state law that's correct yeah okay thanks Taisha yes thank you so much um and I just had some clarifying um things that came up when I was reading um and from the presentation the first around just getting clarification did we get an opportunity um as a city to speak to who are um the the tribal Nations that we're in relation with regarding this issue we did um have some contacts in

[107:02] our communication Department that talked uh with indigenous people Representatives I I think what we heard from them was you know the the concerns about the bill in general at at the state level but right I understand there was they basically what they told us is that they felt like a lot of their concerns were being handled at the state level and that it would be it would cause some conflation if we engage directly with them at the local level and they felt that it should be handled at the state so that that was kind of the extent of our conversations all right but my question was there was no formal uh agenda item in the convers in the meetings in the in the consultation that you have with the 16 drives that was my question no okay no problem I just wanted to see if you know what what levers we're using um although I do appreciate uh uh reaching out to um indigenous people in our community um and I just wanted to lift

[108:01] up that um those comments are not a sensitivity um a sensitivity is a feeling or an emotion um this is culturally responsive practice so I think it's been really important that we um are clear on those terms um the other thing is I noticed a comment around people of color and I just wanted to remind us that people of color is not a thing that is a there's no monolith we don't you know there is differentiation and I just you know wanted to make sure that we are very mindful um of always differentiating um race and ethnicity um to ensure that we are um meeting our communities where they are and recognizing that they're not a monolith and even within a specific um in ethnicity and and racial group and so just to clarify uh the comment around mental disorders and people of color um actually according to the the national Center for or National Institute of Health their latest reports mentions that um and again this reporting is is

[109:01] what it is but Asians have the lowest pre prevalence at 23% black people at 2 37 Latinos 88 uh 38.8 and white people at 45.6 so again just wanting us to be very Mindful and if anything it's just kind of lets uh us know that I I have some Curiosities around um the racial and ethnic groups that were contacted and and just that comment um as far as the um the you know particular questions I'm all of my questions are satisfied and I really appreciate this effort especially given um some of the issues we've seen with the cenis industry here thank you thanks Lauren did you have a follow up and then back to Tara I was just wondering how this various setbacks compare to setbacks for other things like alcohol yeah good question so we we did look at our zoning code um for some analogous setbacks so we looked at a

[110:02] number of different distances for the 300 foot distance uh group homes are held to that 300 foot there's also a a thing in the land use code that if if outdoor seating for a restaurant is within 300 feet it has to go through a conditional use review we're just trying to find some you know analoges uh with 500 ft there's a liquor store uh distance requirement of 500 ft uh same for outdoor seating for restaurants in Parks um there's a sales and rentals of vehicles and recycling centers that have a 500 foot distance so you know rather than coming up with a bunch of different distances kind of looking at what we already have in the code thank you ter I remember Tina sent a hotline recently and I think she asked for a map that uh 1,000 ft from junior high schools and high schools only is that

[111:00] correct you can pull that up yeah so taking out the child care centers right you know what I do it if I could put it into my presentation to make it show up there we go right and you did send that to us through email and in the hotline this afternoon right and so here is the map

[112:01] with a thousand foot and that's just around middle and high schools right that's right ter answer your question totally okay Lauren sorry okay um I was also so those setbacks that you just listed are those those for child care centers as well or were those for the 300 and 500 foot set packs that we have in our existing code those Maps show child care in other schools as well not just the middle and high school I'm sorry I didn't quite catch that can you res yes no um in our zoning code when we for instance with the sale of liquor um have setbacks is that also from Child Care Centers or those setbacks just from middle schools and high schools and things of that nature that I'm not aware

[113:04] of um I mean I think I can answer which is that no it does not include Child Care Facilities because if you look at that map there are liquor stores close to all those little bubbles but please look it up keep me honest know our city for the record the mayor knows our city intimately well well done please no comment about just the liquor stores just ask me out grocery stores I could do the same thing I promise red is on uh good evening Council Joel Wagner and our Chief Financial Officer so I think I can provide a little bit of clarification but I will follow up so uh Mar marijuana facilities the thousand foot restriction is inclusive of child care facilities

[114:00] but liquor is Carl Carl it's Carl's fault not my fault uh uh liquor is just um schools principal campuses of College University so I I knew it the mayor for the win yeah right thanks thanks for the clarification anyway moving on does that answer everybody's questions great no Tina got a quick follow up and then we'll go to the public hearing yeah I have I mean I I hesitate a little bit to compare The Healing Centers with alcohol and marijuana because the alcohol and marijuana have a strong recreational component whereas the natural healing substance we're looking more at as as a medical application so I'm I'm not sure I want to draw that comparison however have the dispensaries struggled with the 1,000 foot setback with all of the different facilities have we heard that feedback consistently if we're going to think about it that

[115:04] way I don't know that we have a definitive answer um I know we have experienced that some dispensaries um you know if there's a license expiration or closure or something like that and a child care facility has moved in then then there excluded from that so there there are several that have been grandfathered and that are in there but if that facility closes or expires for some reason um then it would kind of close that window on that area does that answer the question okay thanks and with that we'll go to the public hearing um I understand that Charles leaf and Eric Castro have withdrawn and our other speaker speakers have gone virtual so we have three virtual speakers they are um Tasia poat Nicole luo and Ken weard you each have three minutes to

[116:04] speak um hello uh thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight are are you hearing me yes I don't know I okay great wonderful thank you um my name is Tasha poet I was born and raised in Boulder and I now serve as the Colorado director of the in advocacy fund which is a nonprofit working to support the successful implementation of the state regulated psilocybin therapy programs in both Oregon and Colorado so I've been closely involved in the public process to develop rules for the program um over the past two years focused on supporting safety quality of care affordability and access um and um I'm speaking tonight primarily to thank Council and staff for your thoughtful approach to this issue taking time to learn about it and gather input input um as I think you've become aware through this process and may have already known as well um a growing body of research at respected institutions

[117:00] like John's Hopkins UCLA and NYU has found that psilocybin can be effective for hard to treat conditions including anxiety depression and PTSD over the past several years I have worked on this policy in Colorado I have heard stories and testimonies that have convinced me of the profound potential of psilocybin therapy to provide hope and healing to those who are suffering I spoken with combat veterans who were very close to taking their own lives young adults who were previously addicted to methamphetamine alcohol and opioids in and out of rehab in jail therapists who have told me that they can hardly believe the transformation they've seen in some of their clients for many people cybin has been the only thing that has helped after years years or even Decades of trying other options including various forms of therapy in a Litany of pharmaceutical medications I want to be clear that although cybin mushrooms do seem to have anti depressant effects healing in relationship with psilocybin is best understood as a process not a cure and improvement with this modality usually

[118:00] requires dedication and a lot of hard work ideally working with someone who can offer support and compassionate care so psilocybin therapies are perhaps best understood as opening the door for positive change not an inevitability of improvement um having contributed to the Statewide regulations over the past two years I do believe they are quite comprehensive and I appreciate council's Focus on decreasing barriers to Affordable access I also think that waving the setback from daycare is the right policy because this is a supervised adult use program and what we've seen especially in Oregon is that there are a lot of challenges in getting these businesses up and running especially because of the barriers created by federal illegality um as well as just kind of the Intensive nature and time requirement for a modality of care that's not at least initially going to be covered by Insurance um so really appreciate that you all have thought carefully about how you can reduce the barriers to this um and make it accessible and Bolder and yes just thank

[119:00] you for your work on this thanks now we have Nicole laau and then Ken weart hello can you hear me yes hi thank you so much um I like to Second the things that uh Tasha was saying I believe very much in these modalities and I also believe that the setback is not necessary as a mother resident in Boulder I also have um several kids in bvsd schools in elementary and middle school and I find that there will be no issue specifically because of these regulations and how they were designed to really just help people and create access for people it won't be seen anywhere you know by the kids by anyone that's really not involved in the actual healing itself in The Healing Centers and also with the the light manufacturing so I also just want to say thank you so much for really deeply considering this

[120:00] situation thank you our final speaker is Ken weart may I do not see Ken online tonight all right that brings our public hearing to a close then so I'll bring it back to council for discussion um what I've been hearing is maybe some interest in this question about um setbacks from child care and school facilities no other key topics have come up um that I have heard of so I wonder if people want to address the question of those setbacks that so we can come to a council decision on that Tina you want to put something out yes um I am interested in the setback um of removing the Early Child the child care centers but we also um I also had a request to think about a setback from recovery centers and shelters from one of the people operating a shelter here um and I think the issue is when

[121:01] marijuana started it first started as medical marijuana and then had recreational marijuana and we're in a similar situation that we have a The Healing Center where we have a medical application of psilocybin but then we simultaneously have a a pretty robust recreational distribution system where you can grow your own and distribute it with or without a paid for service um and I think what I my concern is the regulations I think from the state are fantastic but at the same time because I don't have a sense yet of what the signage is going to look like around The Healing Center whether people are going to be compliant with the advertising regulations in the state my personal preference is to take a cautious approach see how it goes and for the current time due the two things one is um the setback including schools that are K through 12 but also looking at the um the shelters and the current addiction centers and the reason for that is just it's confusing for young people when we're talking about

[122:01] mushrooms is a healing and this is what happened with marijuana marijuana was medical marijuana and then we made it legal and recreational and I think young people had a difficult time and if you recall many of us in the Boulder Valley School District as parents LED an effort to remove uh Vapes because there was a lot of confusion around that and then we had a unfortunately neither of these efforts have come with commensurate increases in mental health treatment from the state or funding nor is there robust public education awareness campaign to have better clarification I found the need to know brochure published by the state to be deficient at best so my hope is that we start slightly cautiously and then see how it goes now I'm seeing that we're not actually going to be as cautious if we do that but um because other people in recovery that are young might have the similar confusion I would like us to consider that as well I think it would be quite minimal and that was very long and I'm sorry about that uh you lots of us speak for that long so Tina you get a

[123:00] chance every once in a while um if I can ask a followup question to that so the um the state legislation does not mention uh addiction recovery centers or shelters um is that something that we are allowed to add in I think the city could create regulations like that the way we've set up the waiver of the requirements the state enabled is we included them in the definition because it really changes the state's laws if we adopt a change um to apply a distance requirement to shelters and addiction recovery facilities I think that would be a different change we probably would have to create a special use standard for that and change the use table so it would be much more comprehensive change in what the ordinance looks like okay so not impossible would take some work correct Council responses to what we've heard so

[124:01] far Nicole um yeah I think just based on the the feedback that we've gotten from folks um I would be most interested in decreasing the regulatory barriers that are going to increase the cost of services for those who are interested in this service so I um would be most favoring not having having any setbacks um I think when medical marijuana started it wasn't with supervised use it was more that people would get a prescription and um they would take it to a place where they would get that prescription and then use on their own um this is supervised use in a medical office and so um I am comfortable and and with licensed um licensed practitioners so I would be comfortable with not having uh any setbacks I feel like um much of what kids see that is influencing their perspectives on uh marijuana and other substances it comes from online and so I'm not sure um what's going to be uh kind of

[125:00] seen many many kids and actually adults too A lot of the time they are walking around they're looking at their phones anyway so um I I just I don't see this as being something that um is going to uh put kids at risk and so I would be comfortable um given that I don't think there's going to be that many of these in our community anyway um given that even even not having setbacks there aren't a ton of additional spaces um that we have available and certainly not in affordable um anyway so I I would be comfortable with not having any setbacks chair I think we should have the setbacks at the junior high school and the high school level I was studying looking up Googling some of the news reports in the past couple years in regards to cocy and there was um there were two kids that overdosed two kids in

[126:00] middle school that overdosed um a a drug dealer gave them a group of middle school children at gave it to them not on a phone but gave it to them at a middle school and two of them overdosed and that was in El Paso County and then we of course know about the ones that happened here I'm just going to pull them because why not I'll just pull each one um we had the 15-year-old boy of course who um whose name is James O'Neal Who Fell 145 ft from the crane on the construction site that was sold um that was given the mushrooms but we also have I don't know if you remember this but a few years ago there was an 18-year-old man I guess man not boy that was on 30th Street I don't know if you'll remember this he had like some sort of a breakdown in the middle of 30th Street and he bit people and he

[127:00] strangled some people and he said that he was also on mushrooms at the time so and then there was this other case recently um naked cuu student high on mushrooms restrained from the flat irons that was actually 2013 some of those took place at schools though um and so I think that we need to think about protecting the kids as the most important one of our most important jobs and so that's why I feel like we should um do keep those setbacks I mean I want to honor the voters and how they feel about mushrooms I would disagree but you know they that that's a done deal but at least we can protect the children who um really cannot most of the articles about mushrooms had to do with kids that were 21 years old or less that weren't able to handle it and either overdosed or killed themselves or had a breakdown or whatever so thanks I got Mark and then

[128:02] Taisha yeah I want to Echo what the uh Tina and Tara have said uh I think we're best off uh taking a conservative approach maintaining the the setbacks um you know it's very difficult to put the toothpaste back in the tube if we find that things are going swimmingly and we want to reduce those setbacks we're free to do it at a later time I think if we eliminate the setbacks now um it will be very difficult to reestablish them uh and so I I think um uh doing this in a uh in a thoughtful and conservative fashion uh it let's have some experience with some of these establishments before we talk about um reducing setbacks and I agree with Tara our um first responsibility is not to

[129:00] promote a particular business it's to protect kids and whether this hurts the the business side of it um in the near term I don't know but that that's not our job our job is is to protect the most vulnerable thank you thanks tasa thank you so much um I just want to be very cautious about the comparisons um because I feel like there's some you know apples to Orange comparison so when we're talking about um what we are talking about tonight is highly regulated supervised all of the examples given previously by my colleagues have been UND unsupervised by felons um in places that are not in again in medical facilities or Healing Centers and so it's very important that if we're going to use data that we're mindful about the comparisons that we're making I can honor and and obviously um

[130:03] am concerned about any deaths of anyone and children in in particular um but um again the cases and incidences that you've brought up um do not align with the regulations that are being proposed and so therefore I am supportive of the staff recommendations that that are being proposed right now um and uh again as somebody who has been in the education Pro profession since 1995 I too care about children um and I want them to have parents and caregivers who are um who are not having to deal with anxiety and PTSD and all of the other medically medical evidence that has been provided um as well as the traditional ecological knowledge again we recently celebrated indigenous people's day and love to talk about our indigenous work um and this is an opportunity for us again uh to model that we are willing to not only acknowledge the um the uh Power

[131:04] and wisdom of of our indigenous and tribal um leaders but also um that um again many of the um medical um prescriptions that we have that are administered in our hospitals uh and in our medical centers um are derivatives of natural medicine so I again want to honor and remember and remind us all um of actually rockefeller's efforts to destroy uh the natural medicine industry um and thus proliferate uh chemical uh and the pharmaceutical drug industry so um I'm absolutely very supportive of this work I am hopeful that and again um although I I appreciate the um go slow to go far this we're not the first um and the other piece is um why would we be delaying and prohibiting access to something that is um medically proven to

[132:00] be um effective in treating mental health which we have all um mentioned in one way or another the lack of medical health services and again this is a evidence-based and um State mandated requirement now and so I am fully supportive of making sure that we are um you know high on enforcement and if anything the concerns around anybody 21 and younger I am actually interested in what we are going to do on the non-authorized right the Homegrown you know and and that aspect is something that I would be willing to have a conversation around um related to the comments provided earlier by my colleagues but as it relates to the um the structure format um that is very that is in no way similar to what is what has been shared thus far related to um those under underneath the age of 21 um at this time let me see if there's anything else no thank you so

[133:02] much okay thanks Taisha if we can get through our current council member so I what I would just ask is the my remaining colleagues to maybe just really briefly address whether you would like to see setbacks and if so from what facilities um and so look to remaining colleagues so we can get to the will councel saw Lauren sure um thank you I really appreciated our planning board's thoughtful discussion on this and for me that really swayed um my thinking on this one and so I would like to I would support the um definition as has been brought forward by staff thank you Steph can you clarify what your recommendation is uh the recommendation is the um planning board recommendation so allowing the addiction recovery facility and natural medicine facilities to have overnight stays uh as well as waving the

[134:02] the distance requirement okay thanks for that yeah the ordinance reflects the waiver of the thousand foot distance Terry you wanted to finish your previous thought real quick I also um thought that Tina had a good thought when it came to um the shelters did but I'm I can't remember or perhaps I misunderstood what what did we decide on that can we ask for that as well it's possible but it would take a fair amount of work on staff's part okay yeah I'd like to go with staff's recommendation I think um just a couple words um this is an evidence-based therapy that is shown to have transformational health benefits in a society that has a lot of needs we have a lot of Behavioral Health Health uh traumas and other issues that we need to um work on and this is something that is a medical uh done by medical the it's a

[135:00] medical therapy done by licensed professionals and so I just I don't see the the the comparison that closely with um some of the other recreational um substances what I do see a comparison with is other conversations we've had about trying to reduce business regulations that stand in the way of uh getting things done so I'm suppor of the staff recommendation guess so you want to go ahead Matt and then I'll call myself yeah I appreciate hearing everybody's uh thoughts and comments on this um I think and there are some really good arguments on both sides um I think I think finding I think a middle ground is certainly appropriate I like to sort of find that that split um I'm certain I think I'm going to land at being interested in uh just middle school and high schools but getting rid of cuz I think the having them was too restrictive um but when you open up those child's Care Centers I think there's more than enough space uh for this industry to get going um in our community and we can sort of see how it

[136:00] goes um I think Nicole's right we're not going to see that many um but there's plenty of space for those few to get going um and then we can always loosen the reins as we get going but I think there's a ripe environment if we get rid of the child centers for for this industry to get established and get going and um do the good that it's intended to do I'll uh call on myself and um yeah I mean I I really appreciate that what everybody has been saying tonight I'm going to come in around where Matt is here to say that um I feel like the initial full set of restrictions were too restrictive but um for the border around middle and high schools which are young people who are cognizant of these issues and so there might be some effect on them from having something right next door so I I might actually suggest a a 500 foot um border like we currently have for alcohol from from those schools um so uh but I would keep it to just middle and high schools um so we're a little bit all over the map here I think I've heard from four people who would like no

[137:02] setbacks whatsoever I've heard from um I think three people who would like um either the full setbacks as or previously proposed or adding in additional facilities like um the okay do you want to clarify I think um I'm fine with the 500 but I would do K through 12 and the reason is it's it's not that big of a difference but we have some K through eights and I think it would just be cleaner and I think when I spoke with um Tasha who spoke it was really just the child care center that was the issue not so much the K through2 if I can respond there with a um if it were middle and high school it would also include K through 8 schools it would but it might be more confusing but can I turn turn to staff like if we if we did middle and high school would it be clear that that included schools that had a middle school component I think we would just have to update the definition to refer to

[138:01] whatever you want the distance from so that could be done okay okay so there so I've got continuing a couple people who wanted more significant setbacks um maybe three but um you're wanting K through 12 rather than just middle and high school with the 500 so we got a couple things on the table here I I will also just make a comment that it's I find it really interesting that public health is not here at the table with us and um I hope that for a future conversation we're talking to people who work every day uh with children and with um some of their behaviors the risk behaviors and the youth risk assessment tests um I'm struggling a little bit that we are making these decisions and making assumptions about how teens behave and uh hope that public health can at the some point take a stronger role in the state um license all right so we Mark you want to throw quick additional thought yeah just

[139:01] in the in the spirit of compromise uh if we did the K 12 at 500 feet uh I could sign on to that we got some willingness to consider that here Lauren um I was just wondering Carl would that change the map that we have of the schools if we go K through 12 or is that the map that you're showing comprehensive of that in the 500t distance these Maps show Child Care Facilities so obviously if it was just K through 12 some of those would drop off obviously there's a lot of child care facilities um on the map if you zoom in you can actually see the little icons of what's a school or what's a child care facility thank you so and Nicole I just um that if we just want to go with middle and high schools I think that that that is um something I can be

[140:00] comfortable with I'm not gonna die on this hill um but one thing I do just want to draw to our attention um within just sort of research on this topic um there there is there is some research emerging of course around um the use of uh of soloc cybin and um treatment and and as there always is at the beginning there's you know it you you will find some people who say yes it helps and some people who say not it's not really that big of a deal but where we have really no research is on the way that policy makers like US influence people's behaviors with the policies that we make and I think that's just a really important point for us to hold and it's um it is a little bit of a subtle one but what we're doing right now is new ground I I think Oregon has you know a little bit of this here but you know we're talking about multiple levels of things that haven't been studied yet how a policy like this is going to influence

[141:00] youth Behavior how it's going to change based on where um where the treatment centers are and things like that and I just it's so important for us to think about where there is no research on how policy influences people's behaviors um just to kind of keep keep that in mind I think we can all have our own ideas about what may happen happen but really there is very little out there to guide us okay point taken so I wonder if we obviously we don't have full consensus here I wonder if somebody might put a motion on the table and we could start U you know voting on things we people could make an amendment to the motion if they wanted Tina um I'd like to move that we um amend the ordinance to um do a 500 setback from K through 12 schools and that we study a setback from shelters and addiction recovery I think you're going to want to move this I have to move the whole thing and then amend

[142:00] oh someone else has to move it because then I can't vote against go ahead Lauren I'll take you up on that I move that we adopt emergency measure ordinance 8665 amending Title 9 land use code brc1 1981 to implement Senate Bill 2329 90 and locally perit natural medicine businesses defined in the state bill as natural medicine Healing Centers cultivation production and testing facilities and setting forth related details do we have a second a second yeah okay TAA got in there for the second okay and just to be clear this is with the staff recommendation with um no setbacks from educational facilities and overnight and also includes the overnight component okay so we got a motion on a second and a second on

[143:00] that then can I offer an amendment oh you could okay great I'd like to amend ordinance 8665 to remove the language in the sentence that says um without a setback from the different School types and just limit the school type or to remove Early Childhood or child care centers and then to change the setback to 500 ft so that would have the effect of K through 12 schools at 500 feet okay um yes Hela just to clarify I think the amendment you want to do is to delete out of the second sentence the reference to Middle junior or High School correct and I was throwing in elementary although I think it's on the table yes and and this would change the motion is a little bit confusing because the first motion was a

[144:01] motion to adopt but if you end up amending the ordinance then it would have to go to third reading and it would be a motion to amend on second reading right okay but we thanks for that clarification H but but we've got it to where Tina asked for it about the including K through 12 schools but not child care facilities and 500 ft CL clarify question uh so Hela did I hear you correctly that making any change to the proposed motion nullifies our ability to pass anything on emergency tonight yeah we have to um we have to publish the ordinance how it's adopted in fin form for 10 days so if we make an amendment it would be an amendment on second reading and then we would bring it back I think on January 9th for a third reading and we would

[145:01] again propose to propose to adopt it on emergency but it might be good for you all to check in if you have the votes to adopt it on emergency otherwise we could bring it back as a regular ordinance then thank you okay so we get um so we have an amendment as described so then what we we will do is vote on the amendment and then depending on how that vot go goes we'll vote on the original motion either as the original or as amended depending on the success of the amendment vote I don't have a second what's oh you haven't thank you for pointing that out do we have a second marks I got a second did you have a clarifying thing Nicole okay so we'll do um um a vote on Tina's Amendment and I believe this would be a show of hands for an amendment okay so all in favor of Tina's amendment I got five so that amendment is successful so then we can go to the main motion did you want to say well I was gon to ask if I can make an amendment oh yeah

[146:01] absolutely if you want to make I was wondering if we could take out the elementary and just have because you you two had talked about middle school and high school um and so I was wondering if we could consider that as an option just open up slightly more spaces sure so you want to move that we us help us out here that that we remove from Tina's Amendment Elementary K K through five remind me did you vote on Tina's Amendment yet we did it was successful on a five to four vote okay then you would move to amend the motion um to relist elementary schools oh to relist okay so I said it wrong okay so do you want to state that then Nicole yes yeah so then I would move to relist um elementary

[147:01] schools do we have a second second com yeah I'm I'm a little unclear you said relist elementary schools what what's the impact of your proposal Yeah so basically um what I was trying to get to was what um Matt and Ain had initially suggested as a compromised place where it wasn't all schools but rather middle and high schools just middle and high school so there would be a 500 setback from middle and high schools um would would be the function of this I think um to you know the same point about the the daycare centers and and others that um some kids are going to be too young to sort of process or notice okay thank you okay so Nicole's uh motion would remove setbacks from elementary schools okay so and it had a second from Ryan so all in favor of that Amendment raise your hand I got six for

[148:01] that okay so that motion is successful that Amendment motion does anybody else want to make a different Amendment on that we haven't considered yet before we go to the vote on the main motion I feel like this is just like a bill song from Schoolhouse Rock of all the Amendments you any remember that one I do will will the bill will become a law we'll find out okay seeing none then uh we're going to go for a vote on the main motion do we need to restated it now since it's got an amendment there's so many if if I may propose to read the language that I propose it it'll include a little bit more of a change just to make it match with the state law and under that the second sentence would read in the city of Boulder a building where natural medicine services are provided may be located at within 500 ft of a Child Care Center preschool elementary school or a residential child facility this is a variation from the distance restrictions

[149:00] established in CRS 44-50 d302 1 D1 the distance shall be computed as established in CRS 44-50 d302 1 D2 would somebody like to move hel's language I move H's language second okay so but help me out here because we were coming back to an original main motion but now we just had a a new motion so do we have to withdraw the initial Motion in order to consider the exact Lang I think you could just amend it move to amend it that the second sentence reads so move to amend the main motion MH so I would like to move to amend my motion to include what hel just read as the second sentence very good okay so second Chris

[150:00] I'm gonna I'm gonna propose an alternate course of action tonight yes we're getting a little tangled up here we are and um the state's not likely to gonna start issuing licenses on January 1 and so we could go to a third reading and so we could use a KN of five to get council's direction to have the ordinance exactly how you want it and then we can take our time and prepare it using that direction rather than amending amendments tonight and trying to get it all right here on the Fly and I'm just really worried that something's going to get mixed and messed up and so I would propose that we do a knot of five to get council's direction to get the ordinance exactly how you all would like it to be and then we can come back on a third reading early next year uh I love the way you're thinking Chris um so would we give you a notify but would we continue though the hearing tonight or would we just there there would you could continue it and we could come back with a written Amendment but at that point in time we would still have to go to a

[151:01] third reading so it would it would add a couple more meetings essentially if we draft the language tonight okay so in other so in other words we will take no formal action tonight but we will give you a KN of five to bring back a revised ordinance as the majority of council requested yes love it okay yeah Lauren could that revised ordinance be on consent I'm thinking um I think in the past if the if the public hearing has been continued it's rescheduled on public hearing not on consent but there is not a public hearing yeah I guess okay it feels like there's two different possibilities for us to go forward we could well there's more than that but the ones that I'm hearing are continuing this portion of this

[152:02] meeting but I feel like Chris was potentially suggesting something else which was not continuing it but bringing it back and so that's what I was wondering with the bringing it back if it could be brought back just on consent and I think we often bring those back under consent once we've attain the the will of councel yes so that that would be my advice tonight okay great so then I guess what I would ask would then be a not of five to direct City staff to craft an updated ordinance based on the what the majority of council asked for a few minutes ago um is that good enough or do I need to restate it yeah okay yeah good point but let me ask that question I I just want to make sure that staff understand understands the direction of Council in terms of what exactly the ordinance should look like and so I think it's worth spending some time to make sure that's I'll restate that but first do you want to withdraw your motion Lauren yes I would

[153:00] like to withdraw my motion okay that having been done then what we'd look for is a KN of five to bring back a revised ordinance that would um impose a 500 foot boundary only from middle and high school educational facilities clear enough that sounds very clear okay can I get a show of hands to see if there's an not of five for this I got I got nine on that okay that was a little messy but thanks everybody for getting through the discussion um I feel like we we got to a will of counsel so that's good all right Carl and uh Team thanks for all your work on this we'll look forward to seeing that revised ordinance all right we got one more formal agenda item left and I'll just note we're a little bit behind schedule but this is a very important item so we want to give it its full measure but also keep in mind that we are a little behind

[154:06] schedule so Elisha if we can go to that um item 6A please all right so thank you and our next and final item for tonight is item 6A from Matters from the city manager and it is is the climate Action Plan update thank you so much uh mayor and members of council uh the next item is one of those Council priorities you snuck in there at the last minute uh Council priority number 11 um and thankfully we have an amazing staff that's getting organized here that really is being thoughtful about what we're doing with all things climate and so as we talk about an update to The Climate action plan I will pass it over to our climate initiatives director Jonathan Cohen right there there we go there we go thank you Nua um good evening well our mayor disappeared uh

[155:00] good evening uh Mr Mayor members of council Jonathan Cohen with climate initiatives as we get settled up here I'm G to just provide some opening remarks it's been an interesting evening so um it's not lost on me that this is the last Council presentation of 2024 which also means that we stand between you and your recess so um uh let me introduce uh some of the team who you're going to be hearing from tonight I think many of you know yel gishan uh with the climate initiatives Department I also want to introduce uh Kate galbo who's our senior data analyst and I will just say uh tonight is Kate's first time in front of city council so please be nice we really really like her um also joining tonight uh you can see uh we have Carolyn Elam and Brett Karen from the Department joining tonight too and also online virtually we have a huge number of folks uh from multiple departments that are ready to jump in uh if we need a phone a friend uh moment and that's really because I think you've heard me say to council

[156:00] before climate action is not the sole responsibility of one department and I just really want to appreciate and acknowledge the amazing work that's going on across all of the Departments and we're really seeing um climate Champions really emerge and each department really becoming um experts in climate in their own rights so I really want to acknowledge the hard work that's been going on you're going to hear more about that in the coming months but I would just really want to appreciate that and then to the community members that are watching tonight um we are here in fact to talk about the next generation of our climate action plan and the we is us the climate uh or excuse me the community the Boulder Community we would not be here if not for the commitment of our uh residents our businesses um our city leadership and of course our elected officials past and current so really want appreciate where we are today and this is really an important Milestone I think for our department and for our community um so let me just uh if you are already I'm going to jump in um as a quick reminder

[157:02] and as neria pointed out this was one of the priorities that Council identified in your retreat earlier this year as luck would have it our department was already in the process of working on a refresh of the climate action plan which was last updated in 2021 so it's very timely and I think a really important piece that then will inform a lot of the other processes that are underway particularly the the Boulder Valley comp plan and and other processes in terms of updates to Major um strategic plans that are that are um in existence within the city organization um so tonight we're really here to talk about uh what this update is what it isn't and to highlight some of the areas of emphasis for the update uh because this is a touch point with Council we do have some highle questions that we'll come back to near the end of the president presentation to get some feedback and guidance from Council so let's go ahead and go to the next slide I I won't take Council on a detailed journey of our updates uh to the cap but hit some of the learnings

[158:01] since the original cap was updated or adopted in 2006 and yes some of us were here in 2006 for that original adoption um first was the real importance of shifting from City Centric action to addressing systemic change in other in other words what we do here in Boulder does matter but climate change of course is a planet-wide challenge and we know we have years not decades so our approach needs to acknowledge uh both individual and Collective action but also we need to focus on changing systems and yle is going to talk a lot about what that looks like in the update um here shortly over time we've also continue to update our science-based emission reduction targets to match what we describe as the speed and scale of what's needed and integrate equity and resilience and cl climate action in addition to focusing on reducing emissions and and like I mentioned the last update as you see on the right side of the screen uh was to our Targets in 2021 um so we can go to the next slide

[159:02] so the intention um is to really think about a refined approach to our climate action work here locally and so our plan is of course um to make the cap an accessible summary of our goals our targets our ongoing strategies and the pathways to achieve our climate uh objectives it's also intended to more directly integrate climate resilience and Equity outcomes and really refresh some of our existing targets and priority work plan items I want to stress this is not uh a complete rewrite of our strategies I think there's been some confusion um in the community that we're kind of blowing it up and starting from scratch and that's not what we are doing we've been at this a long time as a community and we have a good sense of the areas that are effective so this update is intended to not replace but really build on what's been effective in the past I also want to make clear this is not a departure from a focus on emission reductions I think there's been some rumor that somehow we're really

[160:00] shifting directions and that's not the case over the past year we have really spent a lot of time expanding on the way we measure impact to not only include our quantitative progress in terms of emissions but also start to look at the qualitative benefits of local climate action so our impact report that we launched last year was a way to really bring in some of those value-based impacts So the plan will absolutely continue to focus on reducing CommunityWide emissions and the overarching target of climate or carbon neutrality continues to be driven by what science says is necessary so next slide okay so as much as I would love to spend all of this evening talking about progress and Emissions we're not going to do that we're not going to Deep dive on emissions but I have to just take a moment to celebrate the success and the progress that we made as Community we released our most recent greenhouse gas inventory last month uh which shows we are making study progress in reducing emissions since we started conducting

[161:00] emission inventories back in 2008 we do one each year and we release our inventory so we can track that progress in 2023 it's very hard to see on this graph but hopefully you all had a chance to look at the the report in 2023 emissions were 24% below our 2018 Baseline and 41% from our original 2005 B Baseline so what that means is that we're reducing emissions uh roughly 5% annually year-over-year um which of course is steady but below the progress or Pace that's necessary which we have targeted to be around 7% annually that said I I want to I want to acknowledge this is tremendous progress it it really is and our community should be incredibly proud of this um the update to the cap is going to reflect the speed and scale in the urgency of how we make sure we're hitting the pace and the stride that we need and that we're delivering the greatest impact in the least amount of time in terms of the strategies that are identified so I really encourage anyone

[162:02] that's watching at home uh to spend some time with our latest inventory if you haven't seen it it really explains our emissions Trends it starts to forecast where some of our headwinds really lie in other words if you like data um you will love the document it's really fabulous next slide this will be the last one for me so the key updates that we're making um in this update to the plan first the updates going to include a more robust resilience section with a summary of key climate risks and a new overarching goal for resilience we described it as a design principle we really uh feel that we need to elevate resilience and Equity to having specific goals and targets um this does include an added Focus um on water and the connection to water and the connection to food it doesn't mean that we are going to go super deep but we need to draw the those important connections as you heard from one of our speakers earlier this evening second while Equity has been a priority in all of our climate work we're going to be introducing a new Equity goal just as I said to bring it to that elevation of

[163:01] some of our mitigation targets c i is going to talk more about that third the cap update's going to continue to emphasize uh achieving systems based changes in addition to supporting those individual actions my comment from earlier speaks to that fourth Kate is going to talk about this new and what I believe is a really exciting uh way to map across the city organization taking a look at some of those uh priority plans that are already in existence and some of the key strategies and how they connect with the cap and that's really going to help our department align our strategic framework and last thing I want to say um I think Council saw uh with this week's uh hotline exchange with council member shuart um and comments reflected by some of our earlier speakers this update is really going to link our current and future land use and transportation policies um more uh deliberately so with that I want to hand the mic uh over to Kate to take us a little bit level uh to a deeper level and I will join you when we get back to the questions for Council

[164:00] thanks thanks Jonathan and good evening mayor and members of the council um as as mentioned this plan will have an enhanced focus on climate adaptation and resilience which is really in response to the accelerating pace of climate change that we're now seeing today um I'm sorry do you mind introducing yourself for the record oh yep Kate galvo senior sustainability data analyst with climate initiatives um and is also in recognition of the critical role that local governments play in uh prioritizing Community Health well-being and safety so I'm going to walk through what some of these updates will look like and how we're prioritizing adaptation and resilience in this plan one important new feature in this cap will be um a comprehensive summary of localized climate risks both in an effort to educate the community on what we can expect to see but also to set an understanding of what we need to adapt to as a community we now have access to a range of uh data sources and tools that allow us to understand and map

[165:01] local climate risks over the past couple of years City staff have worked with the county and modeling experts to downscale Global Climate models to Boulders local conditions so we now have a better understanding of um historic current and projected frequency of climate related risks this is really important because uh this allows us to have a good understanding of what climate change will look like locally um many cities don't have or have to rely on state or even Global Climate models to to do this work so this allows us to um have more uh locally appropriate climate interventions here's some examples of some of the localized data we've been able to extract from these tools um when you compare the his iic current and projected conditions the changes are pretty striking so some examples days over 95 degrees have doubled and are expected to double Again by 2030 High fire risk days have gone from 16 days

[166:01] per year historically to 116 days currently um and could reach over 200 days which is um almost two-thirds of the Year by 2050 um so this is um this info really underscores the significance of climate change on Community Health and well-being and the importance of managing these impacts locally recognizing that climate resilience extends uh beyond the scope of just one Department this update uh will lay the foundation for really strong collaboration across the city organization on climate resilience um our department has undertaken a collaborative cross- departmental mapping exercise to show showcase the great work that's already being done across the city in this area the graphic on the right side of the screen is an example from Vancouver's climate adaptation strategy that we're using as a model for this exercise to identify existing City action plans that relate to climate resilience and map them to the relevant climate risk that they

[167:02] address uh these next two slides are meant to illustrate our initial efforts at identifying and mapping these plans um we've selected six key climate risk areas to um to structure this exercise so heat Wildfire drought extreme weather flooding and air quality um this is a this is um still work in progress so we're in the process of coordinating across the city to update and refine this list so I won't go into each one but you can kind of get a idea of the scale and breadth of City functions addressing climate resilience from the city's work focused on water with the water efficiency plan and drought plan to urban forestry and Open Space Management this is um a continuation from the previous slide we've also identified several overarching plans that tie in across climate risk like the city's sustainability equity and resilience framework the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan and our local landscape and building codes I do want

[168:01] to emphasize that this cap will not be uh duplicating efforts so the um water focused strategies will still remain in the water efficiency plan or the drought plan but um we're intending for this exercise to enable the cap to serve as a guiding document for the city's climate action objectives um so for example as the utilities department updates their water plan next year they can use the cap as a guide to uh weave climate action into that plan so I'll hand it over to yel to um talk about centering equity in climate action good evening mayor members of council Y El gishan I'm a principal project manager in climate initiatives as Kate mentioned I'm going to um start off talking about the centering of equity in this climate Action Plan update um so this plan does have an even more enhanced Equity Focus um as Jonathan mentioned in 2017 our climate commitment document was really the introduction of the just transition in climate action

[169:00] work and our 2021 update um of the climate action plan staff presented Equity design principles that guided the development of the goals and targets and proposed that these principles continue to guide our climate initiatives strategic planning um and these equity princip principles that were presented in 2021 still ring true today and they're listed on the slide here all interested parties involved from the beginning um the result of programs and policies have equ equitable distribution of benefits and burdens funding allocations correct for historically excluded groups and addressing and reducing burdens imposed on future Generations um in this cap update the central design elements of equity and climate Justice will continue to be brought to the Forefront of the goals targets and strategic planning and we will also be introducing a new overarching climate Equity goal statement and we aim to leverage this cap update to bring attention to the various ways in which we integrate these Equity principles into our work some

[170:02] examples underway um include setting a local justice 40 Target and continuing to use our racial Equity instrument as we unroll new strategies programs and policies so I want to spend a little bit of time um talking about justice 40 because it's something that we have been exploring locally here it's a federal government policy that was initiated it's actually a tool that was initiated by the Biden Administration um with the goal that 40% of funding um goes to in the overall benefits of certain federal climate clean energy affordable and sustainable housing and other Investments flow to historically excluded communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by by pollution and so regardless of what happens federally we'll still be working to implement these sorts of targets and goals locally some of the guiding principles of justice 40 are that it's Justice driven

[171:00] so its resource and focus on historically excluded communities um it's community powerered so creating systems that achieve transformational change from the bottom up and it's accountable change so institutionalizing practices and transparency in government um so I wanted to share a little bit more about how locally we're looking at that um as I mentioned we are exploring developing we're in the process of creating a formal Target for the percentage of climate funds that go towards historically excluded community members um we do believe a good portion of our funds are already directed in this way but creating a formal Target and tracking system will align with the account accountability and transparency principles in government um we've also been partnering a lot with Boulder County on studies um looking at justice 40 so we worked with a team of Consultants to explore best practices and recommendations for implementing this goal locally and from

[172:01] this work we are now partnering with the county on developing a local climate Equity Fund that will be countywide and it will be a mechanism to Resource um individuals and communities directly that have been historically excluded from formal climate Solutions and work through Community capacity city building and inclusive climate action so the fund will provide accessible transparent and inclusive funds that are dedicated to nonprofits Community groups organized leaders and neighborhood groups I wanted to just highlight a few of the mapping tools as this is something we'll also be unpacking this year as we look at developing a local Target there's a variety of mapping tools um there's a few at the federal level from the Environmental Protection Agency the climate and economic justice social um screening tools there's tools through the state and we have our City's racial Equity index map as well um and these tools all use various economic socioeconomic and environmental

[173:00] indicators to map in the community um areas that might be historically excluded um I just wanted to call out here that it's it's there's could be some some uncertainty in the soo socioeconomic and environmental data part particularly when we're looking at smaller Geographic areas since the tools are geographically based and so we want to ensure that the data and the inputs track with the local context in Boulder so part of this work item is understanding and developing criteria that defines benefits and burdens in a local Boulder context um and lastly I just wanted to mention that we're also designing and launching tools that align with the city's climate action and community members most impacted from climate risks which is um some of the work that Kate was talking about and that's a priority action in the city strategic plan and we will be continuing engagement I also wanted to call out that Ryan Hansen is here from our um Communications and engagement department and they have been

[174:01] um great Partners on this continued engagement um we'll be continuing to use as I mentioned the racial Equity instrument and also wanted to mention the coordination with the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan and the engagement that's taking place there and the climate and resilience and Equity strategies that will be um proposed through the comp plan update so next I'm going to move to talking about our continuous focus on systems change and I'm GNA take a quick sip of water so this this slide has a lot going on but I'm going to try to direct your attention here um so this is really a refresh of our approach that was outlined in 2021 um and we just wanted to emphasize why this is still really important today so the left side of the slide here shows the evolution of our learning and just really honing in on the idea of how we move from Individual to Collective to systems level change and where we believe cities have a role

[175:00] in this um on that left Circle there um these are areas that we believe the city is really good at we have the opportunity to to um to try things out pilot them scale them up and replicate them um we also have opportunities to innovate at the local level and to test and adapt new strategies and policies and then through partners and Partnerships and collaborations we can move into really moving the needle on systems and those four levers under the systems change column in the middle are the places where we believe those are most effective through policy change through changing markets looking at knowledge and technology and through um the ability to influence culture change the right side of the slide here is a model that we also presented in 2021 that we we're continuing to use which looks at um the Spheres of control influence and interest and this is the concept of how we map our strategies against the places that we feel like we can actually make the most change and so

[176:00] there's places where we might have um there's strategies and systems that we might have a lot of interest in but we might not be able to actually control or influence them and so it helps us where um to understand what where the best focus our resources and just wanted to share this because this is how we've mapped um some of the big moves in your memo and we'll be continuing to do that through this climate Action Plan update so I just wanted to highlight some systems change efforts to date and um the ones I'm talking about are really focused on ones that are controlled through climate initiatives and they're not necessarily the big moves that we see across the city and as Jonathan introduced this this climate action plan and Kate also mentioned this is really an opportunity for us to create a guide and map what's happening across the city but it's not necessarily all things that live in climate initiatives and so these ones happen to be ones that we mostly mostly live in our department but I'll talk more about ones that go across the city as well as we move forward um so electricity grid emissions we've seen

[177:01] huge systems change here and a lot a lot of this was really a result of our 10 years um and a lot of time and energy and resources into trying to municipalization go but it wouldn't have done much for the region and now we have Regional change through excel's um service territory in Colorado that is driving electricity grid emissions um to be much lower across the whole region so that was a huge systems change success some of the work in our high performance buildings as well with um with our codes is really changing our built environment and Boulder has been a leader in that and that's been um we're seeing a lot of collaborations and changes across the region in that as well um the next one is one that's close to my heart I've been working a lot on the heat pump adoption it started as a small um in in that systems change pie chart it was a small um pilot program that we did a number of years ago and fast forward to

[178:01] today we have we're leveraging about a billion dollars um across the Front Range in heat pump adoption through the Dr Cog $200 million $400 million with the CLE clean heat plan there's the state um green bank and the Colorado energy offices as well so there's been huge success there in driving heat pump adoption and building electrification um corporate accountability um some of our work with holding corporations accountable for um some of the oil and gas lawsuits that we've been involved in work in the building materials um sphere some of our deconstruction ordinances showing really high diversion rates and a lot of success in changing those systems and how we deconstruct buildings and look at building waste and a lot of the Plastics and packaging work where um the financial burden of recovering and recycling packaging material onto producers and policy at the state level there that we've been involved in and so moving forward um these are

[179:00] some highlights to show the theme of this climate action plan really connecting climate strategies across the city and understanding that mitigation efforts must continue but the city must also prioritize resources towards resilience so this cap update will include new big moves to outline the next phase of City climate AC and the mitigation efforts will be prioritized based on their resilience and Equity benefits um also as Jonathan mentioned calling special attention to the impact in association be between climate and water and we'll be mapping that in this climate action plan and a theme of this conversation tonight and On The Hotline was the connection of land use Transit planning and compact development and there's a lot more data and research available now and the timing with the update to the Boulder Valley comp plan is really where many of these policies and strategies live so just really important to highlight there in the connection to the work that's happening across the city um also wanted to emphasize a focus on science literacy data and Reporting just having more of

[180:01] an emphasis on research and evaluation and emphasizing Our intention to more um regularly align with emerging science and lastly just prioritizing big moves that will be core to the next phase of this um City climate action plan things such as energy equity and grid resilience clean Mobility reducing consumption embodied carbon in the environment and a huge body of work out of our nature-based Solutions team on resilient landscape and urban Cooling and more um and so next I'm just going to move a little bit quickly I know we're um probably close to our time here but um talking about our goals um so this is um where we focused on our mitigation goal and the overarching goal of um staving off climate change taking action to mitigate our missions consistent with science-based evidence and targets and when we set these Targets in 2021 it was based on the science that we had at the time and these continue to be where we

[181:01] are today um and so I want to move to the proposed resilience and climate Equity goals um we are um hoping to amend our resolution to add proposed goals that um that speak to resilience and climate equity and while these are um more qualitative statements about taking action and preparing and responding to the changes that are here and will be coming with climate um and also looking at equity and making sure that we're um considering the impact that on our community's most vulnerable members and distributing benefits and burdens um equally um we recognize that from these we can set more um quantitative targets such as the justice 40 goal and we'll be seeing some of those in our climate action Plan update as well um next steps I think handing it back to you Jonathan yeah all right big breath we're almost there promise um this is a lot of

[182:01] information uh towards Council so I appreciate your attentiveness um I'm just going to walk you through the next steps very very quickly and then I'd like to invite eron vinoa from the environment Advisory Board to join me at the podium to summarize some of the board's feedback so just walking through where we plan to go from tonight we want to hear some of council's feedback in terms of are are we on track in terms of what you were hoping to see with this next update are there comments questions that you have specifically um we intend to come back uh in the spring if not earlier with amended resolution um I know that there is a desire I hear the desire to use resolutions more sparingly I just know that the the goals and targets that were established by the previous Council were done by resolution so it seemed logical to make those amendments there and bring that back um and then in late spring we would launch the updated climate action plan and and I want to make sure that you all hear that that doesn't end a progress of engaging with our community in fact

[183:01] starts uh and renews an engagement opportunity to make sure our community understands what's in it how do they connect with the climate action plan how do they see the actions within it as something that is accessible and that they can um really move out on in their own way so those are our next steps and before we get back to the question questions I will invite eron to the podium okay good evening mayor members of council I promise I'll be quick um I'm ernan vua I've been a member of the environmental Advisory Board since 2021 uh first I would like to thank Jonathan and his department for their hard work on this plan we've been working being you know seeing their work throughout um the past few months um and it's been exceptional climate initiatives involve numerous components different players so their ability to

[184:00] distill all of that into like a comprehensive cohesive plan is is really remarkable um okay so now uh back to the board's uh feedback um overall the board was supportive and complimentary of the framework and the proposed update um board members suggested the inclusion of a graphic that shows the interface or hierarchy of this plan with respect to the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan the city strategic plan the sustainability equity and resilience framework like you know we have a lot of plans and as Jonathan said earlier climate action is not the responsibility of one department so showing where this plan fits within all of that and how interact with other plans and priorities I think is important uh not only for the city for City staff but also for the public um and then the next item was density and land use um board members

[185:03] asked if recommendations related to The Climate impacts of land use and density will be included in the plan uh one board member suggested incorporating the most recent land use information from the International Panel on climate change ipcc for reference uh while there were no specific recommendations the board discussed the city's ability to influence the culture and Norms around density in favor of lessening climate impacts uh there was another opinion where uh it was suggested that we should first study what the ipcc recommendations mean specifically for Boulder uh including evaluating how much of this data can be extrapolated to our community this will particularly focus on the Imp applications for example for extra boundary Transportation which is a big source of emissions and which could differ significantly for from Global or national context so basically take those recommendations study them and see how

[186:00] we can apply that data to our city and then what local recommendations we can make uh the board also supports strategies to continue holding large corporations accountable for their role in climate change such as our uh curring climate lawsuit against Exxon Mobile Exon Mobile and suncore uh at the same time the board wants to ensure that while we're driving emissions reductions locally we do continue to support our local businesses um our local business community Through targeted incentives and business related strategies and if I remember correctly it was mentioned in the context of the relationship between local businesses sales tax and our city budget like we don't want to make their lives harder um and finally in addition to the identified climate risk the board was interested including economic and Financial Risk assessments as a climate related risk as well so for example we discuss Insurance risk for individuals who um who live in uh near Wildfire

[187:00] areas and identifying actions for people to take and be prepared and we also talk about uh Equity cons considerations in this area and how some may not be able to afford insurance uh and other Financial impacts of this uh increase climate disasters yeah that's it thank you eron thanks so much for joining us tonight and sharing that feedback and really appreciate your service and everything the environmental Advisory Board does so very much thanks so much for joining us thank you thank you appreciate it okay so we are gonna turn next to questions for Council and just to wrap the piece with the EAB I just really wanted to Echo the comment of the mayor that we really appreciated the the feedback from the board and feel really confident that we can integrate much of what they said into this next update so um with that we'll turn it back to you mayor for the questions for Council thank you great thanks Jonathan thanks everybody for the Fantastic presentation all the work you're doing on the project

[188:00] so I'll look to council members uh the first question for us is if whether we have questions so let's start with any clarifying questions we have for City staff Tina yes is there um and thank you for all the information it was great um one of the questions have is how we integrate human behavior um and just what people are accustomed doing and how we look at their behavior and how that behavior can be changed or what we've seen that we were hopeful for but Behavior wasn't changed um how is that integrated in this I'll take a first pass of that and um you know I think that's as long as I've been doing this work that's been one of the hardest things um um is really looking at Behavior change and how to impact Behavior change and I think where we are with it today is that by changing the systems and making the choices that we're driving people towards kind of the most logical ones or

[189:01] the easiest ones or the most accessible ones it's not you know you can kind of take the pressure off of having to change Behavior not that behavior doesn't impact it but if you make things accessible and you have good Transportation opportunities and Transit opportunities and um networks of contractors that are installing the right equipment and not you know not sending people towards gas furnaces for Replacements when their systems are at the end of life um The Hope is that by changing the larger systems that you're taking the pressure off of that and again it doesn't mean that it's it's the bullet you know the Silver Bullet for it but I think that's um a strategy we're employing and I was going to say like is is there a way to flag efforts or initiatives that you think human behavior might be a problem so it's going to be less likely to succeed and we should look at a different priority or initiative um Jonathan Cohen again I promise I will not jump up here and try to um answer every question um it's a really excellent question and I wanted to just draw your attention to a comment

[190:00] I made earlier about impact one of the ways we have thought much differently over the past couple of years about what are the challenges we face with changing behavior is that we start with something that really doesn't motivate we talk about metric tons of carbon so what we have really been shifting to is value-based conversations about health safety um joy happiness the things that motivate people and what we realize is that in order to get uh um our community members to change a behavior there is definitely a way to do that that really connects into those values and so I don't know that I could answer your question directly to say what are the barriers I think we are working around that um in ways that we are seeing much uh much more aggressive uptake of the types of services and programs that we offer by approaching it from that values perspective and what I said earlier and I think that what yel did an excellent job explaining is we are not abandoning that that individual Behavior change but we're trying to show how individual

[191:00] actions work most effectively when done in a collective way and then that Collective action then can change the big systems I know that seems a little bit planner esque and that's really um challenging for me to even think that way but I I just I think the behavior change is such a critical piece of this and then the last comment I would make is understanding the the impact of climate on social health issues so drawing a much deeper connection uh to understanding how our mental health issues are connected to climate and we talk about that in a very connected way so when you saw that mapping exercise there was a lot of connectedness into some of us our social services as well so thanks Mark thank you this was a a really interesting presentation um one I actually have two questions um one is that the plan notes favorably the EAB comment to quote consider the ability City's ability to influence the culture Norms around density in favor of

[192:02] lessening climate impacts what exactly does that mean well I guess I'm asking you because you quoted it with approval in your memo sure okay well what council member W um what what we quoted we just referenced the feedback that we heard from the board okay and so that's why I was suggesting that it might be more appropriate to have Anon try to describe the conversation that the board had and what they meant by that I think I could tell you what I think they mean by that but I would much prefer to have himan come on down all right this is [Music] item okay the city's ability to

[193:01] influence the culture and Norms around density in favor of listening climate impacts so this was part of the discussion that was brought for by um by a member that mentioned the ipcc okay the ipcc does have recommendations about Urban density transportation and its relationship to climate impacts now these are Global Trends it's as a global report um so what was discuss of that is what does that mean for our city I mean density is a controversial Topic in the city I think we can all recognize that so if we start talking about land use and the ipcc recommendations in the plan what does that mean for uh the land use recommendations for our city so that's kind of what we were getting at and the other part of the discussion was okay if we start looking

[194:00] at this report how does that extrapolate to our community what does urban density mean for Boulders like does it mean um what like basically we don't know like how do we extrapolate this data and fit it to our local um to data that was part of the discussion I'm I'm not quoting anything from sta that was just kind of like what we were discussing and the ideas that we were throwing at it okay does that make sense yes yes it does H my other question is um and this this will be back to Jonathan and and Company um how will the climate action plan be integrated with the city's long-term Financial strategy I mean it can't simply be a list of of things we want to do if we don't have the money to do them so yeah thanks uh council member walk is I understand your question and and I appreciated that last little bit uh in

[195:01] terms of um funding for specific actions um I would draw your memory back to when we were before Council talking about the climate action plan tax um understanding what kind of revenues and sources of revenue were necessary to achieve the types of emission reductions that we Endeavor to achieve one of the things that we spend a lot of time as a team um doing and as a city doing is looking at supplementary opportunities for funding so it doesn't mean that we have to look at City funds to accomplish what we're um seeking to achieve great example of that is um the EPA grant that that y was referencing how do we leverage those dollars to achieve what we want how do we uh leverage private sector investment to achieve what we want and so we as team and we as a an organization try to leverage our expertise our thought leadership and the funds that we do have and we've been effective at that um and I will also add that across the organization um so your your comment

[196:02] about um our long-term budgeting and financial strategy is as all departments are aligning around um and understanding how they contribute to achieving those goals there are really complementary and crosscutting objectives that we see from all departments that support normally we just think about it as one Department here's your budget and here's how we're trying to achieve those goals but it really is the the objective of the entire organization we're seeing that play out sure Jonathan um I just wanted to touch on since we're in the position to try to not be using or you leverage outside funds to really achieve our goals given that we're walking into a very difficult administrative environment for the next four years certainly as it pertains to climate action um one can assume that those those funds are going to vanish like a fart in the wind so how are we going to how are we going to reach our goals knowing that that we're going to be

[197:00] subst substantially Limited in those external resources to still then be able to fill and meet our goals how are we going to do that well um thanks for that Council moment Benjamin you you know I'm an optimist and so I maybe I don't show that kind of pessimistic Outlook but I I think it'sa an objective one we've actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about what kind of funds are available today what would possibly be going away with the change in the administration the the way we think about accessing those funds is perhaps not directly through things that are labeled as climate but certainly things that are related to broader resilience strategies hardening of systems uh reliability um so there are funds that we know are going to continue through federal agencies that we can access and use them to support our our overall climate and resilience resilience objectives so I am I am not of course I am concerned um but I also believe that we can find ways to to access funds um we've been effective at it we'll continue to be effective at it I I'll

[198:01] just add too uh if I will onto what Jonathan was saying is that we can also expect that there will be private funds right and if as we saw in the in previous administrations uh where federal funds were per perhaps reduced for these Endeavors um there were other uh private philanthropic organizations who stepped up uh Bloomberg philanthropies comes to mind where they spent a lot of money uh investing in particular in the climate space uh and so we will be thinking about those strategies as well as we move forward and so there will be other opportunities uh I will only say that you you guys are true optimists um because I share the concern of my colleague uh council member Benjamin on this on this subject and um by all means uh join the financial strategies uh meeting tomorrow and and listen to the tale of Woe um because that's all we do at the moment is is cry

[199:00] so um join in okay okay thanks uh tasa and then I'll call myself yes thank you so much this is really exciting um and one of the reason reasons I ran for office here in our city um I did have a question just two questions one around um oh God I hate when I can't read my handwriting what is the and I just wrote it down oh right um it it was about the research Cannon so um although I appreciate the ipcc um I want to honor that they are not the only body they are not the only most print it is very dangerous for us to only identify one group and call them um you know the ones that are in charge of of and and taking direction from only them so one question I had is do we have access to the research base Beyond um the I just that is informing the plan

[200:01] and informing the work um you know again specific to the IP again very appreciative of the working groups and the reports um but there has been criticism and actual research conducted about the lack of indigenous people in positions of leadership to guide and form that there is a lack of recognition of indigenous people's rights there is a lack of or or there is a pattern of portraying indigenous peoples as vulnerable and there are recommendations to create a strength-based approach that is more ethical and Equitable uh in its application of indigenous people's knowledge systems which are also not included sufficiently um in the in the efforts and also of course involving indigenous peoples in the scope in process so um again I'm very interested and again it's not a question that I want responded right now but I think it is very important that we um have a collective understanding of the knowledge base that we're using um and

[201:00] as you can imagine I am especially interested in um researchers that have historically been denied the opportunities and though and unfortunately tend to be those who are most disproportionately impacted by the negative impacts of policy that have been set without them so um yeah so my question is about the research base and getting access to just the cannon that we're using I heard sure good evening council members this is I'm Brett Karen with the climate initiatives Department we actually work with a broad range of different researchers across both our community and the country we're working closely right now and actually helping to to establish the first uh Center for nature-based Solutions in the country at CU and so we've been working closely with the environmental biology programs there and many others so I really appreciate this question because there

[202:00] are certainly limits to the kinds of views that certain scientific bodies have and I also appreciate this issue about who gets to participate in the research the city of Boulders and Lead right yes the city not participate in a focus group or go ahead yes indeed so just to note that the city of Boulder is taking a leading role in a new initiative in the coming year in which communities across the world are actually working on developing biodiversity strategies and one of the organizations that we have proposed to be involved in that process is the First Nations development Institute for the very reason that you are calling out quite appropriately which is that we need all voices and all forms of knowledge to be in that conversation so very much appreciate the question and it's something that we have very much top of Mind in the work we're doing awesome um thank you so much for that Brett and I look forward to our discussion around biodiversity um although I did I am asking though for what is the research

[203:02] that informed the plan that we are currently considering um and just you know again if we're referencing right um just a bibliography or just something that lets us know um kind of what is anchoring um the the work that we're currently doing and I especially appreciate the acknowledgement of the gaps in our research and the gaps in who gets to participate and looking forward to um working with all of you to to write that wrong so thank you uh my second was around the 15-minute neighborhood and um just you know I moved here from Washington DC I've lived in big cities I've I've lived in 15minute neighborhoods most of my life and I chose to leave them uh because there were issues with popul with pollution and um you know insufficient climate needs Etc Workforce payment affordability um and so again I'm eager to work with you all to reimagine what a 15-minute neighborhood would look like my question is however um one of my

[204:00] concerns or struggles with the 15-minute neighborhood is it it um gives the impression that all of our needs are addressed within a 15minute footprint and um and so my question is how are we monitoring both our city of Boulder consumption um at the um that we're consuming in the city limits right versus um consumption that we are doing as a city outside of Boulder City Limits and so for example I think of fracking um or off-site um energy generation of any kind um or other places where there are potential sacrifice zones um how are we kind of balancing both uh balanc and tracking um both both of those I I I I got a hint because you mentioned local Global uh but I was just curious if you can can just speak on how you all are are navigating and balancing um those two critical components because again

[205:00] all of our needs are not met within a 15minute footprint thank you yeah I can um address that question so um last year in 2023 we um we released a consumption based emissions inventory which um estimates our emissions associated with the goods and services that we consume in Boulder but it accounts for the missions that occur outside of our boundaries so um while our emissions inventory that we conduct on an annual basis that we released a report for um last month that includes just what's within our own City boundaries that consumption based emissions inventory looks outside our boundaries so um we have not yet set a target for consumption-based emissions uh like we do have for um for Missions within our own boundaries but uh we're going to continue to um you know assess that on an ongoing basis and currently there are thank you so much and currently there are no um water or energy specific um

[206:03] goals outside we only have a mission based goals is that correct we me we do have we do have goals related to R I'm sorry City level City level right I I know that I've talked with Jan and I know he showed me all this stuff and there's tons of goals right but at the city level we only have kind of Prim primarily emission space goals so I just wanted to clarify that that was still the case thank you awesome thank you thanks TAA I got uh one question for youall which is um just a question about how um our trajectory towards achieving our goals will be a part of the climate Action Plan update right because we have our goals we've made incredible progress so congratulations to the whole Community for that and to The Climate initiatives Department in particular um but how will we kind of lay out the road map for how we plan to accomplish the full goals as part of this climate Action Plan update um yeah so I can address that question as well so we are in the

[207:01] process of conducting a greenhouse gas forecasting analysis to chart that path towards meeting our emissions reduction targets um and a summary of that will be included in the plan so that'll take into account our expected future growth based on uh local and Regional planning and also the changes needed uh to meet those emissions reduction targets that's great to hear and then will we also be taking into account as we look at that the state's action because they have some very specific sets of actions to achieve the their goals and so is that going to be wrapped into that whole process yeah so uh targets associated with the state decarbonization road map will be incorporated into that fantastic that's great to hear that's all I had Matt um so I had a question about the um proposed resilience and Equity goals in in particular the climate resilience goal and um I know Jonathan said they're more qualitative than quantitative but I'm wondering why aren't they quantitative

[208:02] and how do we get there because I mean first ask a question I maybe I'll follow up but I'm just curious why we're not leaning into more quantitative goals that we can measure kpis and stuff like that we can measure our success on yeah that's a great question um you know the way we look at it is in the hierarchy of goals and targets and indicators is that the goal statements are tend to be more qualitative and that from those we can build specific targets so you will see targets that are quantitative in the climate action plan having to do with resilience things like tree canopy and how we're measuring heat Islands um in the equity goal we talked about having a justice 40 Target and as we start to unpack some of the benefits from um our Equity programs we'll have some more quanti ative targets there as well that we can track and measure um just wanting to like emphasize that tracking and measuring is a huge important hugely important part of this but the goal statements are meant to be um sort of the overarching qualitative

[209:00] um Concepts and vision and then from those will build the targets that are quantitative okay I appreciate that just taking the opportunity to add one more piece to this because I I can't miss the opportunity to applaud um the other departments in the organization resilience is another location or another space where a lot of the existing resilience goals do reside with other departments so coming forward with something as y all said that is more qualitative at the high level and then we will embed some of those more Milestone numeric targets as it as it as it tracks with those various plans and those um specific plans in those is in those other areas sorry that was a little bit clunky but oh yeah I appreciate my other question had to do with um there were General uh there were I at the slide uh where were all the bubbles of what are exact oh yes so talking about the uh current existing City actions to build resilience and and I love that we've got heat and wildfire and drought um and extreme weather

[210:00] flooding air quality um and I and I I'm going to steal Taisha Thunder because she brings this up all the time but I'm curious why perhaps Wildlife is not one that's in here and I think of things like the impacts of light pollution on Wildlife delayed hibernation of animal as a result of climate change or just how they move based on higher drought more flood events so I'm just curious where Wildlife fits in on that it is an integral part of our open space and Mountain Parks program of management and so there's a extensive body of work that the ecologists in that group are doing and have been doing for a long time so I think that's very mature the area that we're now starting to work on more is in the urban landscape context and the urban biodiversity context and I think one of the things that you'll see this year which will be really exciting is some citizen science or Community science-based efforts to involve our community in starting to do biological

[211:01] diversity surveys including young people and others so we can start to see that we actually don't have the Baseline data but that's something that we are are working on in fact we're developing Partnerships again with CU through the CU Natural History Museum to develop that Community science effort so you'll see those starting to roll out this spring that's great so I'm just curious what department would that R in since open space is kind of the CER around us who who would sort of have dominion over the wildlife in the urban Corridor it's the really interesting Dynamic of urban nature based Solutions because once you like a department of like ours we start to enter into that space then we're walking on the toes of the parks department and open space and so we work quite closely with all of them and I think one of the exciting elements of this is that we're starting for the first time to see our Urban Landscapes as ecosystems as opposed to trees over here and maybe green infrastructure over there and maybe some pollinator habitat here we're going to start to actually be able to map and characterize our Urban Landscapes and the biodiversity that exists in

[212:01] yeah Lauren thank you um so I'm excited about this cross departmental mapping plan um but I wanted to just check in you talked about it providing guidance for sort of plan and code updates across all departments and I'm wondering how we go if we will have a plan be if this will include guidance for how be how we have interdepartmental coordination Beyond just kind of overarching guidance is that part of what this plan will consider how we integrate and Achieve these it in each department yeah so I was just Pro excuse me I was just processing your question trying to think about the W way answered and and what I think you're

[213:00] asking is how do you operationalize um or institutionalize I think what we're trying to describe so yes there are these points in of intersection where we can say there is a plan that's being updated can we map it can we check um how does it represent uh the the goals and objectives around climate and and what I would say is that we have built a much deeper Foundation within the organization that it it's an ongoing process so we are really trying to think more holistically and that takes some time to build that muscle obviously um but I again just want to so appreciate my colleagues in other departments who have really um integrated climate in their own way um as an example open space has developed their own climate action plan within their own operations and we're seeing parks and we're seeing our facilities and all departments are starting to kind of rise up in that way so we're strengthening that Network and that whole constellation of not just the plans but the work itself and creating opportunities not just for leadership

[214:00] but all staff to participate and play a role in developing Solutions so I would say that it's much deeper than just those frequent or infrequent check-ins on plans and codes but really how we operationalize it across the organization thank you for that somewhat related um I noticed that our little sustainability paragraph in our packet um often is not part of our memo anymore and um while I know that I suggested that if it wasn't going to be done in a uniform way maybe perhaps we shouldn't do it but I think I was hoping that more that it would come more from let's do that in a uniform and robust way rather than let's eliminate it completely is that something we should expect to see come back or what are we thinking on that front right now I and I appreciate that I think we're as we go

[215:01] into a new agenda Management Systems we're thinking about that I we're trying to balance your and frankly our desire to see uh lighter memos um with making sure that the information we have in that memo is truly relevant and so as we think of things like fiscal notes which I know has been an interest uh for many of you and uh how does this relate to many of our values perhaps how does that relate to our strategic plan things like that we want to make sure it is Meaningful and relevant to our work so you'll find some iteration as we figure out how to configure that into our new agenda management system so something will come back in a hopefully more relevant form thank you um and then I don't need an answer for this tonight but as I think about the areas of control that we have the buildings we build are a big part of that the buildings that the city itself builds and so I was wondering um what standards we hold ourself to and

[216:01] how much above and beyond what we require the rest of the community um oh we do get an answer to this tonight yay Carolyn thank you good evening Council I'm carollyn I'm a senior sustainability manager for energy systems and um council member foler thank you so much for asking that question you know as a I I'm so proud of our um facilities team and and the facilities teams across our organization who have been leading the way from you know open space Who Behind the Scenes electrified their buildings and to our our amazing facilities master plan so we continue to strive um to go above and beyond um lead by example you know so our newest fire station um is is really walking the Walk of of here's how you do an amazing high efficiency all electric structure and so I think we you'll consider continue to see the city testing those bounds and leading by example I think as well as we think about how we preserve our structures and

[217:01] and adaptively reuse them I I think as Michelle crane has been up here and talked about you know some of our our buildings that are are the ones that we may be moving out of like how do we Foster um the appropriate and effective re use of those I think is really going to be foundational and the things you're going to see coming in the future um I guess I I was wondering if we might be able to set a standard for ourselves in terms of you know a more uniform Target a living building challenge certification or you know lead Platinum kind of a thing I I'm not sure if we do that ubiquitously across our um projects that we're planning at the moment but it's something I would like to see yeah I know as a um and I won't speak for them directly but I know as a practice they've always designed um to the standard but non gone after the certification just acknowledging that there's there's cost and and resources

[218:00] involved in that but the principle is there um to put put all of those practices into place so you won't necessarily see the you know the lead certifications showing up on our facilities but they could have been based on on the practices we so certainly I I think that's that's something they would certainly Channel and champion thank you for that okay do we have another question okay got another question and then we'll move on thank you um you had mentioned earlier about a role for mental health Jonathan when when you were um up here answering a question I think it might have the first question um in the climate Action Plan update and I was just wondering if you could speak a little bit bit more to that or if anyone could just how what is the role of mental health in this update and how are how are we thinking about that as this moves

[219:04] forward thanks council member I I think uh I think that work is evolving um I don't have a a direct answer for you but we we have come at this with a recognition that um mental Health has to be a factor as we think about um climate and this is one of the things that a lot of the research out there is starting to signal to us so to try to think about actions um without connecting um it just it just it's not going to work and so the way we've been at this for a little while I'm going to invite Brett uh to come up in just a moment talk about some of the work that we're doing with our community youth um so finding those ways to connect into the community not necessarily talking about climate anxiety or climate grief directly but recognizing that it exists and finding those outlets and way to connect our youth and connect our community back in a way that um really helps them protect what they love help to address some of the challenges that we're facing at the local level and of course at the global

[220:01] level so Brett do you want to talk specifically about uh s of our youth programming I think it's a great illustration of trying to answer your question i' I'd start also by saying if you haven't had a chance to check out the cool Boulder work I think it's one of those places that we're really trying to create an Avenue for more and more of our community to enter climate when climate was seen as just about energy systems than it was did you put solar panels on did you buy your electric car you know those are things that are kind of prohibitive from any parts of the community but did you plant a pollinator Garden did you actually create some native seeds that you could plant out those are things that anybody could do and so we've seen a really large upsell of community interest in the climate work in that way but it was a part of that work that actually led to some really exciting engagements with young people and then they started getting inspired about creating conversations themselves and so two years ago we had our first youth climate Summit and now the schools are starting to pass that

[221:00] around and we're having two climate Summits a year at the different high schools and middle schools the next one will be this April at Boulder high so I think there's a broadening conversation that I'm really excited to see more of our youth in we've also been working quite closely with an fascinating organization called classrooms for climate action that's working in the elementary schools and we're seeing fascinating and really fun stuff I attended a pollinator uh fashion show about three weeks ago and it was fascinating to watch these second graders just parading down the runway with their pollinator suits on so I think we're seeing a lot of really fun ways that we can make climate something that's uplifting and not just a sort of ominous topic okay great so that brings us to an end of Council questions which was your question for us number one the second question is what does a successful update to the cap look for like for council members and I'll suggest we could all wax lyrical on this topic for 10 or 15 minutes a piece but it's late 40 so what I would

[222:00] suggest is um if council members have specific targeted bits of feedback for what they really need to see in this update different from what we've already heard about you could offer those now but if if you feel like it's on good track no no need to to chime in so anybody thoughts we got Tina yeah I um am looking to see something that um has some flexibility so when there's a roadblock that is out of our control that we can pivot and work on other things that are in our control or if we find that there's a human behavior issue that we're having a hard time address um that that you have based on what you see and your expertise can pivot and do what you need to do to meet our goals um and then the second thing is um to think about whether a resolution is the right way to adopt the new goals or whether there's a different mechanism we can use um and that also makes it so that um you can you have flexibility under the goals to do the

[223:01] activities you need to do to meet those goals Ryan thanks Tina I feel fortunate to be part of your team's leading work and I if I could just briefly mention this you showed slides that went back to 2006 and if I could just briefly salute those of you who have been working on this for 10 or 15 years or more who were seeing Finance then in the future and were a part of a cohort then that was saying we would see insurance premiums start to fail and that would be an early indicator and that you have been seeing the future and Finance in it from the beginning and I'm um would just want to um highlight that we have some real expertise in future seers in here today as we go forward and think about the question of integrating finance and climate as we go forward um so that's just a quick uh uh appreciation um and I do see the year- on-year ghd reductions over time it it does need to get steeper so you're going

[224:00] to need a lot of support for that um so just a word of of of thanks and then also to Nan and the EAB really appreciate both the partnership and then also your um your detailed analysis which I think is is great so eron I have four things I'll try to be um just Doom them quickly I just would like to lift up four things that I've heard you talk about that I think are really important and that I hope we we continue to develop in this plan the first is something that is I think pretty subtle but perhaps the most Innovative and important thing of all which is this proposed effort to create more ownership within the city for climate strategies beyond what we may think of as the core climate initiatives team this is how we're going to drive change Es at scale in the city and also show the way for others and it's hard work and it's not just analytical but it's organizing so this is going to look different and I think to Lauren's point about looking for things in our packet I I think that's a place where we're going to hopefully see some more of that as well as to Mark's question about financial

[225:02] strategies um looking forward to that second thing um I I really appreciate that your continued focus on being strategic and emphasizing systems Transitions and and also reimagining how we understand our systems because it's these big making plans for changes with with outcomes that look different that are going to drive the the big structural changes we need rather than looking sort of ghg by by ghg so I'm I'm really glad to see that and paired with the the integration effort I I think we're going to we might see some new things really bloom in this update um third thing the your intention to newly incorporate the science of compact land use and transportation choices with consideration of PCC but not only the IPC and looking at the entire body of science on this topic I think is really important that the science on this has been more or less established for years um it's also from an equity standpoint that the housing Transportation cost burden for lowincome

[226:00] um households is an incredible important Equity issue and I also think as as people have pointed out we are entering a period um in which the there are going to be Federal head headwinds at the federal level and uncertainty at least as far as most people expect and this is a tip this is an area where we have as a city some of the greatest power and control to drive climate action um final and fourth thing is um on energy I know this is a topic area that we've have a long tradition of Excellence there's a there's decarbonization happening steadily with electricity so um I look forward hopefully to updating our view of how we think about the energy future that we are trying to drive for and thinking about it in terms of the outcomes that we would like to reach I won't say what I think those outcomes are now but I think examples of outcomes might be things like um we should see reduced costs to what we are paying for electricity given that the the Renewables Revolution is fundament reducing fundamental costs another one

[227:00] is reliability this is not specifically about the power safety shut off proceeding with Excel it includes that but it is addressing the question of what does reliability what should we expect from reliability in the future and then a third and final one is thinking about the what does it look like to transition to total or near tootal electrification and how does the existing and the Legacy gas system create a barrier or create issues that we need to think about so those are three things that I wouldn't say like have to be the ones but those are examples of outcomes that I would hope that our um energy process would planning process would lead to uh thanks very much thanks I got uh Matt then Taisha then Mark thanks Aaron um appreciate Ryan complimenting staff as being future seers um if you could use that superpower to tell me if the Buffs are going to win the National Championship in a few years I'd appreciate that future seeing as well um I think this whole Community would um my my in terms

[228:00] of what I really want to see this look like and I brought and sort of connected to what I brought up earlier about these resilience goals and some of the other goals is think of them kind of like how a lot of organizations do their um Financial development especially nonprofits is they come up with a goal that's a push but realistic and then they come up with the stretch goal the one that's like boy if everything if the stars align and we hit it then we can hit it and I think that might be something of Interest with regards to some of these resiliency goals and I think of that with regards to Wildfire and flood in particular given those are the two most critical threats this community faces with regards to climate resiliency and I think some goals and and I I would just say that to some extent this presentation probably should have front-ended our Wildfire conversation only because the slide here that talks about High fire risk days is really sobering uh I think that might have actually pushed this Council to be a bit more aggressive on its recommendations um uh just just a little bit ago um so so that's I think think of those stretch goals um where can you really push the envelope but you're not

[229:00] holding yourself to it but if you hit it it's there of a measure of even greater success or we got somewhere in between um so I think those might be um some really interesting ways to push the envelope and give Community a sense of the high bar that we're setting for ourselves thanks Taisha thank you so much um I Echo a lot of the comments already made I would say for me I'll just send a follow-up hotline with more specific details but I'll just give three overarching the first is around aligned accountability and administration so I appreciated the I appreciate the um collaboration and cooperation between Boulder uh the city of Boulder and Boulder County I also love the ever growing relationship with CU Boulder um I did make a a a connection with Colorado Parks and Wildlife particularly around Wildlife so um you know again I I'm hopeful that we can engage all of the players um working in those spaces and um show what aligned accountability

[230:01] looks like whether it be the Frameworks or account um Community accountability reducing bureaucratic barriers across um uh different things monitoring and Reporting um what is the Cadence what is the you know I am both in the city and in the county right and so what can we do to get more synergies um and uh more data alignment another area is around intergovernmental and interdepartmental cooperation so there was a lot of conversations around inter dep departmental uh cooperation but I did want to again just lift up the intergovernmental collaboration yes we know you know the feds have been very clear around the the next Administration however that means that the state county and City Alignment must be stronger um and I'm especially interested in what it looks like when we're working with community members so that we're not hosting eight different meetings with different Community with the same community members about the same topics

[231:01] um but really having that alignment around Communications and Outreach um and even the community science pieces right um even data sharing is another component and data sharing not just with um departments and inter-government also with our partner organizations um those we have traditionally worked with in the cool Boulder space which is so Dynamic um but also those who are doing the work but are not kind of in the cool climate Club um and so I would love you know one goal for me would be to see a much deeper um you know that everybody understands their role um and and have an opportunity to lead and that leads me to the next which is um community-led and so I'm really excited about the equity components but I think it's really important that we Define what we mean by that term every time because it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people um and the other piece is making sure we're very clear on what our accountability mechanisms both qualitatively and quantitatively um and who is conducting that research as I

[232:00] said um and uh again making sure that it's not just I I also noticed a little uh dissonance between what was in the slides around the equity statement um so the equity statement said something like you know we understand that everybody is not not experiencing the same things Etc um but you know a different slide said you know we're going to make sure that all people have opportunities from the start right so it's not about I mean yes that's nice but what is the quality of the opportunity um how frequent is it what is the you know EXA Etc so really power sharing um is something I'm eager in and and really making sure that this is as um Ryan indicated a community plan um that is integrated Ross all the many many other plans that we have um so anyway as I said I have a lot of specific um requests and and recommendations and questions that I will provide in a hotline but um all in all um I'm really excited and and hopeful for better alignment around even

[233:01] when we're talking about it so it's not just once a year but how are we monitoring and Reporting on a consistent basis thank you very oh inclusive of water and energy right emissions is great but emissions is the outcome of extraction and consumption so I would love us to get a little closer to the root cause um and not just the outcomes of of of um unfortunate policymaking thank you thanks I got Mark and then Lauren and then Nicole I'll be brief um I'm a fairly simple person so my request is going to be simple I would like to see a series of actionable proposals with identified sources of funding for me the rest is is fluff um this is what we need to move forward on and that's what I would like to see other than that you can give us 150 Pages at your discretion on any subject you want um but that's what I need thank

[234:00] you Mark I'm going to disagree with your characterization of yourself as simple I think uh none of your colleagues up here would agree with that that designation Lauren and then Nicole um I want to start off with appreciating my colleagues who pushed for incorporating this as a work plan item I believe that was Taisha and um Ryan I don't know why I just blanked on your name for like half a second thanks for bearing with me um and also nura for letting us sneak in 11th or maybe 12th depending on how you count item onto our work plan um I think that this update is really exciting to me I appreciate the shifts that you're making bringing into the new ideas of bringing into Focus the connections to food and water but also prioritizing the big moves we need to make um in order to meet our climate goal as we think about

[235:01] the steps moving forward I'm happy to do a resolution that may be unpopular with some of my colleagues but whatever um is easiest and makes most sense bring it um as we dive deeper into re-evaluating um a number of our rules and plans I think that we're a number of the trade-offs that we're trying to make is are difficult and this is something I've seen us struggle and it's a place where I've seen the climate initiatives Department do really well in terms of bringing forward tradeoffs in a way that is uh um diving deeply into them um but also trans with a high level transparency to help us as a community really understand these issues more deeply and I look forward to you you bringing that um and helping all of our

[236:02] departments um do that especially where we are seeing um more difficult tradeoffs for me some of those are going to be like planning building Transportation those kinds of areas um I would love whether it's our form based code Landscaping requirements or landmarking ordinances um I would appreciate um coordination in these efforts really being stepped up I know that we're starting it and I love that we're going there and I still think we have quite a ways to go thank you thanks Nicole thank you um and I just want to say this is in over three years of being on Council this is one of my favorite questions that I have ever been asked so I just I want to thank you for that um success for me in this in this update is

[237:02] continuing to use this plan as I think you all have been doing a great job of over the last um years of of changing the way we do things so I'm not tired to kind of a specific um outcome or anything but everything about how we do things has to change given this crisis and and that's what um what success looks like to me and just to get a little more specific there um I think emphasizing the programs and processes that bring our community together especially community members that we've marginalized historically and currently um engaging youth in Solutions as you're already starting to do they're the ones who are going to be dealing with the impacts of all of our current work in 2050 explicitly recognizing that meeting people's basic needs for things like housing food and social connection are key to resilience and we cannot have it without it um and in mentioning mental

[238:02] health even as we're still exploring what that means because I think it's that it's that little piece like when we first started mentioning Equity then you all have evolved that into an incredible place since we started doing that but just planting seeds that you all can run with um so that we can flesh that out and see what is that what what does that mean in this um in this time that we're living in um and looking at art and culture as a way to Foster the creativity and the vision that we need to imagine a radically different future um and I want to call out the sounds of Hope video that's on the website with video sound not technically audio recording I guess um that to me is a really great example of the kinds of things that can come from this plan and the type of community that it creates that I see as successful not everything has to be really expensive or visibly transformative uh but that that

[239:00] recording gave people a place to State their hopes and visions and it gave listeners a chance to hear each other to understand each other to see the commonalities and to feel more connected so that they didn't feel so loone and that to me is the kind of thing that it's it's beyond building codes it's it's not anything that we're going to get from a specifically stated outcome but it is a radically different way of doing things and that's success for me thank you right thanks for that all right um that brings us I think to our end of our Council comments I'll just say I think you all have done a phenomenal job I'm really excited about what's to come um so thank you for your extraordinary work um it's groundbreaking and Incredibly necessary uh to face the challenges that we have ahead of us so we look forward to what comes next thanks so much all right that brings us to the end of that agenda item which is our last

[240:00] formal agenda item but um Chris I believe you had a a point of procedure you'd like to bring up I would mayor thank you very much and I hate to go backwards at this late hour but uh just touching on item 5A the natural medicine ordinance uh would advise Council to make a motion to continue uh the second reading uh this uh would clarify the record would Street streamline the process and allow us um to continue to use the emergency uh procedures for this ordinance so I would advise Council to make a motion to continue item 5A the second reading of ordinance 8665 with direction for staff to draft amendments to the ordinance based on Council Direction just to ensure that the record is clear which US lawyers worry about okay great I'm happy to do I got that yeah I'll just go for it just to restate it so I move that we continue item 5A the second reading of ordinance 8665 with direction for staff to draft amendments to the ordinance based on Council Direction second all right we

[241:01] got a motion in a second all in favor do we do a roll call for this or can we continue with it yep okay roll call for that all right thank you we'll start the roll call for the continuation of ordinance 866 5 with council member Adams yes Benjamin yes mayor Brockett yes mayor protim fuls yes council member Marquis yes shuart yes spear yes wallik yes and Wier yes the ordinance 8665 is hereby continued okay thanks so much we dotted that I and crossed that t all right that brings us to the end of our agenda for this evening um unless anyone has any final thoughts to offer ran all right I'm going to test that my two minutes or less comment on open comment um during open comment there was a uh a

[242:00] comment that involved a very personal focus on Taisha I am not very moved by provoking individual council members um at least towards what um I hear from I guess advocates um but she has been invoked so I'd like to say something first I'd like to remind everyone that she is an elected official part of this body and the our business depends on all of us individually being effective team workers there were disruptions today that left multiple people who came to speak visibly shaken and that doesn't just affect public commenters but it affects our work together at least from my view so um please let me just say Taisha is one of the most thoughtful people I know she is someone who has dedicated her profession to trying to mend very deep wounds she addresses a lot at once she has a lot of wisdom to share and I have known her as somebody who listens and she tries to get it right and she does she corrects things when I see her so um I just want to say

[243:02] how excited I am about some of the things she's working on including the anti-muslim hate resolution um that I look forward to supporting when we get it into the right place so um just to conclude the the the personal focused individual comments are not helpful yeah thanks for that Ry I was actually gonna say you said it very eloquently I was going to say something very similar so I really appreciate you bringing that up that that kind of direct personal attack on individual council members uncalled for and uh Taisha I'm sorry that you had to experience that and again that the disruptions are keeping us from the business of the city and is in in fact scaring other members of the public who are trying to come and work with us on our matters at hand um I do look forward to in the New Year passing um resolutions um both on anti-Semitism and on anti-muslim hate uh those are both moving forward and thanks to council members uh Benjamin for moving forward on one and council member Adams for moving forward on the other because no

[244:01] form of hate is allow um acceptable or welcome in our city yeah Nicole um yeah and thank you Ryan I thank you um the other thing that I wanted to um note in in and this is in response to some of the things that were said in open comment today um and and I want to fully separate this from what Ryan just said because they are two separate things and I just want to make sure that that that is clear um I I think there's there is sometimes a wanting to um make all the things known uh in in sort of one go and and sometimes just a clear separation can help so try to do this despite being tired um but one thing uh I I had a chance to talk with a colleague today and um got a little more understanding of the way that when people bring up uh the specific idea that um folks who are

[245:02] Jewish have special power in politics or outsized power in politics that is part of the anti-Semitism that folks are feeling in the community so um I just wanted to ask that as we're having these conversations um just being open to the idea that we are all living in a world in a country in a state in a city where there is racism and there is anti-Semitism and how how can we hold open the space to learn from each other so that we're recognizing the times when we are inadvertently um perpetuating uh tropes or showing um these these Act s or or behaviors that are um making folks feel like they are being targeted for an aspect of their identity so um I I just it was a piece of learning that I had today that I was not aware of um and I am very grateful to have that knowledge and understanding um and just wanted to

[246:01] share that uh with everyone in the hopes that maybe the community can um can take that into account as well and just recognize the place where anti-Semitism shows up in those comments as well and I also look forward to supporting both uh the anti-Semitism and the anti- uh uh islamophobia resolutions thanks for that Nicole did you have something Mark uh well first I want to agree with both of my colleagues U Ryan and Nicole I I thought their comments were wonderful um but what we experien tonight um is simply out of control and I am urging us as a council to at least analyze uh what we can do to protect our own processes so that we're not sitting here 00 every time we have open comment um and having endured um a mini Riot um so I I think we need to look to

[247:01] what uh types of restrictions we can impose if any and then the answer maybe none but we need to look to our own resources to see if there's anything we can do um to control what has become an untenable environment um and we we just can't keep doing this uh every two weeks uh and and having the screaming the hatred the uh the invective um and the just the the the unacceptable kind of behavior directed at us um uh and I'm I'm urging us to start to start that process of of of looking at what it is we can do um I I I don't suggest anything in particular um but I do suggest we need to make inquiry and look at it thank you thanks

[248:01] Mark just um agreeing with that I just want to add that community members who have nothing to do with this conflict they're texting me that they cannot come anymore they don't feel safe they can't handle it and so it behooves us to support people that want to talk about you know things that we have on our Pro working plan Etc to have them feel comfortable and not literally scared to come so that that I'm hoping we all agree with all of us I also want to say that I'm looking forward to the process committee because I feel like videos make me un when somebody plays a video I tense up and I feel uncomfortable no matter what it is because people can really show anything you know Taisha couldn't you know you're kind of Blindsided in a way and that goes for any subject so I'm hoping that we consider not especially at this time in

[249:01] this day and age here we are at this point to not have videos at uh open comma I feel people can um email them to us and it has the same impact rather than having a room full of people we don't know what's going to be with these videos it's just taken too big of a chance in this environment is my opinion and so um I hope we consider that thanks laoren thanks I just wanted to thank you Ryan for reminding us of that I um also wanted to express um my support for Taisha and you know it's it is not lost on me that me and Taisha have expressed very similar stances on a number of issues and um I do not get nearly the kind of negative attention that she does for you

[250:01] know very similar things and none of us up here have you know are without having made mistakes from the dis or said things um in ways that we have regretted or backtracked on so I think that it would be great if people could offer us a little Grace sometimes sorry do I have 20 seconds left did I speak for two minutes yeah you have 15 seconds okay 15 second check okay so I also want to say that the one member who was cursing Fu etc etc we let that go on in my opinion for way too long that was just outrageous and scary so I'm hoping that we make some sort of a decision about that I mean I know we don't know it's going to happen but how long did we sit here during this so I'm just asking us to be a little more strict in that type of thing okay and Lauren that was well said um I'll just respond I mean I I think it was a like

[251:00] 15 or 20 seconds before we were out of here um it's um it's you know like you gavel you tell people to be quiet you have to give them a chance to stop like it it takes a second or two but but Point well taken it can go a little faster yeah okay uh all right well thanks everybody um for those comments and um it's such a difficult situation that we're dealing with here today but I'm grateful for um you all as my colleagues as we work uh together and on it and also appreciate everybody sticking within that um TW minute uh limit guideline that we agreed to at our last meeting all right um seeing nothing else I will go ahead and gabble is closed 06 p.m. thanks everybody and happy

[252:12] holidays e

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