Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[4:44] it's 6 o'clock we've got every here everybody here so I'm going to go ahead and get us started good evening everyone and welcome to the Thursday January 9th 2025 special uh 2025 special meeting of the Boulder City Council start with a quick

[5:00] announcement which is about boards and commissions recruitment so if you're looking for an opportunity to get involved the 2025 boards and commissions recruitment period is now open until January 31st 2025 find board and commission descriptions and vacancies online at bouldercolorado.gov government boards dn- commissions appointed members can now participate in person or virtually for hybrid meetings and members also receive a free RTD Eco pass to enjoy Unlimited on RTV trains and buses City staff will hold aards and commissions openhouse on 30 to 6:30 please come by and get your questions answered and with that I wish everyone a Happy New Year go ahead and call us to order and ask should have please do roll call all right thank you sir good evening everyone and again happy 2025 we'll start tonight's roll call as as usual with council member Adams

[6:03] present Benjamin present mayor Brocket present mayor Pro Tim farts present council member maras present shoar here spear present wallet here and Wier present thank you ma'am mayor we have our quum thank you so much Elicia and now I'm going to request a motion to amend the agenda to do two things to add item 2G to our consent agenda which is consideration of a motion to approve changing City Council meetings on January 16th and February 6th from inperson to Virtual pursuant to BRC section 2-1-2 and also to remove item 3A which was uh consideration of a motion in second reading to adopt ordinance 88677

[7:01] designating the property 3168 6th Street as a individual Landmark second oh so moved second okay we got a motion in a second all in favor please raise your hand right I think I got seven there so that passes the agenda has been amended and we are now going to go to our item 1A which is the Martin Luther King Jr Day declaration to be presented by council member Adams so T youa the floor is yours thank you so much mayor um and happy New Year everyone um so I'll read the Declaration and then I will um invite

[8:00] Dr David Humphrey um who is the assistant Vice Chancellor for diversity Equity inclusion at uh C Boulder all right Dr Martin Luther King Jr devoted his life to advancing equality social justice and opportunity for all and he challenged all people to participate in the NeverEnding work of building a more perfect union the King holiday and Service Act enacted in 1994 designated the King holiday as a national day of volunteer service since then millions of people have been inspired by the work and life of Dr King to serve their neighbors and community on the holiday Dr king led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycotts and in 1970 1957 he became the first president of the Southern Christian Le leadership

[9:00] conference while serving as the president of the conference he helped organize the nonviolent 1963 protest in Birmingham Alabama and the 1963 March on Washington where he delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech my favorite part about that this is a add-on is that um and I'll be brief is that um this incredible black singer whose name I can't remember at the moment um was next to him was said tell him about the and that because they were all talking last night so I just love the impromptu moment of that moment that like the personal came into that very magnificent speech and the best point gots were almost a year and a half and then to continue on October 14th 1964 Dr King was awarded the Nobel Prize peace prize for combating racism inequality through nonpr nonviolent resistance Dr King helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of

[10:02] 1965 in 1965 he also helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches and in 1966 he and the southern Christian leadership NE uh conference took the movement to Chicago Illinois to protest segregated housing Dr King also passed us and world leaders to work together to address economic inequality poverty and the suffering and Injustice caused by the Vietnam War Dr King's Hallmark approach to activism was to promote peace and nonviolence he chose and encouraged empathy and diplomacy in pursuit of structural change his teachings and contributions are immoral lied to this day and the legacy of his work continues to inspire us to carry the torch in addressing present-day challenges inequalities and injustices in our community we the city of B the city Council of the city of Boulder

[11:00] Colorado declare January 20th 209 2025 as Martin Luther King Jr day and and urge our fellow community members to celebrate the spirit of this day by seeking out and acting on opportunities for service in our community um thank you for uh thank you for the city for putting this together and all of the incredible uh work that we're doing in this area and now I would like to uh pass the zoom room mic if I will uh to Dr Humphrey thank you council person Adams uh that was mahelia Jackson that you were referring to who told him to tell him about the dream thank you I wasn't planning on talking about it but I just had to tell that part because it's one of my favorites but go ahead I I'll be brief in my comments as well I'm deep deeply honored to receive the Declaration um my heart felt gratitude to everyone involved in selecting me to

[12:00] be here tonight um this moment really holds special significance because Reverend Dr Marther King Jr whose Legacy we celebrate today was a fellow brother of alpha alpha Fraternity Incorporated um our fraternity's ideals leadership Brotherhood academic Excellence service to all mankind and advocacy for the downtrodden shape Dr King's sense of purpose and vocation just as they continue to shape mine um Dr King's vision for the delove for the Beloved Community calls us to this higher standard of engagement and action um and I want to remind us that it's not a superficial Act of service or a pursuit of hollow Harmony nor is it grounded in color blindness which erases erases difference and values Comfort over transformative tension instead Dr King's Beloved Community challenges us to continue to confront Injustice and embrace diversity authenticity and the hard work of reconciliation mutuality and reciprocity today Dr King's ideals are often diluted and romanticized misinterpreted to fit narrow agendas his

[13:02] fiery sermons are s sanitized and made palatable to uphold systems of privilege and too often his quote I have a dream in in quote speech is reduced to this idilic image of children holding hands but this act of joining hands was never the root goal it was the natural outgrowth of relationships reconciled within the Beloved Community and without a commitment to this Vision even well-intentioned efforts will fall short King understood that that quote the destiny of freedom of one is inextricably bound inextricably bound to the destiny and freedom of the other in quote this conviction that Injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere reminds us of our interconnectedness because we are tied as he said to this inescapable network of mutuality a single Garment of Destiny and and in our current social political context we face this pervas pervasive threat of eraser and avoidance especially for those who have been historically marginalized and avoidance

[14:02] may feel like a refuge but it is an accomplice to oppression and ignoring complex truths will deny our humanity and betray our shared responsibility and this is my charge to you and everyone listening we must resist the temptation to allow the Mythos of Supremacy and exceptionalism to be our guide and light these false Idols perpetuate Division and dehumanization and instead let mutuality empathy and the dignity in worth of every human being be our guide and our path forward we must also resist the temptation to run from our country's history of racial terrorism and violence our path forward must reckon with its history not ignore it because reconciliation requires truth-telling accountability and courage to confront Injustice headon so let this honor serve as a call to action resist complacency confront the issues of our day with courage and Clarity recognize that our freedom is tied together that none of us

[15:02] can truly be free until we all are Dr King's Legacy is not a finish story y'all it is a torch path to us lighting the way for Collective Liberation and radical love and so let us honor his life by embracing the transformative possibilities of the Beloved Community thank you for your time Dr Humphrey thank you so much for those inspiring and Power F words appreciate that so much that is exactly what we needed to hear so thank you very very much and thank you council member Adams um for your powerful reading of the Declaration okay well thank you very much for that and we are now going to go to our consent agenda pleas all right thank you and thank you again Dr Humphrey our consent agenda is item number two on tonight's agenda and it consists of items 2 a through

[16:04] 2G okay great any um questions or comments on the consent agenda or a motion Mark um when you say uh comments I have comments on um uh one of the items and uh should I make them now or should I make them uh uh a little later uh feel free if to make a couple comments right now you like okay um trying to find my comments uh let me first I I had a couple of questions about the um uh the lodging business assessment area um it seems to as I understand it it is co-terminus with the city of Boulder is that a a common

[17:06] practice Mark did you want to answer that question mark wolf yeah happy to good evening uh mayor members of council Mark wolf assistant city manager uh thanks for the question council member wallik it typically uh they are co-terminus with Municipal uh borders that is the case in Fort Collins and Denver okay um thank you um have I lost the thread uh um uh are we not approving um ordinance 8666 tonight or or do I have the wrong date you do have the right date but that's that's our public hearing for tonight

[18:00] okay very good my comments on that will'll await the public hearing okay very good man appreciate it U my comments center around the prospect of going virtual and I just want to express my my deep disappointment um at that Prospect um having a um handful of people run us out of our own building um I think sends a really bad message to our Community um it wasn't long ago that previous Council stood in front of the NRA and armed individuals who were um absolutely outraged from their point of view about our gun violence prevention measures and previous Council stood firm stood together and said we weren't going to get bullied out of our uh building and I'm disappointed that in this instance we're going to be bullied out of our building and I think that sends a really poor message um and I wish that we one knew this was coming I think most of us

[19:00] saw that this was going to escalate the way it did and we're taking the actions now to run away rather than to stand firm and say no um this is not what we stand for we're not going to get run out of our building um for people protesting and there are things we could do while staying in our building to keep people safe and I wish we had pursued some of those interests so I'm probably in the minority on this but um I'm just disappointed that that's the the place that we chose to abdicate our leadership and responsibility and Retreat to our home offices um instead of standing firm in front of community to show strength than I I have a thought but I'll let TAA and Mark go I also voted or rather didn't vote for that um but for a different reason I believe we need to stand firm for our community members to be able to talk to us to our face um and we need to be able to figure out mechanisms to be able to do that um coming from Colorado Parks and Wildlife where people were active with guns and were high tensioned and

[20:00] high stress we had very complex um prep we had um very clear guidelines and you know there was you know faithful everybody knew what it was and what would happen when you know you get one and then and that's it right um and so I am hopeful that when we do return because it did pass um that those things are in place um and you know I'm I disappointed that we weren't able you know that we think it'll take this long um to be able to allow our community to uh and our community has a right to protest so I want to honor that as well uh but no one has the right to break the law and really that's what it's all about isn't it rule of law thank you Mark uh Matt I 100% share your sense of frustration uh but I do believe there's a purpose to what we're doing and the purpose is that we will be reviewing our

[21:01] various procedures and processes and how we conduct our meetings and I I think we will come back with a better set of procedures that will address some of the problems that we've having we're having I I I don't like it any better than you do but I'm supporting it because I think there's an underlying purpose to give us adequate time to consider our possibilities and Alternatives and come back with a better set of of rules and procedures and that's that's why I support it not because I like it um you know I'm an old New York boy I don't like getting run off my my turf and uh um and uh uh it it rankles but I understand why we are uh conducting ourselves in that fashion and I hope we will be productive and come up with um a better way of operating and that's the only reason I'm supporting it Mark I'll just uh call myself here and

[22:01] just agree with what Mark just said and um would not characterize this as being being run off but uh instead a brief pause while we can reassess um our responses to some of the disruptions that we've seen in council chambers to make sure that we can keep all attendees of our meetings safe as well as City staff um so um if we do approve this I'm sure that we will take advantage of that pause to get things in better shape for the next time that we are in person okay uh Tara actually all I want to say is my internet where I am is unstable so I'm going to mostly have my camera off so I don't want anybody to feel offended that's fine okay okay understood all right um Elicia can we go to see no other hands raised then we can we go to a vote on the consent agenda please I understand that will be a roll call vote and we need a motion in a second sir that would be a helpful step

[23:02] wouldn't it so I would invite a motion on the consensus agenda I move the consent agenda second okay now we have a motion in a second thanks Nicole and Mark um so Alicia how about that that roll call please of course sir can we start the roll call tonight for the consent agenda items a through G with council member Adams yes Benjamin yes but a no on 2G thank you sir mayor protim Brockett I'm sorry mayor Brocket Lauren we just switched spots uh yes thank you mayor protim fuls yes but no on G thank you council member Marquis yes but no on

[24:02] F thank you shuart yes spear yes wallet yes M Wier yes the consent agenda items a through G are hereby approved unanimously with the duly noted Y's for f and g not N I believe NOS yes thank you okay thanks for that if we can move to our first public hearing please thank you sir our public hearings are item number three on tonight's agenda three B is the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8680 designating the property at 575 uid Avenue city of Boulder Colorado to be known as the shuroken house as an individual Landmark under chapter 9-11

[25:01] historic preservation BRC 1981 and setting forth related details that Mr Mayor we'll go straight to Marcy Gerwin welcome Marcy thank you all right good evening city council and happy New Year let me get started there we go all right so I'll begin with the procedure for quas judicial hearing hearings um I'll pause here for council members to note any expart contacts any site visits or conversations about the property at 575 uid hearing none we'll move to the staff presentation followed by the applicants presentation after that the public hearing is opened uh for Community member comments after each of those presentations and comments Council may ask question questions and then after the final public comment speaker the

[26:00] applicant May respond to anything that was said the public hearing is then closed and Council will discuss the decision a motion requires an affirmative vote of at least five members to pass motions must State findings conclusions and a recommendation and finally a record of the hearing is kept by staff the criteria for your review for this individual Landmark designation is found in section 9111 and 911 two of the boulder Revis code uh which determines whether it meets the criteria for review including whether it's in balance with the goals and policies of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan the options in front of you this evening are to either approve the designation modify and approve or deny the designation uh this application was submitted by the property owner in September and um since then we've reviewed an improve two Landmark alteration certificates for exterior

[27:01] changes including a rear addition window and door replacement and construction of a new garage on December 4th the landmarks board unanimously recommended to designate the property as an individual landmark and the first reading passed on consent agenda uh on December 19th and that brings us to this evening's uh public hearing this property is located uh in West Boulder in the Rose Hill Neighborhood on the north side of uid between uh Gilbert and 6th Street the property was uh or the house was constructed in 1959 and it is an example of modernist style using the eonian form evidenced by the intersecting curval linear walls that extend into the landscape interconnected one and TW story volumes strips of ribbon and clear story windows and a sculptural metal chimney it also expresses the eonian style in the walls of stacked concrete

[28:01] blocks with expressed mortar joints and scalloped roofs with Canal levered Eaves the accessory building was designed by lgil Ables as an artist studio and is complimentary to the house it features High ceilings exposed wooden beams and expansive windows that allow for natural light the building meets the city's uh significance criteria and is historically significant for its association with Philip and Cecil sakin the original owners and later owners George and Betty Woodman and Everett Brown and Louis padon and for its association with the development of the modern movement in architecture in Boulder as one of the finest modernist houses built in the 1950s about 25 years ago the property was determined to be potentially eligible for listing on both the local and state levels Cecil sarokin designed the house in collaboration with architect tician Papa christu Cecil was awarded a

[29:01] marshall field scholarship to study at The Institute of Design in Chicago at the age of 16 she later earned a masters of Fine Arts at the American University in Washington DC and worked as a senior designer for the Marshall field and Company in Chicago she and her husband Philip moved to Boulder in 1957 she was a leader in the development of the Arts in Colorado and is credited with researching and writing the legislation that helped fund original art in all public buildings she also helped coordinate the first Colorado women in the arts program in 1979 Philip worked at the Western Interstate commission for higher education and developed the mental health education program he became director in 1976 artists George and Betty Woodman purchased the house in 1967 Betty was an internationally renowned ceramic artist with Works in museums including the Whitney

[30:00] Metropolitan Denver and Brooklyn museums and she was also locally active playing a key role in establishing Boulders Pottery lab in 1956 George was also an artist whose paintings reside in the Guggenheim Denver and Brooklyn Museum collections married couple Everett Brown and Louise padon purchased the house in 1997 and they are known for contributions to the international and local art scenes themselves the city worked with Louise pden in 2013 to recognize the house as a structure of Merit the property is architecturally significant as an example of modernist style using the eui eonian form and through its association with architec tician Papa christu who designed the house in collaboration with Cecil sarakin and elil Ables later designed the accessory building which complemented papa Christo's design both Architects were influential in shaping Boulder's architectural identity during the mid 20th

[31:00] century the property is environmentally significant with site characteristics that follow the natural Contours of the site and the curve a linear layout and horizontal orientation of the inside and outside uh maximizing the connection between the built environment and nature the uh recommended name for the house is the sarakin Woodman house recognizing the two uh earliest owners and the proposed boundary follows the property lines with that the landmarks board and staff recommend that the city council adopt ordinance 8680 designating the property at 575 uclid Avenue to be known as the saren Woodman house uh we welcome the owner Charlie Bond and as well as Sher Bells the architect who designed the more recent changes um and with that I'm happy to answer any questions you may have

[32:00] thanks Marcy do we have any questions for Marcy on this U presentation seeing none then um should we go to the um applicant for their presentation all right see I've got a hand rais from one the attendees looks like we need to make somebody pist right are you about ready to come online there we go oh there I am am I don't have a presentation because Marcy

[33:02] did such an excellent job and I want to thank her um I want to thank my client Charlie Bon um for buying this house and wanting to preserve it he actually grew up in Boulder and was friends with the Woodman and spent a lot of his childhood at this home and so I think Boulder is very lucky to have someone like him who wants to preserve such an architect seal gym and I want to thank you all for considering its landmarking thanks so much any questions for our applicant seeing none I think we can go to the public hearing then please excuse me mayor Sher can you confirm that Charlie who's on the call is the owner is he wishing to speak under the owner's presentation he is on the call um let's

[34:01] see I don't let me text him I'm not let's see what he says uh hi this is Charlie oh there he is I don't a little trouble with the technology I'm on the call and I think everybody else has summed it up and um um yeah it's a great house looking forward to um um moving in great thanks for being here with us and moving this through the process okay well let's go to the public hearing now please there are four speakers of each wh of whom will have three minutes to speak and our first three speakers are Leonard seagull hos M kruer hunningham and Lyn seagull all right can you hear me this is Lyn great thank you Happy New Year city council uh speaking on behalf of historic Boulder I want to start by saying that the property that the council is considering as a landmark

[35:01] tonight could be one of the last in Boulder this is an unintended but likely outcome of the familyfriendly vibrant neighborhoods resoning you are considering the increased density promoted by this up zoning would Target older homes in town many of which are small buildings on larger Lots it would certainly encourage the demolition of historic properties especially ones not in an historic district there are hundreds of unprotected historic properties in whiter and uni Hill plus many black American sites in the Goss Grove neighborhood while historic Boulder is supportive of ideas to make housing more attainable for the workforce we would ask that you direct the city planning staff to develop some language to strengthen not weaken the ability to safeguard historic properties that contribute to the spirit of Boulder we also recommend that you double the number of preservation planning staff employees to handle what we predict will be an avalanche of applications for

[36:00] demolitions the proposed sarakin Woodman Landmark is a great case in point it's a smaller home on a large lot the notable people who have lived there and the modern design featur certainly qualify it as an individual Landmark The Cutting Edge design of this building illustrates how the 1950s and 60s were the most highly progressive era in Boulder Architects like tishan Pap Christo set the groundwork for the Innovative community that Boulder has become his groundbreaking designs of Homes apartment buildings and businesses plus his work on enar set a high standard for the generations that have followed him I had the great pleasure and Fort Good Fortune to work fortian in New York City he was an inspiring designer and a progressive social thinker another aspect of this landmarking that's significant is how it demonstrates The Beneficial trade-off of preserving a Legacy property in exchange for leniency on the property setback the

[37:02] owner can now build a garage where there was none and in exchange the city gets a unique and significant property you that is preserved you should know that when this property went on the market a few years ago the Realtors were marketing it as a tear down this building as a tear down with that mentality The Proposal of the familyfriendly rezoning will most likely result in the demolition of the unprotected Innovative homes designed by people like Papa Christo Hobart Wagner And even Charles Hartley thankfully the applicant for this Landmark Charlie Bond saw the value of this property and is motivated to save it historic Boulder hopes you will support its landmarking tonight and considers some extra language in your rezoning proposals thank you very much thank you now we have Kos mger Cunningham ly seagull and Dan Howard mayor I do not see Kima online

[38:02] tonight all right then let's go to L please it's another no-brainer from the county this morning which had um an Adu for an aging mother-in-law proposal um I know we're pushing adus um in the urban centers but what is it that these people with a small lot and a chicken coup and they sell seeds in the summer have to go through a special site review to get an Adu on Cherryvale I mean what has the world come to so this one of course the beautiful scalloped poy chrst do yeah of course yeah yes duh tell me something I

[39:02] don't know done and our final speaker is Daniel Howard hello Council uh thank you for your time um though this parcel follows president standards or Landmark status I'm against this Historic Landmark approval given potential for negative impact on the overall economic welfare of the city large welfare being a requirement in BRC 911-1 subsection a though there's a a lack of broader there's also a lack of broader cultural and public facing significance such as Museum status beyond the acknowledg not or the architecture of the single detached hom design further uran land in suit which is a confence in M Endeavor a relevant paper discusses this issue preserving history or hindering growth the heterogeneous effects of historic districts on local housing markets to note currently about 1,200 of approximately 12 120,000 parcels or 1% of of Boulders Parcels are Lan Boulder

[40:00] this is less than a 3.2% of par Parcels preserved in New York but approximately equal to that in the Bronx in the paper economists and policy analysts posit that constraining Redevelopment via landmarks May NE negatively impact effect uh overall economic welfare this is because preventing Parcels from naturally Inc increasing intensity I.E expanding adus or partitioning essentially reduces its highest and best value use of a parcel that could house multiple families instead of one they explain that land prices actually Decline and preserve neighborhoods because properties properties no longer have the option to add more housing units the result is less Community wealth created although sales prices may increase for individual existing units this may meet the goal of enhancing or increasing property values in housing cuts which is an explicit goal of the lar Ence ordinance but this is at the expense of encounter to the overall economic welfare and affordable housing goals of the City Historic districts of homes which often lead to higher property values price out lower income residents and reinforce economic inequalities though I value lmar being significant and culturally at risk historic sites I remain concerned about

[41:00] the long-term impacts of excessive landmarking contributing to increased housing costs that likely are not balanced with increased value in tourism or cultural value L bring I'll end with the quote attributed to Pelle the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes buildings come and go but the power and supremacy of this land continues forever um lastly as a compromise as relates to 8666 I'm open to encourage mixed use or multif family developments in areas outside of designated historic zones to address housing shortages without compromising preservation efforts thank you for your time thank you all right that concludes the public hearing I'll just ask if the applicant wants to uh respond to any of the comments that were made I'm seeing a headshake okay then I'll uh come back to council for a deliberation if anyone has some thoughts or a motion to make a little quiet tonight Mar um I guess I could just jump right

[42:01] in with it um I would like to make a motion that we designate this property uh a motion to adopt ordinance 8680 designating the property at 575 uclid Avenue city of Boulder Colorado to be known as the sorten Woodman house as an individual Landmark under chapter 911 historic preservation BRC 1981 as well as adopt the staff memorandum dated January 9th 2025 as the findings and conclusions of council and setting forth related details um I really I want to thank the applicant for bringing this project forward I had the opportunity um to tour this house once and it is one of my I mean this doesn't weigh into my decision my decision is entirely criteria based but um I will just say that I personally

[43:02] um love this house and it is just such a beautiful example um of this modernist style in our community and I'm really excited to see us Landmark it so thank you than Lauren do we have a second yes we do you can have it here I got the second I think great all right well uh let's go ahead and have a vote on the the motion uh in front of us all right thank you sir we'll start the vote for item 3B the for the adoption of ordinance 8680 with council member Benjamin yes mayor bronet yes mayor Pro Tim Furs yes council member Marist

[44:00] yes Shu hard yes spear yes wallik yes Wier yes and Adams yes ordinance 8680 is hereby adopted unanimously very good thank you and thanks and congratulations to the applicant for bringing this forward really appreciate your dedication to this very beautiful and historic property okay I think um we are ready to go to our second public hearing of the even all right sir thank you our next public hearing is item 3C on tonight's agenda and it is the second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 8666 amending chapters 9-2 review process cesses 9-6 use standards and 9-8

[45:02] intensity standards of Title 9 the land use code BRC 1981 to amend density and intensity standards to allow development of additional dwelling units in the residential rule one residential rule two and residential low one residential medium one and residential mix one zoning districts and to amend review procedures and use standards to reduce regulatory requirements for certain residential developments and setting forth related details thank you Alicia and for this mayor this is one of your Council priorities coming back I know it's been before you uh and we will turn to Carl guer to start this conversation thank you very much if the city clerk could bring up the presentation please thank you good evening council members my name is Carl gerer planning and development services uh we're going to talk about the familyfriendly vibrant

[46:01] neighborhoods project as as nura mentioned is a 2024 and 2025 city council work program item uh this project grew out of the Zoning for affordable housing project uh the last time that we discussed this before Council was on October 17th uh where the council provided Direction before we began the drafting of the ordinance so we've we're returning with the ordinance tonight it's ordinance 866 6 uh I wanted to convey and it's also in the packet that planning board recommended approval of this ordinance on a vote of 6 to1 uh they considered it on November 19th and then the following day the housing Advisory Board uh considered the ordinance and unanimously recommended approval uh next slide please so the purpose of tonight is for Council to consider the ordinance and make a decision on the ordinance uh just to talk about uh what's composed of this presentation I'll start off with the city council suggestions uh from

[47:01] September 2023 uh which led to what we looked at and focused on for for this ordinance for this discussion tonight we're going to focus mainly on three topics which relates to the zoning changes to a number of zoning districts the rmx1 the RR zones and the rl1 zone and the rm1 Zone uh I'm not going to be talking about the other components of the ordinance which we've talked about in the past in there was consensus among many of the council members and planning board members on this I'll conclude uh with a statement of compliance with the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan uh our conclusion and then the suggested motion language uh next slide please so really quick um when the Zoning for affordable housing project was considered by Council there were some suggestions at that hearing uh to include the scope or or move on to a new project that would basically include some other zones so that's why we took a look at rmx1 rm1 uh and the rl1 uh and

[48:03] RR zones uh looking at additional housing density and lower uh density areas of the city uh kind of moving on from the Zoning for affordable housing project which really focused more on industrial areas of the City commercial areas mixed use areas um in this in higher density residential areas we firstly started talking about exempting out some missing middle housing um in the zoning code in order to get more missing middle housing and I'll talk more about missing middle housing on a upcoming slide that kind of evolved more into exempting out 100% permanently affordable housing projects from site review relative to ones that don't uh have modifications requested so that is included uh in the ordinance before you tonight we also have included some changes to the minimum thresholds for site review to encourage more housing as well as some incentives uh for mixing uses in industrial zones with residential and I'm not going to talk about those two latter items for the

[49:00] sake of of brevity of this uh presentation uh next slide please so the point of this ordinance is to increase the amount of missing middle housing in Boulder um which I'll point out is a housing type uh not to be confused with the income range what missing middle housing really relates to is duplexes triplexes quad plexes Town Homes uh things of that nature they're more modes siiz housing units that give people more choice and more income ranges uh and would hopefully by adding housing would impact the rising cost of housing and try to mitigate that that increase uh so we've done extensive Outreach on these Concepts through the Zoning for affordable housing project and this project um much of the feedback from 2023 and 2024 uh has been summarized in pre previous presentations uh as well as attached to the memo as evidenced by recent correspondents there are mixed op opions on adding housing in a number of areas in the city particularly in the lower

[50:01] density areas there are proponents that talk about adding housing will help uh add to the needed Supply in the city uh to help mitigating that rising cost but then there are others that find that housing should only be allowed if it's deed restricted if we're changing the zoning uh we have heard from some commenters from some neighborhoods like uni Hill and Martin Acres uh that have requested that they be Exempted from these changes is based on the impacts that the density of those neighborhoods that they currently experience and that by adding more housing could could exacerbate those impacts we've also heard from some folks that um have requested that the ordinance apply to most of their neighborhood to allow more Housing Opportunity so we've we've we've heard the full range uh next slide please so the first focus of tonight is to talk about the rmx1 Zone that's the mixed density residential Zone these uh surround the downtown uh this is an area

[51:01] of the city that um contains our oldest housing stock so as a result we wanted to be thoughtful about the character of these neighborhoods um this area has experienced a number of rezonings over time it was largely developed as detached dwelling units before being um rezoned to high density residential for many decades uh and then later rezone back down to a low density residential zone so that would explains why there's a mix of older smaller single family homes mixed in with multif family apartment type buildings uh so that's kind of uh created the character of these zones but it is a unique area of the city it includes whiter gos Grove Mapleton Hill or portions of these zones uh West Pearl and uni Hill uh that are the oldest neighborhoods in Boulder uh they they tend to be more walkable they were built before the car and include walkable um 15-minute neighborhood type neighborhoods that uh allow people to

[52:00] walk to businesses uh and things of that nature so next slide please so the the comprehensive plan does call out this particular Zone as as a unique area uh where there are in the past there's been parking and traffic impacts as well as um pressures on the historic housing stock that have led to some of these zoning changes so it is called out specifically in the comp plan so what we're Rec recommending to city council tonight are things that are consistent with the current Boulder Valley comprehensive plan um so in this case we do have to take Credence of what's written um for this Zone in this area the land use designation and also propose things that are within the density ranges that are allowed under the current comp plan so in this particular area because of the changes that have been seen over time uh it has six to2 to to 20 dwelling units per acre uh as a density range uh next slide please so this map shows the importance

[53:01] of the area that we're looking at uh based on the age of housing that's in the area so if you look at this map you can see that the concentration of Darker blue shows that it is the highest concentration of buildings that are over 50 years old in the city of Boulder so for instance when we look at the city Citywide 50% of properties have a building that are over 50% or I'm sorry 50 years old when we look at the rmx1 Zone that jumps up to almost 70% so we've kind of looked at this Zone with a little bit of a different eye uh next slide please so these are some of the pictures of of the character and some of the housing stock that we have in these near these neighborhoods that are certainly very important for protection we have the University Hill Neighborhood gos Grove Whittier uh shown in these slides uh next slide please so the proposed ordinance would modify the required area per dwelling unit from 6,000 square ft to 2500 ft per

[54:02] unit so for example on a 6,000 s foot lot that today would only allow a detached dwelling unit you could have two units you could have a duplex or a slightly larger lot like 7500 Square F feet you could have a Triplex but what we're proposing is that the the FL ratio height and setback regulations coverage limits all those regulations that currently apply to a single family or a single unit uh would apply to a multi-unit building as well so this would keep the character the same in terms of scale and massing so that's what's proposed as part of this ordinance and we we do have some other criteria um which I'll talk about on on the next slide please so there have been some examples in other cities that we've looked at where there if there's been changes in zoning that allow more housing units uh Within areas that have a lot of historic housing stock there's been some unfortunate uh loss of historic uh

[55:02] buildings as a result um some developers have come in to demolish those buildings to rebuild uh to get more units on their site so we that's why we've looked at this a little bit closely to understand how to try to mitigate that um in order to address this concern there is a requirement uh that proposes that the density increase does not apply in instances where a developer or property owner either illegally demolishes a building um does it without permits or in a case where if there's a building um that's demolished after a finding of probable cause um that it may be eligible for landmark designation those particular instances would not be um subject to the allowed increase uh of density so we're trying to disincentivize people from demolishing buildings that are over 50 years that are that are either designated or um have historic

[56:01] significance next slide please so this intent is to allow additional housing units and encourage adaptive reuse in this area while maintaining the neighborhood scale that exists today so as this slide shows uh units could be added in a variety of ways it could be with internal structural changes within the building um that add units through the construction of additions or a second building on the site in the in the backyard it could be on a vacant site um or through demolition of any building that isn't found to have any cultural or architectural significance next slide please so the proposed language that we have within the ordinance recognizes the concentration of Boulder's oldest housing stock in rmx1 and intends to to reduce the development pressure on these places uh that are significant to Boulder's history maintain the distinctive neighborhood character of these neighborhoods and encourage

[57:01] development that aligns with the existing scale of the neighborhood uh the density increase would apply to a majority of projects in this Zone nonetheless and not um just the ones that are designated so we want to be clear about that uh staff finds that this change would be consistent with the goals of the overall project I I'll point out before we move on to the next topic that uh planning board recommended approval of this change on a vote of 7 to zero uh a secondary motion recommended that the language in the ordinance be simplified so that is reflected uh in the ordinance so moving on to the next topic uh next slide please so the next um topic is the RR zones and the rl1 zones which are our lowest density residential zones in the city of Boulder you can see it covers a wide sloth of the city you can see the rl1 in yellow and you can see the rr2 and rr1 in a slightly uh lighter shade so in this case we we took another look at this at these areas uh for

[58:01] consistency of could we add housing units we talked in Prior presentations about how we looked at uh gross density in these areas to see if additional housing could be um allowed uh and if uh next if you could click on the slide bring up the uh characteristics and locations and uses the things that we have to take into consideration for compliance with the bbcp here is that we have to make a finding obviously that uh the resulting product of of housing being added consists predominantly of single family detached units as it's reflected in the plan today and still fits within the two to six dwelling units per acre so these are the things that we've looked at uh in this analysis next slide please so in this case um it would be looking at allowing duplexes on any sized lot that's within 350 ft of a mapped bus Corridor so we've included appendix J which includes the bus routes that are RTD routes um and we're again proposing

[59:01] the 350 that was discussed uh in Prior presentations you can see the graphic that the same F same lot coverage same height same setbacks would apply it's just that a property owner would have the ability to split their home or build a duplex within the same scale as what exists in the neighborhood today next slide please so the three the 350 ft from the corridors represents a 30% increase in potential units in this zone so it basically means that 30% of all the Lots in these zones would become eligible we've we've suggested either 30% or 40% in order to stay true to that predominantly single family uh intent within the plan um we did subtract some bus routes from the map like CU routes and seasonal routes which did have a change since we we talked about this in October so what that did is it dropped the number of the percentage down to 30%

[60:01] when before we were talking about 40% so that's why we've raised it as a key issue as part of this review that if the council wanted to go up to 40% uh that buffer where of eligible Lots could be increased to 550 ft uh that that's something that planning board had recommended approval of um so we we hope to get feedback on that from Council tonight uh next slide please so we found that this proposal would be consistent with the land use designation in the low density areas of the city would it would fit within the 2 to six dwelling units per acre you can see this is the map that shows the eligible corridors uh for discussion um and uh we were recommending approval of that uh next slide please so the next Zone that we're looking at is rm1 which is a medium density residential zone so this is where the characteristics are described um on this slide it it includes a mix of housing types similar to rmx1 and it

[61:01] allows six to 14 dwelling units per acre these are areas that are shown in Orange and typically tend to be in the areas that surround shopping centers uh in the city of Boulder uh next slide please in this case the proposal is to modify the open space requirement uh basically reducing it from 3,000 ft of open space per dwelling unit down down to 2,000 ft of open space per dwelling unit um so this is one of the zones where it's it's a little nuanced in that there it's not easy to necessarily determine how many units are allowed until you actually have a designed plan how much open space that qualifies those Open Spaces in the in the design in this case we're adding a little bit of flexibility by dropping down to 2,000 uh next slide please so in this case we found that this is a fairly modest increase this Zone only accounts for about 6% of the city I think only about three like half

[62:01] the zone or less than half the Zone would be um eligible for this so that drops it down to a very small percentage um we felt that that would allow you know roughly 20% increase over time in in this particular zoning District um we've worked with other City departments on this proposal I think based on the scope of this Zone being much smaller um the the the loss of open space is not a great concern in the sense that we're talking mostly about lawn area and small Green Space Landscape areas rather than sensitive environmental or Wildlife protection areas like you see outside you know the the growth boundary of the city so in this case this is a modest change to allow some additional units that are that would be walkable distance to um commercial centers uh next slide please all right so there's a number of of different bbcp housing policies that

[63:00] apply to this project as I've raised within the memo uh in this case I just wanted to highlight some um for city council so staff finds that the proposed ordinance would be consistent with the current uh bbcp land use designations and policies that are listed on this slide uh for a number of reasons uh the change would allow for more housing types Citywide expanding options in terms of size and cost and this would be consistent with policy 7.07 mixture of housing types as well as policy 7.10 housing for full range of households uh the ordinance would allow more housing along Transit corridors to encourage Transit use and moves towards the city's goals for 15minute neighborhoods this would be consistent with policy 2.16 mixed use and higher density development um it would preserve the scale and character by applying existing detach dwelling unit limitations like f and coverage limits

[64:00] setback limits height limitations to sites um and apply those to duplexes and other missing middle housing types uh to preserve that character and that would be consistent with policy 2.10 preservation and support uh for residential uh neighborhoods lastly it would incentivize adaptive reuse of buildings and avoids incentivizing de demolition of buildings that are over 50 years old in areas that have the highest concentration of historic housing stock and this would be consistent with policy 7.08 uh preserve historic housing stock and policy 2.30 eligible historic districts and landmarks next slide please so in conclusion uh staff is recommending approval of the ordinance to council we find that it's consistent with the original goals that were outlined for the project uh allowing a wider area of the city to have more housing options concentrating housing in areas that are walkable along bus

[65:00] corridors near mixed use areas uh in this case you know over the long term you know again this is talking about if everyone were to decide to add the housing it has the potential for adding over 7,000 housing units over the long term but it would move overtime in towards the goal of trying to um add more options for a number of different types of people in the city um if there were changes that go beyond what we're talking about tonight this is obviously something that we're looking at uh as part of the 2025 bbcp update so like where we could be looking at other uh Missing middle housing opportunities um so that concludes my presentation uh next slide please uh We've provided the suggested Mo motion language should the city council agree and uh with that I'll and my presentation happy to answer any questions thanks so much much for that Carl a very informative presentation uh really appreciate that and I will turn

[66:01] to council and see if anybody has any questions for you Tera yes I just have a quick question about um RM and going from 6,000 all the way down to 2500 which is square feet which is more than half Carl can you just tell me and I can't remember from the last time we talked about it what this looks like why did you decide on 3,000 in the first place and will this have any visual um any negative visual impact I would say and is is this an um so that's my first question and my second question is I was thinking about your um disincentive if I can only say that word disincentive th help me Aaron disincentivize you said right car dis incentiv disincentive that so to I was thinking

[67:02] about this demolition um issue and what uh Leonard said earlier um with the other topic and I'm wondering if we do you think we're doing enough to disincentivize demolition uh we feel we are or are we okay we we feel that um the guard rails that this would put up would just least highlight the need for um PE people that are considering adding units within their building that they're they're going through the proper processes of looking whether there is any kind of uh historic significance to their building that might need to be preserved but I mean again we're talking about any buildings that are over 50 years old so there may be some that go through a process and they're not found to be eligible and you know they'd be able to move forward but for the most part it's it's raising attention um so that people like design their projects in a man a manner where they're trying

[68:00] to adapt an existing you know older building um to allow the additional units and to get to your other questions we we don't necessarily see that there would be a big visual change with this in fact today in the rmx1 zone a lot of these floor area ratio and coverage limits do not apply to any buildings um other than detached dwelling units this would be applied to all buildings now so in a case it would actually keep the scale smaller than what is actually was allowed in the past for the most part so we we feel that those are adequate protections um and as far as our proposal for the 3000 I think originally we were you know as I pointed out in the presentation there are some sensitivities in this area related to parking and traffic and congestion so we started with the 3,000 uh We've presented that uh te Council and planning board and and there were Rec direction to to to move to the

[69:00] 2500 um but that kind of informed our our analysis okay we got Tina and then Ryan and then Nicole hi um thank you for the presentation that was really helpful um in the rmx1 uh when you showed the visual and and we talked about this a little bit at the last meeting if we had a three ,000 squ foot house currently the owner can do a duplex but this zoning change would allow it to be transferred into a quadplex is that one way of describing the change I'm sorry how big would the lot be oh I whatever I think the lot was uh 7,000 on your oh example it was it just because it's 2500 per unit um the lot would have to be 7500 to have a Triplex you you would have to have 2500 more square feet in a lot to have a

[70:00] quadplex okay so one of the when we think about what the outcomes of this change would be would we anticipate more one and two bedroom units or more three-bedroom units do we have an idea of what would happen and do we is is that something that we've sort of thought about we haven't done any estimations as far as what would result in terms of number of bedrooms I think obviously if people are incentivized to do more units on their site they probably would do a smaller number of bedrooms um but not always I mean we have seen some examples particularly in gos Grove where they've broken up buildings and each unit has you know more than two bedrooms so I I think you it just really depends on what they want to do what a developer wants to do or you know I think there's a a wide range of different lot sizes in zone so there's kind of a lot of opportunities for for different types of

[71:00] units with different numbers of bedrooms okay because you know sometimes the the density of people is different than the density of units so it could be a lot of times we sort of our our metric is the number of leases that are out or the number of mailing address but it doesn't represent um the children that are living in a building or other people in the building so um I have a particular interest in um up lifting up the family part which I'm defining narrowly is um somebody with a child and and just you know we we are pretty good at building one and two bedroom units in the city that's a something that we've been very good at but I am looking for that three-bedroom point for some that I think we've heard consistently as more difficult to find uh in the in the middle housing type um and that's a particular area so I'm I'm interested well I uh put it in my

[72:00] hotline I'm wondering if we have seen municipalities that were able to provide incentives to create um M midle housing that was more on a three-bedroom um and then try to disincentivize going to one-bedroom units uh where we find that there's a scarcity of one type over another yeah I think we'd have to do more analysis on that okay um and then for the the increase or the ability to do duplexes in the RL in the residential areas does this also allow for triplexes in certain cases if the lot is big enough or is it just duplexes uh in this particular proposal it's just duplexes uh the Zoning for affordable housing project did allow triplexes but it would be on a much larger lot you'd have to have have um over I I do the math in my I think 21,000 square feet on a lot to

[73:03] get a Triplex so this doesn't change that but we've not included triplexes in the scope of this project okay so that would be and and then and obviously nothing no quad plexes or anything like that either so that would be something that would be Revisited in a couple of years through the Boulder Valley comp plan or it could be and then and then currently we're maintaining the parking r requirement uh we are obviously we're analyzing that as part of a you know separate parking related project okay thank you I got uh now Ryan Nicole Mark and Matt thank you Carl and the team for um all this great work I have a question about uh historic landmarking on page 15 of the memo I read that um a reduction from 6,000 ft of lot area to 2500 ft

[74:00] would apply to most residential projects with a couple of exceptions one of those exceptions the second one is that if the if there is a finding of probable cause that it is that it may be eligible for landmark designation that jumps out at me because I would intuitively think that if it were designated as a as hisor Landmark then that would be the standard but this says it if it would if there was a finding of probable cause that it may be eligible and I don't see anything after that to say and then there's a followup to determine the the that it actually is historic and if my understanding is correct probable cause would mean there's a I don't know if it's a committee it's the ldrc that has three members and one of them one of them could say that it could could determine probable cause and and if I've got that right and I may not so that's really my question but if I do have that right that would seem to imply a much

[75:01] higher um or I guess a lower bar for um what would be caught up in in the sort of historic process that would um stand in the way of this um type of upzoning so I I may have my facts not completely straight so could could you please help to clarify if that's right or if there's more to it yeah I may have to Des uh defer to Marcy gerwing on this but uh the intent is obviously to it does hold higher bar in the instance where somebody wants to make alterations to a building that's over 50 years old and if there is a identified probability uh that that might be a landm markable structure um the hope is to like move them in the direction of landmarking uh to keep that density if they were to not move forward with landmarking um they wouldn't be entitled to that density again this this is going to be a very small instance considering all the the properties in rmx1 but avoids the the loss of historic housing

[76:00] stock I don't know if you want to add anything else to that Marcy I do thank you Marcy gring principal planner and planning and development services and um a a key distinction is that uh the applied density The increased density would uh apply to designated properties non-designated properties that are keeping the existing building or keeping at least half of the existing building either through an addition or a second building Etc um what this is kind of shaping the way the density is added is saying that if an eligible building is demolished then the vacant site could not be redeveloped with the increased density so it's the demolition it's the loss of that uh eligible building and to your second point about who makes that determination we've proposed that that be made at that initial review it's the most expeditious

[77:00] way you know within 2 weeks uh with some I think pretty uh good understanding of what the eligibility is uh determining whether there's probable cause to believe the building may be eligible or not um and would just take the opportunity to share that uh in the last year we re reviewed about 130 demolition applications uh 90% of those were approved at the initial level finding those 90% were not eligible for landmark designation just because it's old doesn't mean it's historic can I cqu on that yeah I was going to call yeah go ahead R sorry so I guess I'm wondering in that initial review how many people does it take to um give to essentially sort of like call something up or give it this

[78:02] um to to find it eligible and also um I guess in my understanding having gone through this process before sometimes it feels like things are sometimes deemed eligible because there isn't a complete set of information to go off of and it can be a way to pause while um in order to look deeper into something um it would you say that's correct and if if that happened and then people were to determine that there isn't enough to landm Market would then demolition be allowed so um a couple questions in there first the um who determines that uh or who makes that determination is based on the age of the building so the codee provides that a committee of uh two landmarks board members and one

[79:01] staff member review demolition applications for buildings built before 1940 and it does take just one person to refer an application up to the board of those three and then for applications for buildings that are uh built between 1940 and 1975 that's a staff level review that we make with our um preservation team uh your next question could you please cue that up again sorry okay so just to clarify so one person could say that this is eligible and that would keep this property in perpetuity from being able to add another unit if the building is demolished the you know so yes it it would um be one person uh that could make that determination and then the applicant would have the

[80:00] decision to either continue with the Demolition review process at the landmarks board level or revise their Redevelopment plans to keep at least half of that eligible building in which case they would qualify for the increased density but if they demolish the building they would not qualify for the increased density Okay so add to that a little bit if I may so Brad Mueller uh planning and development services director a key distinction is this is um this is closing what would be a loophole otherwise if somebody unauthorized Dem demoed something so in other words they they did the oops kind of e uh you know oops we demoed it and didn't didn't go through the process to see if it was even eligible that's the only circumstance and and this is me as a stop Gap from people doing that so just wanted to make sure that clarification there I see that as item

[81:01] 983b one is pretty clear but what we're talking right is 983 B2 which seems a little bit different to me um so if this gets flagged by a single person to be eligible and then it goes to the full board and they determine that it is is not eligible for landmark status the applicant still would not be able to demolish this building in the future is that correct so they and do a duplex right they'd be able to demolish it but would not qualify for the increased density I mean to me that seems like a significant issue that we're going to determine that a building ultimately is not eligible for landmark status and still maintain that they cannot create a you know demolish and create a duplex if they desire when we've reviewed this

[82:01] project in further depth and determined again that it's not landmark and one of the options that we did consider was moving that determin determination of Eligibility up to the full landmarks Board review where it is determined and confirmed in a public hearing and made by five members with a uh staff recommendation and we um opted for what we've presented today with the initial review um because it is a a determination that can be made in typically two weeks for the 51 or $280 fee rather than the 4 to six Monon process with a $1,500 fee but there are other mechanisms to make this determination if that's the direction that Council wants to go if we went with and I apologize for diving into the details on this I hope that it's okay with everyone if we were

[83:02] to make it um contingent on the full review of the five individuals you still would potentially have a faster turnaround time right because if it gets brought to the ldrc um committee and it is not not found to be eligible at that point there would be no five body review and it would be allowed to move forward with Demolition and potentially have a duplex right so for for cases where it's clearly not Landmark we wouldn't be adding additional time to those cases we would only be adding time to the determination in cases where it is potentially landm markable and in that case people can't demo it any anyway so adding a little bit of time doesn't seem like a significant issue

[84:02] potentially okay okay thank you for that going down that road with me Marcy thanks for responding all that appreciate it Ryan do you have more no thank you okay I got uh Mark and then Taisha I think I may have oh no Nicole first I missed the hand um thank you and thanks so much for the concise presentation as well um I had H some questions as well about this historic preservation um piece of things and and I I think what I'm wondering is how this works differently from our standard process so is there a consequence if somebody were to raise a single family home that might have historic significance so for example in um the Lamar caring that we just had I thought somebody said that the landmark that we just approved was initially being marketed as a property for a

[85:01] scrape and Redevelopment where the purchasers um you know would have torn down that home to build a new single family home and it sounded like the current owners had saved it from that fate via our standard landmarking process and I guess my question is if someone had torn it down and built something new could they have done that um would there have been a penalty uh would there have been any um you know not allowing them to make it bigger than it was like what's the consequence on a single family home that goes through this process versus um you know somebody wanting to tear something down and put in a duplex or some sort of middle housing thank you so the um City's historic preservation program does have the ability to designate over an owner's objection um but that is done in very very rare cases and so so um for the Sarat kin Woodman house it's very unlikely that that um would have been

[86:01] approved for demolition but that whole process would have taken about 6 to8 months that the landmarks board the landmarks board would have needed to make the difficult decision to initiate over the owner's objection and then it would come to you all uh to make that determination if it was a balance uh with the policies of the comprehensive plan so we see see this familyfriendly vibrant neighborhoods as a catalyst for change right we're adding density into these older neighborhoods and so this is a way to guide that change towards preserving the eligible buildings or allowing for redevelopment in um many ways but dis disincentivizing the demolition of eligible buildings rather than using designation over the owner's objection as the only tool to preserve these uh buildings okay and so I think I'm still

[87:00] trying to understand just that the sort of case where so say somebody had taken the house that we um just landmarked and they had demoed it and it was one of those oops my bad kind of moments would could they have kind of put something back there like what what would be the consequences in that case I guess what I'm concerned about is whether we're setting a different standard for redevelopment for Det single family homes than for Middle housing so if if there's not a sort of um penalty like oh you know shoot single family home you know you you want to build a a bigger single family home now you can't do that because you demoed this one that has historic significance so I'm just trying to understand you know what the um what the analogy is for somebody who did this kind of uh Behavior we're trying to disincentivize with a single family home versus um multif family housing so in both of the cases where they um got permission to demolish an eligible house or uh

[88:03] demolished a house of any age uh without permits they would still be able to build back one unit but they wouldn't be eligible for the increased uh density on those lots but the unit that they would build back could it potentially be bigger than the initial one than than the initial home so yes oh yeah go ahead yeah and the assumption that we used here was that the allowance to build more units would be an potentially an incentive for someone to clear a lot to to be able to build a bigger building uh we didn't really look at it from the sense of a being able to build a a bigger detached dwelling unit um okay yeah thank you that yeah thank you that that answers my question so basically you could raise it say oops my bad and then build back something that was twice as big if it were a single family home but what we're what this would say is um if you raise it and then

[89:02] do the oops my bad um you're kind of limited to building another single family home that's right and it could be as big as you wanted it to be based on other standards well it' be it'd be based on the the existing floor area ratio and coverage no no exactly yeah based on all our other regulations and things but it would still be um okay thank you um and then uh my other question about this one is um did we do engagement on this aspect of the orance around we have um it's been a part oh on this particular on the historic yep yeah yeah yeah not specific this one was just a surprise to me and so I was just wondering if we had done engagement around it yeah there there weren't specific conversations about the you know the language related to demolitions okay other than you know going to housing advisory board and planning board um with the ordinance and so forth okay thank you so much um and I just have a couple more questions that

[90:01] are not related to this um historic piece of it wait can I cqu on this one oh yes yeah go ahead thanks um when we do the oops my bad that Nicole was referring to what are the penalties and fines looking like or is that truly just an oops my bad to borrow Nicole's language sorry it's actually not my language of this oh that's true Marcy do you know what the penalty fees would be for that um you know it um knock on wood it does happen but it happens very rarely there are fines in 911 in chapter 911 um but they are I don't think a very strong deterrent um and uh and luckily we shouldn't um curse ourselves but um I think uh we haven't been faced with that very much though there are um violations pretty regularly that we try and resolve

[91:00] other ways but um we can get that information um about the fines thank you can I cqu on that real quick yes although we've got a long queue of questions still to go so let's try to keep things moving um I just there are things Beyond fines right like I recall that at one point we forced someone to rebuild something that they knocked down and so my understanding is that we have the capacity to um be pretty stringent in our requirements around what people may be required to do if they accidentally knock down something correct me if I'm wrong but if if in that particular example I think that might have been a building that was subject to a plan unit development or site review so in order to comply with their site review they had to build it back to you know a similar design and form I don't know that that would apply you know on a lot that didn't have a PUD or site review

[92:00] but Marcy I don't know if I think um Lauren might be referring to the um Coal Shed or chicken coupa up on Mapleton Hill that council did require the um owners to rebuild after they had asked for permission to demolish it were denied and then demolished it anyway and then Carl you're referring to a house on um near 18th in Canyon that was intended to be saved through site review but then an accident whoops on who knows what happened um during construction the building collapsed and um they were required to reconstruct it um as part of that so um that is typically an approach to say if you take it down put it back uh what it to what it looked like um in addition to the enforcement fines so the the highest of fine can go as 2,000 based on our current code okay good thanks all right and we

[93:02] also do have a pretty long public hearing waiting for so let's let's move through our questions go ahead Nicole back to you thank you may have been the longest cqu ever um just a quick clarification um we're not really seeing in this ordinance we're not seeing any changes to um housing density over what's already allowed in the comprehensive plan right we're not like saying that now an area can be twice as dense as it was or anything like that am I understanding that correctly well basically what what's in the ordinance is what we find to be consistent with the current land use designations in the comp plan so the zoning is required to match that y okay thank you um and then I think too there feels like we there's a little bit of um separate definitions when we're thinking about people density versus housing unit density so we may see some new housing units built but would that really necessarily mean more people so for example the form and bult

[94:00] standards are staying the same so the building can't take up more space than a single family home would so if we take a single family home that's housing five or six workers and turn it into two smaller duplexes that fit in the same space that house two or three workers each are we expecting a big increase in people density in these areas like do we expect a population increase in these areas I think in with the data that we've looked at obviously you know hous housing household sizes have been going down over the last few decades family sizes have been going down so I think there can be an argument made that it does not increase necessarily the number of people on a lot based on that even though the housing unit density might increase in some areas like this okay and then just last clarification um we're still talking about the changes that would unfold over many decades right not like next week my neighbor we're not expecting everyone to like overnight just decide to have a duplex on their lot you know thank you that's

[95:00] it thank you thanks I got Mark and TAA Lauren m in the interest of brever I have one comment and one question uh the comment is I I appreciate um that you're creating land protection um against people who would violate landmarking procedures but I'm really really concerned that there's no penalty um if the if there's f 2 200 square feet excuse me of f available and there's a th000 square foot house on the property um and the um and the developer knocks it down um in inappropriately his penalty is to build a 2500 squ foot single family house is it not it could be plus the the the 2000 fee that I mentioned well a 2500 foot house could be $2.5 million I don't think $2,000 as a penalty is is where

[96:03] you want to be I think you you know if somebody is violating the law um you know if they want to build back the 1,000 sq foot home they originally had I I think that's appropriate but to give them the ability to build back something bigger whether it's a single family um or duplex uh when they have uh you know violated our um our standards it is crazy to me um look there are a lot of developers not all of them I would never have done this myself um whose motto is you know uh ask for forgiveness not for permission and um you know if we're going to have effective landmarking protection there has to be a penalty that's a little more significant than um $2,000 when you're building a $2.5 million

[97:01] house I'll just add that you know this is obviously a condition that exists not as a result of the of the ordinance you know someone under today's regs might find that they could build a bigger house and decide to demolish the smaller house to get there it wouldn't be a result of this this ordinance I'm saying that that's something that we have to be cognizant of now I'm I'm just saying that that you might want to tighten this up for landmarking real landmarking protection so that a developer doesn't decide I'd rather pay the penalty knock it down and you know the worst you can do to me is tell me to use the F available on the site to build a single family Mansion um a lot of people will do that my and my question is uh you seem to have rejected all possibilities for tying the development of duplexes to affordability why was that um and there

[98:01] are various things that have been proposed but you seem to have um declined to do any of them or declined to recommend any of them I think some of the analyses that we've had done in the past by market um consultant was that if we start putting deed restrictions on added units it it doesn't create an in an incentive for adding the unit so it' be a low likelihood that people would do it to deed restrict um so obviously what this project is intended to do is to loosen up the code so that more housing can be added you know more expeditiously over time uh that's that's the reason why we didn't include that there's also a lot of administrative challenges with monitoring deed restriction on on Lots um until there's an actual incentive to do it we felt like it it wasn't wasn't appropriate as part of this okay I I'll accept that for the moment I'll

[99:00] address it in my comments in a bit thank you thanks we get TAA and then man thank you um my question was just about some of the environmental benefits and impacts to um to this proposal um and so just was curious if the team had consulted or rather if you have some additional things to share around um you know one of the benefits for example could be shared infrastructure how that helps to conserve water and energy um um you know helping to prevent sprawl which obviously helps our with our habitat and Wildlife corridors um just you know would love to kind of hear a little bit of more always about water and energy because there is an intersection here and there is an impact to these decision to this particular decision yeah we we coordinated uh with utilities folks about water usage obviously you know the the number of units that we're proposing

[100:01] in this case is still within the the um limits of the current comp plan it's really when you start changing areas to allow a substantial number of additional units where there has to be an eye towards is their upsizing of of pipes or water usage how how that gets done they they look at it more holistically through the comp plan process we did consult with them on this project it wasn't something that they were concerned about uh they felt with with any project that we're working on you know the environment is top of mind so in this case you know allowing more housing in a in a tighter area encourages walkability it can encourage Transit use it can um you know encourage people to change Lifestyles to be able to live closer to where they work things like that so those are the things that we're kind of trying to balance as part of this right but we do know that there are efficiencies around having solar panels for example on homes

[101:02] and that would have a energy uh impact so you know I just Googled like you know Google sorry I you know control F to just make sure I didn't miss but shared infrastructure in there because that does have an impact it also has an affordability impact as well um and um similar with with just the spraw aspect as well so you know in by increasing the um you know number of units and potentially although I do hear um unicol on on the um number of people in the units but I am seeing an increase in multif family and particularly as a um well the daughter although my my mother lives with my brother but my larger point is is as Elder Care um continu to increase in our community um you know having those types of options um are going to become more and more attractive I know they were for my family um and so I would love to I would have loved to

[102:00] have seen more but I'll I will save the rest for my comments thank you Aon I think you're muted I'm just trying to call on you Matt thank you for pointing that out your turn appreciate it um my question Carl for one some great questions from you all and kind of I was able to easily check off most of them so I got one left um it dub Tails a little bit with what Nicole was asking um and do we have a rough sense in our rl1 zoned or sing you know our single detached single family zoned areas how many of those properties get sort of scraped each year to you know have a have a newer bigger home built on them do we have any sort of sense of what that like yearly rate is I don't have that in front of me um it's something that we looked at as part of the large homes and

[103:00] lots project that was done in 2018 I think we did have some data on that um I don't have a recollection of what that number is though all right well may another way to ask is do you anticipate uh given the limited area that that um part of this would impact that given the option now if one is to uh convert the house now if it's a split level and they want to keep the existing and make it a duplex yeah that's awesome that that's the best of both worlds but if they were to scrape they get a forked Road opportunity right and one could build a bigger larger home or one you could build a duplex do you see that rate being a wash between the two I mean because I'm wondering are we giving like an equal choice now I so I'm just sort of wondering how do you how how do you value that going forward in terms of that that sort of turnover so to speak on maybe a yearly basis the same as scraping and turning a single family or or less so or more so with regards to a duplex opportunity yeah um it's hard to assess I I think it'd be different in different

[104:01] areas of the city I I think in areas where there's housing stock that's you know getting a little bit older that's not necessarily worthy of preservation there there might be a desire to just scrape it and rebuild it um but obviously there's a lot of resources with having to uh rebuild on a site but certainly people do have been doing it for to build bigger houses so I mean there could be quite an incentive to to rebuild rather than retrofit uh but again it depends on the housing type or the style how easy it is to convert a single family house to a a duplex really depends on the layout uh of a building but we have heard interest from folks that you know they would like to be able to make those internal uh conversions to to get a duplex rather than demolishing uh but I don't have a frame of reference to to what degree that that would uh would be all right I I guess I mean my question

[105:01] really was just trying to get a just to wrap our head around like how fast this change may occur and I think that was sort of centered where Nicole was I was trying to try it from a different approach but this is this is many years to decades for this to have a slow turn is what I understand yeah I mean with the changes that were done like for the ordinance in 2023 like I think that question came up as did we get a lot of duplexes and to my knowledge we only got like one proposal but obviously those are on larger Lots um so I think in this case we would probably see a little bit more but again it would be I think it would be more measured o over the long term thanks Carl appreciate it laen thank you um so you talked a little bit about not changing the sort of envelope at all and I just wanted to check in on one thing I noticed in the

[106:00] rmx1 lot uh rules that there is an exemption that's been removed in both side yard wall articulation um and side yard bulk plane where it used to be that um multifam structures were not um required to comply with those rules and typically the way I've seen that used in the city is that also properties adjacent um don't necessarily have to comply with those rules but that being a removal it seems like actually we're if anything slightly shrinking the buildable area that people are allowed um through this well I mean the reason those requirements were were not applied to multif family buildings is because it would have made a lot of multi-building multif family buildings in the rmx1 zone nonstandard so in this case the original

[107:04] goals of the project were to apply the same form and bulk standards as apply to detach dwelling units in order to preserve that scale and character in the neighborhood so that that's why we change that part of the code to not exempt out the multif family buildings and the result of that is that we are tightening in some cases the amount of we're reducing actually the amount that people can build to some it would be reduced from if you compare it to like existing apartment buildings that exist in that neighborhood yes okay thank you um I also just cuz Tina asked about bedrooms and lot sizes I did look really quickly at an rmx1 average lot which is like 7,200 square feet which gives you

[108:01] two dwelling units and with our current F you could build all like 3,800 square feet so close to 2,000 foot a dwelling unit which is like a four-bedroom unit in case that helps thanks that's it sorry that's not a question just informational Lauren with the math okay all right well thanks for all the great questions everybody it's now time for us to move to our public hearing we've got 34 people signed up to speak um each speaker will have two minutes I'll call three names at a time so please be ready to speak when your name is called our first three speakers are well we need to do our um actually our um open comment well that that this is not open comment let me ask Elicia do you feel like we need to read our public participation guidelines or is that not necessary at this

[109:01] point I think we should read them but we have some that are geared toward just doing the virtual meetings but we don't have the same challenges virtually as we do in person so that call is up to you if you'd like me to read them I'll be happy to please do all right give me just a second to pull them up thank you got you on the spot there all right Emily's done in for me she's so great thank you Emily all right so good evening everyone and thank you for joining us I will now go over the public participation at council meeting guidelines 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 exper experiences and political perspectives for more information about this vision and the community engagement processes please visit our website at bouldercolorado.gov

[110:02] servicesproducts and individuals must display their whole names before being allowed to speak online currently only audio testimony is permitted online our remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to City business no participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person ofinity other epithets based on race gender or religion and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the meeting will not be

[111:01] tolerated thank you for listening and thank you for joining us so much for that elua all right uh let's go to our first three speakers who are Rishi Raj Kim Harmon and Emily Reynolds can you hear me yes okay thank you yeah so yeah my name is Rishi Raj and um and me and my wife we lived on we live on 14th Street and um um I think the council does not quite appreciate the degree of frustration and anger that the citizens are feeling about this ordinance you know I mean they the staff and you are the political body you are supposed to hear our our concerns and Implement into laws and I think that is not happening that is not happening and you

[112:01] know I mean take the title of this ordinance vibrant and familyfriendly neighborhoods that's the title of the ordinance we will all laugh at it I mean this is not what the ordinance is about is the ordinance about destroying neighborhoods not making them more vibrant so I think there's a real sort of Disconnect between um the council and the citizens and I'm not and and as I heard this discussion between you and the staff you know you I mean you don't understand quite what the ordinance is there's a lot of concern about uh historic and landmarking etc etc but all of that concerns is kind kind of camouflaged into comp into very complex rules which are not which is very

[113:00] difficult for citizens to understand and to be vigilant about them so I think this ordinance should be sheld for the time being and the council needs to do a greater diligence to make it simpler so the citizens can understand what is going on right now they don't and they're very frustrated I can tell you that the anger is bubbling over the I think there's also a fundamental problem your time is up but but thank you for your testimony all right now we're going to go to kimman Harmon Emily Reynolds and Brian Keegan hello can you hear me yes okay good hi uh thanks for taking the time to discuss this um I would ask that you stop look around and listen so stop trying to rezone our single family

[114:00] neighborhood I'm feeling like Ukraine trying to fight off Russia we just want to live how we have lived and in a neighborhood where I know my neighbors and have Progressive dinners together and not be inundated with more people more cars more noise so stop look around and see all the building and planned building going on there's Ville there's the old Best Western the old Millennium 17th and ta see you South everywhere so much housing is being built with no regards for increased traffic or more water being used we need the water to fight fires we need space between houses so wild fire wild does not spread so look around listen to what we are saying disregarding the survey which resulted in a no response tells me you will do what you want not what the people want there is no evidence that allowing duplexes and triplexes to supplant

[115:02] single family homes will make it more affordable for the middle none what there is evidence of is that landlords were CH will charge what the market will bear so we have no occupancy limits now how many more people do you want to jam into one space what kind of quality of life will that provide we do not have enough police right now to serve those of us here how will it be any better with more people it won't so listen to us thank you thank you now we have Emily Reynolds Brian Keegan and Oliver Dickus your mic is unmuted you will need to press star six to

[116:07] unmute can you repeat those instructions please absolutely Emily if you're looking to unmute you will need to press star six on your phone that's star six I think we're still muted on your side star six all right not coming through let's come back to Emily we will definitely come back to you and figure this out but let's move on for now to Brian Keegan then Oliver Dicken and Elaine d hello councel can you hear me yes good evening uh thank you for this opportunity uh I just want to note I'm

[117:00] speaking only my personal capacity and My Views don't represent any organization tonight we will witness a fascinating example of Homer onerous oppos asaurus in the wild modest land use changes like ordinance 866 allows to observe how these pack Hunters defend their territory and cooperate to take down slow moving policies because honorous oppos asaurus has not one majorities through elections they instead attempt to influence policy through shows of force at unrepresentative public hearings like this one the species shares common traits like being older wealthier and wider property owners that are not representative of most Boulder residents but there's also strong interdisciplinary scientific consensus that their stubborn defense of status quo land use policies has harmful intersecting and long-term social and economic and ecological consequences because you have already and will continue to hear demands tonight to prioritize concerns over the interests of the majority of the voters who elected you please remember council member Wall's advice from July quote

[118:00] your emails and petitions are part of a form letter campaign and as such are not terribly weighty to me your letters are merely a rehash of older long discredited claims and are therefore even further discredited your complaints have little to no substance accordingly I do not think your campaign has much Merit unquote while Homer onerous oppos asaurus are easily startled they will soon be back in greater numbers especially for the Boulder Valley comprehensive Plan update Council please pass ordinance 8666 and charge your staff and boards to identify additional options to add more housing choices throughout Boulder thank you Council and staff for your work to invest in creating a more inclusive and resilient future for Boulder thank you thanks now we will go to Oliver tousen Elaine Dana Miller and St stoa hi can everyone hear me yes awesome

[119:01] hi my name is Oliver Dicken I live in Mapleton Hill um these opinions are my own and don't reflect any outside organization um I wanted to voice my support for the ordinance and thanks City staff for their work in the proposal I strongly believe that this change will be both an incremental and empowering change that not only can create much needed housing but will create the conditions in which this housing can be created in a bottom up fashion the scale of the project of these projects individual duplexes or triplexes either they be converting an existing structure doing additions or a brand new structure are things that individual families or small Builders could fashion themselves as oppos as opposed to much of the recent development that has happened in Boulder I'm not opposed to those projects but I do believe that smaller development will be better able to scale be built by those in the community and be more sensitive to the wants and desires of

[120:00] neighbors and Residences already in the neighborhoods I do not believe that this change would come without tradeoffs and but I do believe that most of the negative consequences can be either mitigated or eliminated by separate policy prescriptions this change will give families flexibility and tools to furnish their properties as they see fit while also giving more housing options to those looking to build a home in Boulder Boulder was originally created by a multitude of small actors that created Homes apartments by themselves um this process grew started off small and then created the great community that we know today this process has mostly been unavailable to Boulder residences of modern times but I believe that this change can be a small step in the direction of restoring Boulder in a way that is organic resilient and co-created by its residents thank

[121:00] you thank you now let's go to Elaine danam Miller Valerie stoa and Alex RADS good evening Council um once again you're not listening to the community feedback on this I read the documents I agree with the first speaker that like uh occupancy you're probably going to just ignore the will of the voters when I looked at your charts you only have 28% of the people who fully support this plan and I read the feedback comments and uh your documents say that the feedback from the community shows that many in the community remain skeptical of this plan I would say they're not just skeptical I would say they're adamantly opposed to it and if you put this to a vote the vote would probably reflect the outcome similar to uh the community feedback that you got you'd probably get a third of the people supporting it people don't want this you're going to some of it is eliminating open space which is sacred

[122:02] in Boulder uh you're eliminating parking requirements and in some other documents I read staff doesn't anticipate Adverse Events from eliminating parking and therein lies the problem in Boulder entirely with some of the recent projects that you all have done when you've ignored Community feedback you didn't anticipate Adverse Events now I heard Carl guer say they're going to uh do that as a separate parking is going to be a separate project but this is being presented to the P this is a trojan horse being presented to the public as a gift but really it's just a a way to sneak greedy developers and private Equity investors into the city to destroy it uh so listen to the people listen to the feedback between this you're overturning the will of the voters on occupancy and your new Adu requirements uh you've just this is a trojan horse for and a gift for

[123:01] developers they're going to love it all right thank you have a good night thank you now we have Valerie stoa Alex RADS and Mary Maxwell hi um I object to propose to ordinance 8666 and request a pause um I have lived on the Hills since the 60s and by the way I'm a preschool par educator I don't have a lot of money three years ago the single family house across the alley from me sold in less than a week for a little under $3 million now it is occupied by students the rent is about $10,000 a month the alley gets filled with unsecured trash which I literally drive over on my way to work and I also see rats exploring

[124:00] the trash and then there are the parties on the hill and see you adjacent neighborhoods densification simply equals more students and I have nothing against them um 8666 would finish the route of this historic neighborhood Hood I'd really like you to reconsider um and I would like to quote um Nancy blackwood's um letter to Mayor Brockett this ordinance would result in anything but familyfriendly neighborhoods families can't compete with investors it will not create affordability and stability and the loss of owners will discourage long-term investment in our neighborhoods um I Nancy Blackwood have lived on un University Hill for 49 years I raised my daughter here when there were enough families to support our now struggling Elementary School I have

[125:02] worked tirelessly to advocate for our neighborhood which is true for over 25 years to maintain a balance between the transient student population and the permanent residents family seniors and by the way I'm giving care to my father in our home um your time is up thank you for your testimony all right our next three speakers are Alex RADS Mary Maxwell and J saraj hi can you hear me yes awesome um yeah so I'm Alex RADS uh I'm the external student body president for CU Boulder as well as University Hill resident uh and I represent over 37,000 students in support of this ordinance uh I believe it's an important step step towards addressing housing affordability supporting students economic contributions and advancing B Boulders carbon neutral goals uh

[126:00] students make up 31% of Boulder's population but are disproportionately affected by its high high housing costs uh rent increases by 133% annually on average the one bedroom one-bedroom apartment costs $2,400 and rent on University Hill exceeds an average of $1,500 a month many students such as myself live in over credit homes with poor upkeep enduring financial and physical stress just to stay in Boulder as students are priced out of Boulder seeking housing options in neighboring towns there will be a decrease in the $637 million that students contribute to the local economy annually small businesses in particular depend on University students um to survive and the environmental impact of displacing students would also be significant many students live close to campus walking or biking to reduce missions and more student commuters would add cars to the road undermining Boulder's climate goals as well as increasing traffic congestion and the reality is that students make up a

[127:01] significant part of the Boulder Community on University Hill 92% of the housing is rented and predominantly by students um we are legal residents of Boulder and we do deserve a voice in shaping its future and so I ask all of you to consider your constituents when making this decision students enrich Boulders economy culture and sustainability efforts and the university is here to stay and students deserve a place in the city that we do love so thank you for your time and consideration and have a good night thank now we have Mary Maxwell Jes Naraj and Eric B mayor I do not see Mary online tonight maybe we'll take this moment to give Emily Reynolds another try see if we can get her online Emily good evening Council can you hear me thanks very

[128:02] much um you've got two neighborhoods that are trying to opt out of your ordinance already before it's fast somehow city council isn't able to hear what thousands of Boulder rites are saying we voted down bedrooms and you unceremoniously and undemocratically reversed our vote and publicly compared those of us who had just spoken about limiting development to the January 6th insurrectionist in DC who tried to overturn the US government in a coup attempt you call your latest density idea familyfriendly and vibrant I call it noisy disruptive and causing a boatload of problems for neighborhoods receiving hundreds of emphatically negative comments on your survey you

[129:02] conclude your own survey is bogus and dismiss the devastatingly negative comments and results even kids disagree with you the dominant theme in the children's comments in the Daily Camera a few days ago was about the destructive development C Council continues to encourage a 14-year-old says I would like to address the problem of overdevelopment in Boulder I've watched so many beautiful natural areas disappear beneath huge towering apartment buildings with a residential vacancy rate of 8.8% according to S City figures and thousands of units in the pipeline it's time to pull back and assess development in terms of our carrying capacity and enjoyment of nature enough of the so-called Progressive machine that needs to pave over all of Boulder what is it going to take to get you to represent us

[130:02] thank you thank you our next three speakers are J saraj Eric bud and Lisa Sweeney Moran yes um um I am jna Raj and I live at 86314 Street on the hill and we already live in what is a sustainable neighborhood for us my husband teaches at the University he can walk to work most of my activities I can do by walking to where I want to go and I do not see that there will be any greater vibrancy of family friendliness added to our neighborhood by this open door to development which is not going to produce affordable housing in the long run as has been

[131:01] stated in this conversation there is no requirement for affordable housing permanently and so all we are doing is giving up our neighborhoods with beautiful character my own neighborhood is completely historic and in fact I would say the whole hill is is deserving of historic designation and then when you decide to give up these areas to incessant development to incentivize expensive housing this is not going to be affordable development I do not think that you are listening to the people who actually live here and want to live here and live here in a sustainable way to enjoy our neighborhoods and our open space and our beautiful natural environment thank you thank you now we have Eric Bud Lisa

[132:03] Sweeny Moran and Chan Trussell hi thank you Council uh Eric bud I live in Boulder um I just wanted to say that the the familyfriendly vibrant neighborhoods is such an important step forward for Boulder these changes are modest they're incremental and they don't allow homes that are any larger than what we have today I just want to make a few notes on the various policies um on allowing additional housing or Transit Council should definitely consider increasing the proposed range of 350 feet from transit corridors for reference the state law will encourage increased housing for as much as a quarter mile from transit so we can certainly do more here the reduced permitting process for 100% affordable projects is a huge Improvement um you all know that time is money and reducing the overhead of these projects will reduce the cost increase

[133:03] the supply of permanently affordable housing and save the city money we should do even more to reduce the time it takes to get these projects permitted and built we have a severe lack of permanently affordable housing and Boulder lastly landmarks is an important program but this but as this ordinance is written one member of the landmarks board or a staff member can state that a property is potentially eligible for landmarking and that that initial determination prevents the subdivisional of a lot without any due process for the property owner and I have a fair amount of experience seeing how this happens as a former chair of the landmarks board and I think that aspect needs to be addressed and I thank you for talking about that and I I look forward to your conversation uh later in the meeting thank you so much thank you now we have Lisa Sweeney Moran Jen Trussell and Evan rabbits hi Council Lisa Sweeney Moran

[134:02] here um I'm so glad you all are doing this and while it's important it's also very modest change there's nothing that should really be controversial about any of this it's a shame that there's been some disinformation about something so straightforward and helpful and I do hope that the few local voices of opposition will take the time to understand what's actually happening here because everyone in our city can be glad for these changes and the opportunities they represent so you all have been dealing with a lot during public comments lately and I'd like to keep this short and sweet in recognition of your hard work I'll end by just saying thank you for getting this year for a vote tonight and thank you in advance for supporting and passing it thank you now we have Jen Trestle Evan rabbits and Evan FR can you hear me yes uh good evening Council my name is Jan Trussell and I live in Martin acres and have so for over 30 years in the early 90s I lived in several apartment

[135:01] complexes throughout Boulder I had two roommates we all had jobs and two of us had several we decided we wanted to escape the noise parking issues constant rotation of tenants above below and beside us and the stringent rules that came along with living in an apartment complex we found a rle home in Martin ACR with a spacious backyard friendly neighbors and most important peace and quiet as the years passed roommates came and went we secured higher paying jobs and some of us married I was one of them my husband and I struck a deal with our landlord and we bought the house we had been living in for almost 10 years fast forward 20 years later and I'm now divorced and still living in the house we purchased I will be retiring in the next few years and will not be staying in Boulder as it has become far too expensive in the quality of life has diminished considerably it is unfair to ask those of us that have invested our life savings into our homes to give up the quality of life that we fought so

[136:00] hard to secure I'm curious why other neighborhoods and bold are not under the same scrutiny upzoning a low density neighborhood does not make it more family friendly in fact it makes it less so families do not want to live in apartments nor do they wish to rent they want to own homes with backyards and quiet low density neighborhoods Boulder contain continues to push for more density increasing property taxes more government control packing more people into the city to generate revenue and ultimately the destruction of our single family neighborhoods there's nothing vibrant or familyfriendly about this proposal why does city council priori prioritize developers and investors over longtime residents I'm asking city council to reconsider ordinance 66 866 it is a destructive policy for Martin acres and Boulder in general thanks thank you now we have Evan revitz Evan frck and Chris mcer

[137:02] Cunningham hi council is making a similar mistake as made about 15 years ago when will tour and mon cows were on Council they told us we needed more density to quote make Transit work but the devil is in the detail now as then there are no new measures to make new housing affordable so they allowed tall luxury apartments to be built along Canyon Boulevard Etc each has a $50,000 underground parking space each with an expensive car these people don't take local buses they make traffic worse and privatize the flat iron views their units now block from us downtown the good reason for more housing is to reduce the 60,000 in commuters who can't afford to live here

[138:02] but without affordability the luxury units that again result will go to Upper income people who mostly drive more rich people will in increase the price of everything further increasing inequality Transit will work when most local routs use 15 passenger vans instead of the mostly empty 43 passenger buses that cost five times as much use four times as much fuel and dramatically damage our pathetic roads the final nail in the coffin of what councilman Steve pomeran called the Big Bus Empire is ebikes which are far faster and cheaper than bus and fun my ebike has taken me 5,000 miles in 4 years for a total of 20 bucks of electricity and $10 for brake

[139:02] pads please redo this with incentives for affordability thank you thank you now we have Evan frck Christa Krueger Cunningham and Laura Osborne hi this is Evan cish I live in the lower Hill I live in multif family housing um I live not too far from the library um uh I live in a condominium development with 15 units um there are no families in there they're all two bedroom 1,200 s foot units older uh they rent for about $3,000 a month the lower rents are because it's an older building all right the poster child of your project is the duplex across the street from the library I'm sure you've all been to the library looked across the street and saw the duplex which maybe you even authoriz those are $2.4 million

[140:02] each each half that's really what you're talking about here and um uh Mark mik made a comment earlier that really this this uh proposal is not connected at all to the really really big issue of affordable housing because from what I understand about this Council you believe that if you build more things will get cheaper around here you don't think Boulder is kind of aspin light where that really doesn't work so basically while you're in office your goal is to build as much as possible and unfortunately you have no evidence that shows that what you believe actually works here in Boulder I think that this proposal has some Merit in the sense of increasing density I've never been opposed to development I I support density but I also recognize

[141:01] that the problem that needs to be addressed foremost is affordability look at your rules regarding adus and affordability as a hint on how you could amend this proposal to guarantee that there's some level of affordability in there because if you let the Market determine it you'll get more projects like across the street from the library time is for testimony and has Kima Krueger Cunningham joined us I do not see Kima online tonight okay so let's go to Laura Osborne then deian Fuji and L SE can you hear me yes okay I live at 82810 Street and I've lived here since the late 70s at 9661 this used to be a house that was

[142:01] owned by two University professors and they had two small children well they move to seventh in Cascade and they are renting it out beginning January and in their ad it says suitable for for a five to six student group want to be on the hill no one block from the crazy Zone this was our family home one year ago this is the rent 8350 a month $ 8,350 they will be bringing in $100,000 A year had they rent this to a family the maximum they probably could have gotten was $55,000 a month so they are making $40,000 more by renting this to five or six students um this is what's happening the greedy landlords are taking over the hill people who are living here in

[143:02] family homes are deserted I know these people they got sick of their neighbors so they put all their money into a house seven seventh in Cascade this is what your new plan of familyfriendly is doing to our neighborhoods thank you thank you now we have Dean Fuji Lyn seagull and Henry Corin mayor I do not see Dean on line tonight all right ly seagull you're up Lisa and Eric Eric bed and Lisa Sweeney Marin you need to learn about something called rental back Securities and private Equity lenders you don't know the first thing how dare you tell the rest of this

[144:01] community that's opposed to this hostile friendly situation here let's not have personal aspersions of other testif excuse me this is my time you take your own time you've got plenty of it that's what we need in Boulder is these un intelligent or unwilling to Face Reality people that are driving these policies that are so not okay the whole planning board is Shock full of them except for jorie Boon um this is a pitiful situation the Limelight The Moxy see you South planning Reserve diagonal Plaza Macy pellos one thing after another yes it's funny isn't it terara it's funny you know wait until you can't afford to be here either or any of us and you know what it is up the street from me at 71 years old 40,000 bucks a month at 311

[145:01] Mapleton yeah that's something to look forward to all of you folks um first of all free Palestine free Palestine okay now this is an open space issue here do you know how much in deficit we are in our open space and you're willing to cut open space for all of these um this pronatalism this Elon Musk pronatalism policy that's been in with this city of Boulder for decades now that I've watched now now uh Elon has put a name to it prenatal ISM I mean pronatalism have as many kids kids kids kids family family family it's not family it's numbers and those numbers Drive hard thank you for your testimony okay now we've got uh Henry Corin Margaret LMP and Michael

[146:00] broer my name is Henry Corin I live with my family and Table Mesa I'll speak in support of this ordinance I'm going to recommend two interviews from Boulder's Carnegie Library oral history project first listen to the 1972 interview of Ruth cave flower is the first African-American gra graduate of CU Boulder she moved here 100 years ago right after the dissolution Boulders chapter of the KKK Ruth shared her experience of multiple forms of discrimination she was subject to including red lining which restricted her housing choice to the grass grve neighborhood next listen to the 2002 interview of Bob melie one of the founders of plann Boulder County who helped establish the green belt in blue line Bob eventually moved out of B Boulder because his daughter couldn't find housing here he said Boulder had become an upper middle class ghetto I don't think those who are defending low density zoning are willfully or maliciously carrying the cross of white supremacy but I do believe that many aspects of our zoning evolve from racist redlining anyone who walks around our neighborhoods has seen numerous homes that have been buil rebuilt into modern luxury Mansions these multi-million

[147:00] dollar residences are attainable only by the wealthy they may be one of multiple residences that these people enjoy traveling between this leads to quieter less vibrant neighborhoods the school age population of Boulder is declining at an alarming rate of 1.5% per year the construction of Apartments cannot keep up with the emptying of nests if you are not wealthy enough to afford single family homes or expensive apartments that subsidize affordable housing with cash and lo fees you are cooked if your income is not high enough to qualify for subsidized housing you are cooked Beyond The Limited stock of subsidized affordable housing our city is hostile to all but the wealthiest of families only mid missing middle housing will solve this which is what vibrant neighborhoods aims to provide this ordinance provides options for people who want to improve utilization of their low density properties you could downsize into a duplex unit alongside another family my goal is that in two or three decades I will be able to have my children and grandchildren live near me even if this ORD incidence is implemented it will be difficult for my dreams to be achieved I believe these

[148:00] reasonable changes will make the difference between it being difficult and impossible thanks to the city council and staff thank you now we have Margaret LMP Michael broer and Diane Connelly good evening I'm Margaret at LM um I have a bunch of questions please understand this un this ordinance doesn't reduce Boulders lack of affordable and low-income housing why because it has no caps on rentals and sales prices for any new residential units without them this ordinance results will be more unaffordable housing and increase profits for landlords and developments developers Boulder has an inelastic housing market building more housing won't produce cheaper housing when will Council install price caps on housing costs so people like teachers shopkeepers Healthcare and service workers like police and firefighters and all the

[149:01] people who fix and repair and prepare and deliver all the services the community needs can live here especially those with families why is Council anti-family families are the Bedrock of any community and its schools they can't live in adus tiny homes or highdensity minuscule work Force housing apartments with no space for children pets kids toys sports equipment or tools or yards for play spaces Gardens and places to socialize and be neighborly and families are being driven out of Boulder why does council Target already existing familyfriendly vibrant neighborhoods as Leonard seagull and other speakers tonight have described them when there are thousands of new housing units already being built under construction or being planned Boulder Junction Pine Balsam diagonal Plaza East Boulder and South arapo do these create the missing middle housing is there something anti-am about

[150:00] these developments should this be re rethought why does council voice its evidence-free often un un often proven ineffective projects on Boulder citizens without sufficient Community input when will it listen to Serious feedback is it afraid of opposition position this is disrespectful Council should rethink this ordinance but thank you for your testimony okay um now we've got Michael Brer Diane Connelly and Rosie fiban Michael your mic is open you will want to press star six to unmute Michael are you able to hit star six to

[151:09] unmute all right let's come back to you and so we'll go to Dian Connelly and I do not see Diane online tonight okay that brings us to Rosie fibian then hello there can you hear me yes okay um I'm speaking for myself tonight not any organization I support ordinance 8666 and hope Council will vote in favor of the 550 foot option the ipcc recommends simple Ur urban planning measures like increasing density by developing along public transportation corridors as one of six steps we can take to combat

[152:01] climate change I appreciate all the hard work and heavy lifting that staff planning board Hab Council and so many community members have put into this detailed ordinance I recall being at the state capital A couple of years ago alongside many people that are here tonight to speak up in favor of creating addition missing middle housing along Transportation corridors to start to take action on our Statewide housing crisis the amount of time energy and study everyone involved has invested in this effort is priceless and out of respect for everyone's time it costs nothing to vote in favor of these changes tonight and it costs a lot to start again so we should seize the opportunity for change tonight the predictable arguments of neighborhood opposition read like the same script in every town across America and make it so so that state Solutions are needed and it's easy to

[153:00] forget that this ordinance and planning is about the future is much more about the future residence than it is about the residents today thank you very much good night thank you now we have Daniel Howard Claudia theme and Chelsea castalano uh hi this is Daniel Howard again um have presentation slide viewable for you all um just going over some of the slides we presented last time uh but the and I didn't get to cover next slide um so again you know ghg emissions and vmts are lower within Urban centers and neighborhoods close to daily needs and services versus higher at City boundaries and lower density census tracks you see this at this image here and we're trying to encourage building Within These lower ghg emission areas where people have the opportunity to contribute less to climate change next slide another important factor especially considering the LA fires of this past week uh is that fire risk is much lower within the city boundaries as opposed to at the edge and boundaries where a lot of Housing Development tends

[154:01] to be located as populations increases this also includes neighboring cities where boundaries which lack open space has development most concentrated so that tou that housing does not infill essentially creates more fire risk as that demand is pushed into Wildland interfaces and thus also increases all current residents insurance cost and general exposure to disaster next slide another example even to Showcase specifically in Denver is a lot two lots were between the two of them but one was a single family zon and one was a multi family zoned uh the tendency today in most of Boulder that does see say buildings being demolished and rebuilt is it rebuilt into the right uh structure being a MC Mansion single family house but if you can allow duplex buildings you at least allow cheaper to duplex units at least for that might be more attainable there still expens but it's incremental as a change that we're I'm supporting next slide um another thing with the distance from transit cor corridors uh no sorry next slide um the

[155:01] uh with dist of Transit corridors uh you know 550 fet is less than half the distance expected for the HB 1313 Transit oriented communities bill from the state um you know I've supported 550 but keep in mind that we might need to update this to keep to to match with the CML requirement uh in the future uh next Slide the following slides are uh various examples of existing multi multiplexes across Boulder here's a small College courot collection next slide you just kind of SL slice through these exactly um there's a flex uh there's an uning duplex right there your your time is up but thank you for your testimony okay now we're going to go to uh Claudia theme and then Chelsea castalano and Michael Mills but let's not start the timer going until our next Speaker gets started please thank you I'm here go ahead good evening Council this is Claudia Hansen theme I'm a member of the planning board but speaking in a

[156:00] personal capacity tonight earlier this week the planning board approved a subdivision of five large Lots adjacent to a bus route and literally across the street from an under enrolled Elementary School in North Boulder and under our current rules we can expect five jumbo detached weldings to be built on this infill site when you need to do better and the ordinance before you is a step in the right direction as a board member I've seen the thoughtful work planning staff has done to develop recommendations that both create housing potential and respect the guidance in the current version of the comp plan staff's updated analysis of Transit corridors exemplifies this work and I hope you'll consider the larger 550 foot zone for duplexes and additional detached dwellings that it makes possible allowing middle housing within a 2 to three minute walk of bus service is Simply Good planning practice and should not be a cause for heartache I'm familiar with the push back you're receiving against portions of these code changes to me it feels like we've reached a point where our housing ecosystem is so hollowed out

[157:01] that many people don't even recognize the concept of middle housing if it's not a traditional single family house then it must be a boxy highly capitalized apartment complex and one which looms even larger in the imagination the unfamiliar duplex becomes the death of neighborhoods really middle housing makes wise use of existing infrastructure and limited environmental resources it puts people closer to the schools local businesses and other community institutions that we are at risk of losing and it creates good habitat for people needing or seeking alternatives to the two poles of housing types that our land use code currently allows ordinance 8666 is sensible modest and long overdue and I hope you will support a strong version of it tonight thank you thank you now we have Chelsea Castellano Michael Mills and making

[158:03] HS hello Chelsea Castellano I am speaking in support of the ordinance before you and for the potential to create even more vibrant neighborhoods where a diverse group of people can Thrive and while there is a case for even Bolder action than what is proposed here tonight this is an important step and I celebrate you for your leadership and making it happen while I'm here in my personal capacity I bring my experience being a landmarks board member and would like to draw your attention to an issue with exception number two for reducing the minimum lot area square footage requirement for dwelling which states that you can't take advantage of that reduced law area if probable cause for historic designation is determined in the initial part of the review process this decision happens early in the process at ldrc on Wednesday mornings where two board members and one staff member are present there's no public hearing and it only requires one of those three people to say that there's probable cause for designation for this exception to be triggered and this happens after a brief presentation from staff and vague

[159:00] criteria that could easily be weaponized to prevent neighborhood Evolution what this means is you can go through the rigorous Landmark review process and get full board approval for demolition but you can't take advantage of the reduced lot size requirements meaning you could demolish the property but instead of building two to three more affordable housing units you could only build one large more expensive single family home which is the exact opposite outcome of what this ordinance aims to achieve and there should not be a process where one board member or staff member has the power to determine that with zero public engagement or recourse for the property owner in summary my recommendation is to delete that second exception as the current Landmark process already preserves properties that are historically significant and we don't need additional barriers to achieving our housing goals thank you thank you now we have Michael Mills Mak Kohl's and Scott McCary good evening council members this is Michael Mills I'm a member of tab but

[160:01] speaking for myself I live in South Boulder in a neighborhood zoned rl1 where single family detached homes are the norm tonight I'm speaking in strong support of ordinance 8666 and urging you to adopt this thoughtful step toward addressing Boulder's housing crisis the ordinance provides homeowners with more options to create modest middle-income housing which is exactly what Boulder needs to remain inclusive and vibrant as a community by allowing duplexes in areas like mine we're not changing the size or scale of what's already allowed we're simply making better use of the existing space to provide attainable housing options for families young professionals and seniors I want to take this opportunity to endorse increasing the eligibility distance for duplexes along bus carers from 350 ft to 550 ft expanding this distance would align with Boulders values of Transit Orient to development

[161:00] and compact land use while enabling more properties to support housing that meets the need of middle inome residents in my rl1 neighborhood where Transit access is limited this change would be especially impactful as the city council memo highlights we are losing schoolage children young families and middle-income residents at an alarming rate without bold action we risk becoming a city accessible only to The Wealthy by adopting ordinance 8666 and expanding the eligibility distance for duplexes you're making a meaningful commitment to keeping Boulder a place where people of all incomes and life stages can Thrive thank you for your leadership on this issue thank you now we have Mak CO's Scot car and Nick agilo good evening Council there's an urgent need for missing middle housing

[162:00] that's the type of housing small scale that is circled on this drawing from the book Missle missing middle housing periodically staff and BHP have Quantified the amount of middle inome housing that we lose every year some of the losses due to price inflation but a lot of it is caused through destroying modest homes and building huge Lifestyle homes instead this type of Redevelopment destroys neighborhood character driving out people of modest means that there is little restraint even after compatible development ordinance of 2009 on building large because large single family homes think about this are the easiest structure there is to get through the permitting process at the planning office office Council and planning board have wisely guided staff to zone for affordable housing phase one you adopted last year October 2023 phase two is tonight's work but it

[163:03] favors developers some cry in opposition to this ordinance no this is not a bill that favors developers rather it gives options to individual Property Owners living in the affected zones they're property owners who want additional people living on on their property or who need a bit more Financial Security to help pay escalating taxes or who want something different than selling to a builder who specializes in luxury single family homes it's important to emphasize that the changes under consideration would not enlarge the buildings that are placed on these properties it would only permit more and smaller units that are allowed now we need this alternative to building large I support the work of Staff planning board and Council and hope you will adopt this ordinance tonight but increasing the duplex Zone along bus routes to 550 feet thank you so much appreciate

[164:01] it thank you and now we have Scott McCary Nick Aguilera and David enzine can you hear me yes great Scott McCary um I'm the director of a department of CU Boulder with a staff of about 45 and not one of them owns property in the city of Boulder but in my opinion increasing the number of rental units in Boulder may make it more affordable in the near term but I would argue that this affordability is not sustainable rents regularly go up in the 20 years I've lived in Martin Acres rents have basically tripled and I suspect that trend's going to continue ownership on the other hand locks in a monthly housing cost forever and actually goes away once the principal's paid off so I really think ownership is a critical U tool for long-term affordability for Boulder families and employees you know I'm concerned that this ordinance isn't going to actually increase home ownership in Boulder and

[165:00] it might make it worse up zoning makes property more valuable and in this crazy crazy world of massive wealth inequality I'm concerned that investors attracted by the new ability to have two legal rental units on a property will actually out compete folks looking to buy their own place to live in according to the staff memo both planning board and city council recognize this concern but felt it should be dealt with different methods well I think those different methods need to be included now at the passing of this ordinance and I'd like to propose a potential way to do it the city currently has a robust rental license program it seems to me that staff could include a component of this ordinance stating that the city issued no more than one rental license per partial in rl1 zones that would immediately ensure that one of the units of a duplex is owner occupied I don't think this would require additional staff at least not much as is piggybacking off an existing City program so in some I encourage you to

[166:01] include safeguards now that prevent investors from out competing potential families who could use ownership for long-term housing affordability thank you thank you now we have U Nick Aguilera David enzine and David Adamson hey I I believe I'm of you can hear me now yes hi um thank you my name is Nick Agera I am speaking on behalf of um myself um I have lived in Boulder for four years now um living initially in a grandfather duplex in chitaka that was the most affordable housing unit available to me when I moved to Boulder um at $1,200 um you know which is still expensive compared to other American cities but for Boulder was a very reasonable price um I have a master's degree in City Planning and um you know as I became more and more aware of these issues much like most of us um the need for missing middle housing in cities throughout the

[167:02] country um became increasingly evident to me um and there is so much evidence from cities around the country that have made these processes simpler and easier for people to build duplexes triplexes multif family units um the changes actually leading to decreased property or decreased rental prices look at Minneapolis look at Portland look at other cities around the country and look at other cities around the world um but we do not need to go through endless planning processes to determine the benefits of work like this um I applaud you all for uh considering this effort as well as a city staff um and I uh hope to see you all vote for support um for this later tonight um thank you for your time um have a good night all right we now have David enzine David Adamson and

[168:02] Stephanie good evening Boulder City Council my name is David enin and I live at 4020 Evans Drive in Boulder I'm a member of better Boulder a group of diverse and energetic community members who advocate for sustainable and smart development in our Fair City and for the last six mon months I've been chairing a committee of members who are focused on housing and Zoning I've spoken to both you and planning board over the past several months to communicate better Boulders support for ordinance 8666 before you tonight and we provided you a letter on September 9th 2024 communicating our thoughts in detail in the interest of respect for your time tonight I will refrain from repeating all the reasons that we are in favor of this ordinance but I did want to reiterate our strong support as you start your deliberations and move towards a vote this will be a significant step forward in addressing Boulder's housing challenges and we commend you and City staff for bringing this to a final reading thank you so much for the time this evening and for your ongoing efforts to address

[169:00] Boulder's housing needs thank you now we have h d David Adamson and Stephanie Adamson and then we'll see if Michael broer can speak this time uh mayor I do not see David or Stephanie online and it also appears that Mike has has dropped off okay well that brings our uh public hearing to an abrupt close there so I'll go ahead and close the public comment um portion of the evening uh thanks everyone for coming out and speaking with us we really appreciate hearing your thoughts so I'm going to bring it back to council now for a discussion um so we have an an ordinance in front of us we we can pass it as is we could turn it down we could add amendments to it I'd love to hear from my colleagues um your preferred approach and but just maybe we can keep our remarks relatively brief as it is getting towards 9:00 and I've got my first couple hands Tina and

[170:03] Mark hi um Erin am I allowed to ask a question based on the public hearing to staff I'll Grant you a question Tina thank you I am curious if there is a model or a pathway for the idea suggested by Scott around one rental license per duplex we we actually looked into that as a possibility uh and talked to our licensing staff um the response we got from them is there would be some challenges in administering that I mean I I think it's something we could Circle back and check again on um but we have thought of that before okay um so I said that also just putting that aside I thought that idea was fantastic because I um am really really deeply concerned about home ownership

[171:00] opportunities for Middle inome people um especially with middle housing um but one of my concerns is extending uh development into the wild Urban interface area in South Boulder where we have some Transit routes um and doing that before we have settled on some uh Wildfire hardening and Landscaping regulations so as I wrote in my hotline I am interested in um making an amendment to any motion that would um remove the corridors in west of Broadway justtin South Boulder for just the time of six months hoping that the Wildfire regulations will be in place My Hope had been to have them go into place um when the regulations were adopted but there's not a timeline for those regulations yet so it's a little tricky to W Smith that so I'm just putting that

[172:00] out there as something I'm interested in uh Erin if you can just guide me when I can make a motion around that that would be great um and oh and I just want to be clear uh we don't have a mechanism to limit fencing so if there were development happening with duplexes because we haven't adopted that or to create um restrictions around what can be done to prevent Wildfire spread um especially because we have one Transit Corridor that goes way up uh on the road that circles around in the sort of a horseshoe uh I I just think it's best to be realistic about the the threat of wildfire in that area and to think about um not increasing uh ignition areas just for this short period thank you thanks and I might suggest that when we have a motion in front of us you might consider making an amendment to that motion to to put that idea forward okay and then um and then try to share my other comments on

[173:01] this yeah this point yeah okay yep so um I I have a lot of concerns about how we're approaching this as I talked about my hotline not so much about whether we have duplexes but whether we're having a rich enough discussion which really the discussion that we'll be having with the Boulder Valley comp plan um I I strongly support incentives for duplexes that have an affordability piece or some kind of owner occupancy um I also and and in the form of incentives not so much in in sticks um I'm also concerned about how we give notice to property owners in this situation so we did this and I think staff did a great job with um putting out announcements in the Daily Camera speaking with Community Representatives but when we're looking at affecting 30% of the properties in a Zone my preference would be to send a postcard to those properties similar to

[174:00] when we do a gas turn off or something like that um I'm I'm concerned about that I'm I'm not sure if that's a if it's going to be a decision point for me on this particular issue but I am going to raise it to cic so that we can think about doing that with the Boulder Valley comp plan um people invest a lot of money in their property and some could be really excited about making more money and some could be devastated that their neighborhood is changing and I do feel when we make such a high impact decision on a property we should extend that courtesy of of individual notice and not rely on The Daily Camera or next door um the other piece I just want to appreciate people who talked about what families would be looking to Beyond a bus Corridor um you know just thinking about had we done a more holistic review and I understand this started in 23 before I was on Council if I was thinking about places where I would increase middle housing geared toward families I would also be looking at

[175:00] schools and libraries um places where family and Parks uh just thinking about those things um Transit corridors interestingly aren't aren't necessarily I think the primary attraction for a family with young children who are coming to a community but they're probably looking for outside space that probably drawn to our nature and our schools and walkability to schools would probably um be more important than access to a bus particularly before a child can ride a bus alone um and then uh I really appreciate the comments from our student uh who came this evening and I feel that we need to spend more time at the table with CU talking about the needs of students and what the role of the city will be in in creating housing I'm personally interested in other zoning to increase student density in areas that may not be trading off uh a current

[176:02] family housing in uni Hill I um am I it doesn't and and I think it we should at least be intentional and think about okay so we do want uni Hill to be more of a student area or we want to increase more high density student housing and we're going to pick some other areas near CU and stimulate private development there with the hope that we can maintain more of a family feel at Uni Hill I think we need to have this conversation and it really intersects directly with what we're doing tonight and I think that that was something that I'm anxious for uh because I feel like we're lacking Direction in that area on what we're going to do to help our students find the housing they need at the price point they need knowing that you know 3/4 of them are really our city residents um so and then finally with the transit bill I like a lot of the

[177:00] ideas in the transit Bill and I'm not I don't think we should depend on whether we actually do the transit Bill requirements but we can borrow some of those ideas including looking at how to protect older stock as well as um looking at how to incentivize three-bedroom units when one and two-bedroom units are what we're really good at developing right now we're struggling a little more on the three three unit middle housing as mon of course pointed out um and finally with the historic issue I agree with Chelsea 100% the outcome for not being demolished probably shouldn't be a larger single family home but moving more toward the middle housing type so how that is to be done I'm not sure but I I hope that we can address that as well thanks thanks Tina all right I've got lined up Mark Matt terara Ryan well before I start I just want to say I I agree with almost everything Tina said um and I I support her proposed amendments uh and I'm grateful

[178:02] that for a change I think her comments are longer than mine so I'm going to take advantage of that um I'm going to vote against this ordinance and its present form for the following reasons once again we have solicited Community input and simply discarded it when it suits our purposes if the entirely negative feedback we received on this ordinance is not statistically valid the answer is to do a poll that is since we adopted the goal in 2016 to achieve 15% affordable and middle- income units by 2035 the city's dashboard shows that we have created 958 rentals and a mere 40 home ownership units we are producing o no middle inome housing and none will be created by this ordinance you've previously heard it from me and from others uh in the last week that virtually none of the proposed duplex units will be priced at a level

[179:01] accessible to Middle inome buyers calling these units which will likely trade at upwards of 1.3 million missing middle housing uh is entirely deceptive even if you try to Define missing middle as typology not price it's deceptive these are units for the wealthy the following is clear if we do not mandate affordability we will not get affordability today if you attend any meeting of City staff the police department or the fire department and you ask those attending how many of you live in Boulder the number of hands raised will be between zero and negligible this ordinance will not change that in the least the bulk of the impact of this ordinance will fall upon the community's least able to Bear it g Grove Martin acres and uni Hill because that's where existing housing is cheapest these are the areas that always suffer the brunt of our social engineering finally I'm not against

[180:02] duplexes and appropriate density I am against duplexes and density that come without a hint of affordability or other community benefit and I ask my colleagues to remember that you were sent not you were sent here not only to represent those who voted for you you were also sent here to represent those who did not this is an ordinance that will be passed because it can be passed not one that represents the compromises that build community support and on the present basis I descent thank you thanks Mark we got Matt and Tara and Ryan thank you um I'll start with um I'll start with an amendment I'm interested in we'll get there but just to show my interest uh I think I'm going to piggyback on the discussion earlier about the landmarking uh that that is just a wonky weird exemption where you can go through a formal process get

[181:01] approved for demo and still somehow not benefit from the square footage benefit that we're proposing and be in the same place as if you accidentally demoed that just seems weird to me so I I'd like to differentiate those two uh if you go through the process and you get approved for a demo you should be able to get the B uh the opportunity to to use the square footage bonus that we're proposing here um that seems pretty straightforward to me so I think that was kind of missed um so I'd like to get that fixed um however that is shaped up in the in the piece that's an amendment I like um you know it's interesting because I keep hearing these issues of like affordability that was not the purpose of this and I just want to like kind of get us back to that that this was not about affordability this was about lowering the barrier of Entry even if fractionally so to the single family counterpart to detach single family home if that home is going for two million and a town home next to it's going for 1.8 that's a marked improvement that is lowering the barrier of Entry that is the point of this not for big a affordability not

[182:02] middle income but housing type variety that's all this is so apply so if we we can't just keep applying these other rules and other constraints that we're simply not part of this um and so I think that that's where this got a little bit of Ry with a lot of folks um and so we just got to back to some of those basics in a really meaningful way um I'm going to support the 350 feet part um mostly because the 550 was just not a part of any of our website wasn't a part of our staff materials wasn't part of any of our Outreach um I know that sounded interesting um but I don't think that's fair if we weren't out we weren't talking about that staff wasn't putting that out there to community and then we go ahead and make that leap I'm not sure that that's fair to community we said 200 to 300 and we pushed to 350 I I think that's very reason reasonable that's modest I think that's appropriate given what we've discussed uh for the for for quite a long time um there's a you know the concern about um speculation on this I think is an

[183:00] important one but the answer is not what we build the answer lies in what we do to control how what we build is utilized and I think that these are two separate conversations and ultimately I think what's what's key here is we need to start really thinking about the speculative market and the investors that are coming in and artificially inflating our housing market um that's critical and I'd love to see us think about and I've brought this up many of times so I'll keep echoing it a rental ownership ratio in this community would be great um maybe creating some sorts of limits on rental licenses in certain areas whatever we can do to reinen divize and rebalance ownership to rental is good for our community because the other key piece here is the enrollment in schools if we aren't bringing families in here to boost up enrollment bbsd has already told us they're shutting down schools and we've seen what happens when a neighborhood loses their schools they're not they're not as vibrant as they used to be so if this is

[184:00] about family vibrancy we also have to not just build what we have to do but we have to provide the controls to recalibrate that ownership and Rental um so we can maintain folks that want to live their long term and families can build equity and move up the scaffolding of Economic Opportunity in this community so um I think this is a great ordinance I think it's got a little bit of tweaks um in there but I really would like to see us on the follow end touch on this rental ownership ratio and how do we calibrate and rebalance that um for the needs in our community both now and into the future so thank you all for the great work staff and uh appreciate all the really great comments and questions from my Council colleagues yeah Matt thanks very much for that very very perceptive comments if I could just dive into one little thing that you said earlier at the beginning about the um landmarking and removing the second bit which I agree with by the way um that it would not allow them more square footage it would allow them a second unit in the same amount of square footage just wanted to clarify that that that if they are

[185:00] allowed to do the duplex it does not give them an additional square footage opportunity no but it was it was allowing for the shrinkage of square footage to allow for the second unit there you gobe we're saying I think we were saying the same thing just back differently so but that's right just want to clarify right the resulting build would not be a different size it just correct correct sorry if I misspoke thanks for clarifying that Aon appreciate it okay I got uh Tara Ryan Taisha and Nicole hey I haven't said much so I might talk for a little more than you want me to Aon I'm just throwing that out there but I'll try to be brief he's he's rolling his eyes I'm an eye roller so I totally appreciate that first I want to um segue Really T in a sense of what Matt said I feel like we need to really Elevate this Council discussion and I would even say bring it as a council priority as soon as next year for staff to find options to slow this

[186:00] the rental market and bring us more ownership opportunities and slow down the um investor speculative market so places like the hill and Mark acres and Gus Gro can have a good balance of the students and families and seniors I actually think that this is our biggest problem not um duplexes per se um and this is really causing a lot of Agony and stress in this community um however I do feel like affordability is very important to bring the families here um I'm going to start now at the beginning of what I was going to say I'm going to go back and find the beginning of so I am inherently for duplexes for many reasons but these are my main three reasons cond have always given Colorado people entry-level housing ownership options but because of the condo defect law uh that's left developers susceptible to costly lawsuits they're not always responsible

[187:00] for which in turn makes it too difficult and expensive to find insurers willing to underwrite condo projects so we did lose a lot with the condo defect law even though of course it was important on a lot of levels but so this law basically stopped Builders from building new cond so now we mostly have these really old condos and most of them are small even the three-bedroom ones are small and just to personalize it my daughter lives in son-in-law and there are two kids going on three kids um she uh they have about, 1400 square feet and she's going to have her third child and they need a little bit more space but where really can she move because she can't afford a single family home especially not in Soo Wester Broadway so a duplex for her would work really well and this is actually if I could just stick up for the name familyfriendly ordinance in a sense this is why I felt it was familyfriendly be because we do not have a step from going

[188:01] from the old condo to somewhere else before somebody if ever can afford a single family home especially Western Broadway so in for that in that way that is why I do like duplexes and my second reason is many of you know Rachel friend former city council member she wanted to build a duplex for her aging parents to move into they're not really aging they're super they're they they have young hearts if you know them um but she wants them to be able to age in place right next door to her so that she can take care of them in later life and I would hope that my kids would do that for me honestly I think that is one of the great things about a duplex is you can you know you can have your family Liv next to you it's really great M missing middle housing stock because it fits into the uh character character of neighborhoods most e easily and I've seen a lot of really beautiful ones however this is the issue I have

[189:02] with this ordinance and I think that um one of our many of our constituents said it well but especially act Evan rabbits tonight so the problem is is we don't have affordability baked in and whether owner occupancy is required or there should be incentives for owner occupancy there has to be something or we're just going to get more expensive housing so I have to agree with a lot of the community members so going to what Evan said what was that quote Evan said I'm gonna find it right now um please I want to redo this with incentives for affordability that's what I would say because right now it's really not going to get us where I would like to be and that would be more families living here um even at a million and a half or duplex or two million probably is what a lot of duplexes cost it's just too much money for most people so um that's the

[190:00] first point that I have to make the second one is is about Community buy it um and just to talk for a second about um about owner occu um owner occupancy wait hold on let me just find my place for one second um um I think that we can even though um Carl I know that it's hard to find these answers I really think we can do it we just have to really focus on putting a lot of time and energy into figuring out what to do about the affordability of these duplexes there has to be a way I refuse to give up second I want to talk about Community buyin if we could go back to that October 17th study and Carl I'm wondering if you can pull that up for a second spe specifically page 63 um staff made a story map questionnaire on August 16th that um had some questions that asked community members to provide feedback on the

[191:00] specific zoning changes and the questionnaire as we talked about tonight was not intended to be scientific or statistically valid but it was a gauge as to how Community felt and more than half of the responses way more than half did not indicate support or else were really un probably not it was either definitely not or probably not I'm wondering Carl if you have that little pie chart somewhere oh he's sharing thank you Carl Carl ter it is it is getting late so so hopefully you got I know it I am almost done it up here so as you can see one isn't that Carl is that like do we want any um zoning changes in rl1 and RR this one's related to rmx1 I can go down okay go to the next one that one is that R1 and

[192:01] RR uh this one is okay so if you look at that Pi look how many people are not forward a whole lot of people are either not for it or really mostly not for it and then there's a little bit of purple says they don't know but that really leaves about 25 or 30% that are for it so what I'm asking is similar to what Mark said let's then have a statistically valid survey and see what people are really saying so that we are feel like people are listening to us um and so that is what I think about that and my last Point thank you for your patience I just skipped like two paragraphs I think we have really no idea about what the impacts are about eliminate uh the state eliminating the accurancy limits I have a few questions did rents go up for the students on the hill did they stay the same did they go down that's my first question do we even look at rents and what the occupancy limit changes did for rents is there is the noise and

[193:00] trash ordinance doing its job so according to some emails we got there's already been an impact in South houses on the Hill are indeed being sold to investors for student housing and right now no matter how we vote tonight and I'm guessing I know how we're going to vote all I'm asking is that we really dedicate ourselves as a council to figuring out a way to um do something about the um investor um the to stop investors from buying up these properties on the hill and in other neighborhoods and to really just bring more affordability to this um town and that is what I have to say okay thanks Tara we got Ryan tasa Nicole and laen Boulder is unique uh I say that as someone who with my spouse made Boulder our chosen home we chose to plant our lives and raise our children here who are now in elementary school there's no

[194:02] place like it and in my city council role I have no higher Duty than to safeguard it and on a quick personal note one of the most wonderfully unique things that's happened to me as some of you have heard is when my first grade six-year-old gained a new classmate and move and she moved in about a quar mile of away from us making her the first kid of my kid's age that my kid could walk to this was a double blessing because uh classmates in her preschool had begun to move away but what's important for us tonight is not why Boulder is unique but what we have in common with other towns the first thing is aging we have heard from the state's most authoritative demographer that the distribution of Ages is growing older seriously older and this fundamentally challenges the economics that hold our community and our society together um it's not good for younger people and it's not good for seniors for us not to get our arms around this and we have heard that

[195:00] letting more people live here is one of the best remedies because people who come tend to be younger and tend to tend to have kids we need to be focused on creating a a greater intergenerational balance it's one of our top duties second affordability through evidence-based approaches of reducing scarcity we live in a condition of unaffordability that is obviously a problem for a number of reasons um it is also new compared to those who have had their homes for for decades or longer um and it is um it's driving a lot of the the problems and social costs that we're all bearing and ultimately the source of this unaffordability is scarcity uh unfortunately tools of deed restricted affordability that we do have are not a way to create the scale to address that scarcity uh the third thing is that we um we need to make a more integrated system of Housing and transportation

[196:00] that gives us the infrastructure the proximity and the shared resources to create this transportation system that's walkable bikable Transit rich and it helps alleviate the car dependence that is problematic for so many of us and also to turn back the traffic woses that are largely what people make people feel like Boulder is too crowded and just as a reminder if you go to one of the towns in Western Europe that where the majority of people are car light these are places where density is is twice of that of Denver or more or excuse me Boulder or more and the final thing is that the most authoritative climate science as Point people have pointed to tell us that compact land use which means infill affordable hous infill middle housing with that's Transit oriented it's fundamental to climate action because it allows more structural efficiency which also multiplies the possibilities of other climate Investments so what you think about this policy what you think about the urgency and the importance of this policy is is about how you feel about the importance

[197:01] of us dealing with aging as dealing with affordability through evidence-based measures through creating access that reduces cost in traffic and whether you think it's important that we follow the science of climate action that tells us to create more compactness in my judgment this is what the people of Boulder want um and I think it's a great policy uh I don't think it's particularly radical I think staff have have really um pushed us to say this is something that will be within the bvc the confines of a bbcp that was set before our Council um and I staff has told us that they expect it to to changes to be slow um and it doesn't Force anything but it tells homeowners it gives them more freedom to do what they want I think ultimately this is a kind of a policy that will provide a gentle FEA a gentle Feathering uh distributed around the city and um makes it makes a lot of sense um I'll be in favor of the measure to increase the

[198:00] standard of preventing upzoning from probable cause to more full Fuller landmarking something that Chelsea talked to I think that was in addition to the other point that Matt raised which I which I think I agree with um and I also do favor the 550 foot increase that that Claudia mentioned um final thing is this is not the only thing we need to do we need to I agree work on this this investor-owned issue this is clearly part of a national structural problem that is pitting homeowners against renters multiplied by our you know the private equity and capital markets um we also have to do the actual work to make sure that we have transportation measures that follow the the density that happens and finally we have to do this not just with us but with our regional other other communities and partners we can't do this alone but we can expect others to do it if we're not willing to leave so um I'm excited about this and uh thanks all right thanks Ryan all right we got Taisha Nicole La thank you so much um thank you to

[199:03] everyone who's talked thus far a lot of things I agree with um as you know I ran on climate and cultural resilience and um you know to me the biggest driver of this effort is climate um um as my colleague referenced earlier this was never about affordability this was about creating different what is that fancy word typologies typologies um and so I just want to honor um the work of our previous council members but I also and and their willingness to not only address the the need for variety um in that middle section but also um to increase Den density in a responsible way um I've already raised some of the issues that um and and hope hope to see more um around the intersection of the environmental impacts and benefits of this type of density increase in addition to increase decreases in

[200:00] emissions um as I mentioned there's also the shared infrastructure so that we don't you know if there you know by having that increased density we're not sprawling out which means we don't have to um spend millions of dollars um you know with new utilities and those kinds of things it also helps us With Disaster Response and management um and um let me see what else um I will say though you know and I agree that affordability continues to be um a challenge for our community um and I have already raised my concerns around our qualitative approach to research um however if anything what our current research approaches have indicated is that um white wealthy um single um um single homeowners tend to be over represented in our um qualitative efforts as evidenced by at least the

[201:00] research that I've seen thus far um and so although I appreciate the need and interest for um having reliable and valid data um I would recognize that this issue is something that extends across um the agency and is something that I know is being worked on to ensure that um um racially and ethnically diverse voices socioeconomically diverse voices um as well as those who um you know could potentially be in demand for this uh I also want to lift up and Echo um not only the Elder uh the increase in older um folks in our community but also the increase uh in that we're seeing in intergenerational communities as I mentioned my mother uh lives with my brother or my brother lives with her mother or however you want to to say it but um but again you know in a duplex like um town home that um you know again

[202:00] is something that we're going to continue to see more and more um I would be remiss if I didn't bring up the fires that are burning in California right now as someone used to live in the Pacific Palisades and whose Auntie's home is now is no longer in Alam I am acutely aware of spraw um and the the intergenerational failure um of many communities to prevent sprawl from happening as well as the increased sprawl that continues to happen across our um across our state and so therefore I am supportive of this measure um although I do want to lift up again the affordability issue um and making sure that uh but I did want to U bring up sorry that um when they are thank you Lauren for letting us know that that quads are a possibility as well as triplexes which we already knew um which again does significantly impact um affordability and so I do want to lift that up and then I'm also in agreement with the change around the landmarks and um 350 for uh the setbacks thank you so

[203:05] much and very sorry to hear about your aunt losing her home that's a as yeah lots of people suffered losses it's been terrible okay we've got Nicole and then Lauren thanks um first of all I just uh want to say I agree with Mark and others that if we're going to be doing surveys we really need to be doing um statistically representative surveys as we've seen here throughout this process these convenient sample surveys create a lot of confusion and mislead the community about how the city is using those data to make decisions especially given our community engagement framework that changed under a different Council than I was ever a part of but as we get get better at um following that framework that aims to hear from everyone and not just the most extreme views I think it's really important that we are making it clear to the community how we are using information um to to

[204:01] guide our decision making um to get to some of the specific questions that staff had um I'm not really interested in changing the um conditions for increased density in the rmx1 zone um because it does seem to me that it incentivizes replacing potentially historic homes with larger single family homes instead of smaller duplexes or triplexes um we also didn't do any engagement on that topic so we don't have a sense about how the the broader Community feels about that um under the same logic uh and and for that reason I'm not as interested in increasing the distance for duplexes in rl1 and r r zones uh because as staff notes we didn't do engagement on that um I would really love us whatever happens tonight to do more education to help the community understand that these changes are not going to lead to skyscrapers and large apartment buildings nor are they going to allow more development of uh Lots like having more space in the Lots developed um our neighborhoods are

[205:01] already changing with the creation of a lot of really big single family homes um this allows Property Owners to decide to build two homes instead of one it doesn't mean it's bigger it just means it's two in the same space as one um I also really want us in the future to be focused on affordability for people who are here now which is going to come through other policies than zoning um someone mentioned before about kind of why why we're here um and and why we were elected to council I'm here to build a livable future for residents workers students and visitors local land use policies like what we're doing tonight unfold over decades in terms of their impacts the building boom that we're experiencing today comes from Council decisions that were made any year and decades ago the changes in this ordinance are consistent with the current bbcp which was last updated before anybody but I think Aaron was on Council um we aren't allowing development on open spaceand we aren't

[206:01] allowing skyscrapers we aren't likely to see a doubling or tripling of people in our single family neighborhoods in my lifetime um and and I just want to kind of give a personal um note here and I'm going to say this and there may be a little bit of emotion in it because I'm taking some of the criticisms of this a little bit personally and here's why I live in an rm1 neighborhood where we have a mix of apartments condos and single family homes most of my neighborhood was built in the 70s and I'm sure people in the 70s we're talking about how more housing was going to ruin the city especially having single family homes mixing with apartments and condos uh most of the council members who made the decisions that made my my neighborhood possible aren't C any anymore but if they were I would thank them and have so much gratitude 50 years later now in 2025 in my neighborhood I hear children laughing I hear neighbors talking to each other I see people

[207:01] walking to the RTD bus stop a half mile away parents or grandparents are waiting for school buses in the afternoon older couples walk hand in hand around the neighborhood in the evening as the sun's going down when it's warmer people are out playing with their dogs young professionals are sometimes taking meetings on their phones while taking a walk over lunch students are grilling on their patio but the 800 square feet of Kono space that they're in limits how big their parties can get people have house concerts in their backyards or birthday parties in the nearby park people share fruit from their trees with other neighbors so I'm really confused about what is so scary and destructive to the character of a neighborhood to have people with a wide range of incomes ages household sizes and types all living together and caring for each other I would argue that my neighborhood enhances the quality of life in the city

[208:00] and it is a gift that I wish for everyone and our future to have thank you it's very moving Nicole thank you thank you um and thanks for painting that pretty picture I as someone who lives in kind of a similar neighborhood I strongly it resonates with me a lot thank you for that um given the late hour I was thinking I would make a motion um so I would I move that we adopt ordinance 8666 amending chapters 9-2 review processes 9-6 use standards and 9-8 intensity intens standards of Title 9 land use code BRC 1981 to amend density and intensity standards to allow development of additional dwelling units in the residential rural one R1 residential

[209:03] rural 2 rr2 residential low one rl1 residential medium one rm1 and residential mixed one rmx1 zoning districts to amend review procedures and use standards to reduce regulatory requirements for certain residential developments and setting forth related details I would like to um amend this ordinance um and strike -83 B2 um that states following the demolition of a principal building after a finding of probable cause that it may be eligible for landmark designation in an initial review under subsection D of section 9123 review of permits for demolition

[210:00] on-site relocation and offsite relocation of buildings not designated BRC 1981 that was the the section beforehand that um Chelsea mention that relates to landmarking um that maintains that if something was demoed without seeking a permit that um the uh additional intensity would not be allowed I okay would you like to speak to your motion I would so I'm supporting ordinance 8666 because this is a necessary step towards addressing Boulder's housing challenges creating more inclusive neighborhoods and preparing our city for a sustainable

[211:00] future in my email I received a number of comments relating to Boulder being full for too long the idea of Boulder being full has been used to justify our hous policies unaffordable housing prices and generally keeping people out of our community and I want to be clear that I do not think Boulder is full what we are experiencing is in a lack of accessible housing for middle-income families younger generations and essential workers who keep our city running and when people who work in our community can't afford to live in our community that forces them to commute from long distances um and forces them into car dependent Lifestyles saying Boulder is full sends a message that we value exclusivity over community and that's not who I believe we are and certainly not who I hope we aspire to be instead I hope we can create an opportunity for those excluded from our community to be our

[212:01] neighbors this ordinance seeks to address a critical Gap in our housing stock currently the options for middle-income households are disappearing on one side we have deed restricted affordable units for those who qualify and on the other side we have market rate single family housing that is becoming increasingly unattainable for most duplexes provide a stepping stone market rate housing that is more affordable than large single family homes offering opportunities for families and individuals to live and Thrive here but because there is always a premium for something new and changes slow it will take time for the benefits of this to become apparent this General increase in density is not just about affordability it's about aligning with our climate goals the IP the ipcc has made it clear that urban areas must Embrace denser more

[213:00] sustainable development to reduce emissions by allowing duplexes and increasing density near Transit corridors we reduce car dependency promote walkable neighborhoods and make public transportation more viable these changes are essential for cutting our emissions and meeting our City's climate commitments some opponents argue that this ordinance will destroy the character of our neighborhoods and I strongly disagree this ordinance allows for gradual thoughtful Redevelopment it will increase our housing stock over time without substantially altering the character of residential neighborhoods this Natural Evolution allows aligns with Boulder's values of sustainability equity and Community we also know that denser neighborhoods are more vibrant and resilient duplexes bring diversity not just in income but in age background and perspective they allow young families to

[214:02] move in supporting our schools and local businesses and they provide opportunities for seniors to downsize and stay in the community they love this ordinance is a mod modest but meaningful step towards a better Boulder one that is more affordable inclusive and environmentally responsible and I urge my colleagues to support it and to continue thinking boldly about our housing policies to ensure that Boulder remains a place where people from all walks of life can call home thank you um in while I would personally support increasing the distance from the 350 that we have proposed I didn't see um enough support for that so right now I'm proposing that we keep it the same and then again striking that

[215:02] portion of um the code related to uh the historic um eligibility um thank you yes thank you so much for that Lauren that was that was very eloquent um so Tina if I may call on myself before I Turn to You um so yes you get your hand raised can I ask a process question sure did we need to have the motion seconded before she put out the amendment or did she because she described it as an amendment yeah I mean I I certainly over the years have many times made a motion that included an amendment to the text of the ordinance so I've seen seen that in practice but Teresa do you feel like we should do it differently please let us know so technically you would want a motion a second and then you would want someone else to introduce the amendment

[216:02] um here I think it's sufficiently clear what council member or excuse me mayor protm farts um is is uh moving and so I I think we're fine to move forward great thanks for checking in T I appreciate that Teresa um so you all have spoken very eloquently I will not speak for very long given the hour um so the my colleagues who've spoken in support I uh did essentially everything that's been said there's been some really wonderful things said in the way that they were said and just a couple things to emphasize that by allowing duplexes we are to reiterate not allowing a building that is any bigger at all so um it would right now if you scrape a house and rebuild it your only choice is to build one large single family home with this change you would not be allowed to build a building that's any bigger but you could uh put a wall in it and have two families living there and and that's that's really the

[217:01] limit of what we're doing here um and so I think it's a a really modest incremental change I think it is familyfriendly uh because I think your incentive to split a house into two is probably more likely to be something that's more desirable for um families with younger children rather than um you know two sets of students and not there's anything wrong with student housing we really need that too um but I do think there's a familyfriendly aspect to this and it is modest and I think the change we will see over time will be gradual but we will have an additional housing option going forward that we have not had in the past and I think that that's beneficial for all the many reasons that have been stated by my colleagues and just on the engagement front I wanted to say that I found the survey to be um informative I but I consider a non-scientific survey like that to be um qualitative rather than quantitive right so I don't look at just the exact numbers and how many percent were for what or for what but to me that I got a sense of there's support and

[218:01] there is opposition and they're strongly held feelings in a number of ways and so that th those comments from those surveys they help guide our thinking but the a non-scientific survey like that is not I would say dispositive in terms of the the numbers that are there um but I really appreciate um City staff's efforts in bringing this forward and I think this will be a modest but positive step forward for housing opportunities in our city over time and I will oh and I just wanted to just to be clarifying on Lauren's motion that um in terms of the landmarking side that if someone as proposed if somebody demos a house without permission they will not be allowed to build a duplex but if they um apply for a demolition through the landmarking process and they are granted the ability to demolish that house um legally then they would be able to to build the daps if they wanted to so that's the modification that Lauren has proposed which I support okay so we got a motion and a second on the table does anybody want to

[219:01] propose any other changes to what we have um in front of us before we get voting see now I just wanted to propose the change that we um exclude the area west of Broadway and South Boulder for um 6 months from when it goes into effect and that's just recognizing that we don't have the Wildfire hardening in place there and I think we should probably not um add more fencing or landscaping that's not helpful for fires until that time Teresa I is that a concrete enough amendment that that te could just offer that up as a as an amendment as stated uh I think we would have to bring some language back but it um at a future reading and I have the

[220:01] language yeah you gave me the specific language should I use that okay do do you want to go ahead and do it in the form of a motion to amenda we got our yeah great let me just pull it up because staff finally provided it um so I would just like to make a motion to continue well this was um to ask staff to prepare an amendment to the ordinance to remove the following Transit routes from appendix J west of Broadway Table Mesa Drive Lehigh Street greenb Boulevard and gasby drive for a period of six months from the day that uh the ordinance 8666 goes into effect thanks for that but can I just ask do we need to continue the meeting I mean that feels like a a very clearly worded amendment that seems like yeah I don't think we need to continue the meeting because that was the if I was doing it before the first motion sorry about that so just a motion to amend to remove those stated areas

[221:00] for a period of six months yes hello do you want to chime in here yeah I I have a question for a clarification the language about continuing it for or removing it for six months that's the part that I'm concerned about that we would have to think about how that would work in an ordinance um yeah that's not that's not really part of the language I guess I think the language we discussed earlier today was how to remove those particular areas but not to have a Time trigger where part of the ordinance becomes effective later if if we want to do that then I would recommend that counil will continue the second meeing to another date so that we could consider how to draft that up know why don't I just withdraw the motion and um I'll just let this one go

[222:04] thanks okay appreciate your flexibility there Tina I I will say it that I think the pace at which this will move I don't think it it will end up being terribly impactful the so but thanks for the flexibility okay we've got um a motion in a second so I would like to go ahead and move to a vote if I could Elicia if you could walk us through that please yes sir thank you we'll start the vote for the ordinance 8666 as amended with mayor Brockett yes mayor broke Tim bards yes council member Marquis no shoard yes spear yes wallik

[223:02] no Wier no Adams yes Benjamin yes ordinance 8666 as amended is hereby approved with a vote of six to three thank you Leisa um thanks kencel and Lauren do you want to throw in an extra comment before we wrap up this item I just wanted to say thank you for staff I know this has been a um significant process and I really appreciate all the work you've put into on this thank you so much absolutely and we this has been a yearslong process that this is wrapping up the final piece of it so Carl and huge appreciation to you and your team for all the work to get us here it's been a lot of

[224:00] steps so very grateful for that all right so that brings us to the end of that item um before we move on to our final agenda item I just wanted to pause for a moment and um Taisha if I write I call on you I think you wanted to make a comment about a previous vote Yes for the consent agenda I neglected to clarify that I was a yes except for G so I mentioned it but then I didn't vote that way so I wanted to correct the record thank you very good and Teresa do we have to do anything more formal than that I I'm sorry I I was I was dealing with another procedural issue that I need to point out to you and so I didn't I didn't hear exactly what that was Taisha wanted to clarify that she intended to vote no on item G on the consent agenda

[225:04] oh I I'm sorry I don't know the answer to that I don't know if you can go back and change a vote can we at least make sure it's in the minutes and we see if it's possible to revise the the vote tally if you absolutely um but also mayor uh will but just before we Taisha is that is that adequate yes okay thank you go ahead Teresa um because the motion was amended it has to be published in full for 10 days before it can be uh adopted and so um this will need to be will need to come to a third reading understood we'll look for a third reading okay well that brings us to our last agenda item our phenomenal municipal judge judge Khan has been

[226:00] waiting patiently and so I'd like to turn things uh over Elicia can you get us going on our item 4 a please yes sir thank you item 4 a on tonight's agenda is our last item and it is the Matters from the city manager and it is the Municipal Court update and we can go straight to the judge Jeff all right good evening and Emily if you'll put up the PowerPoint that would be terrific and good evening mayor Brockett mayor proam ferz and City Council Members I am Jeff Khan the presiding judge for the city of Boulder municipal court tonight I will go over the Court's 2024 case filings and our 2025 work plan next slide please this chart shows the various types of cases that we handle at the Municipal Court we handled approximately 4,000 traffic cases in 2024 we addressed approximately 1900

[227:01] criminal cases during the year there were over 60,000 photo enforcement citations issued between January 1st of 20124 in December 15th of 2024 and approximately 880,000 parking site ations were issued during that same period we also handle animal and coded violations and Civil Appeals filed in connection with the city's quasi judicial review process and if you'll note in the upper right hand corner the the number 3,849 in the memo that I attached to the agenda item that number was there was a typo that said 2,849 the 3849 number is the correct number and next slide please in this chart we identifi by the traffic filings from 2021 through 2024 as you can see the filings dropped a little bit from 2021 to 2022 and then they have increased steadily since that time and in 2024 we had 3,849 traffic filings uh also want to

[228:03] point out that that the orange bars there represent juvenile filings and as you can see it's just a small number we just don't get a lot of traffic tickets issued to people under the age of 18 and you'll see that as well with criminal cases I would anticipate that the numbers in 2025 will be quite similar to these or perhaps even a little bit higher we're pretty close to fully staffed at the police department and with the vision zero program in effect I would expect that we'll continue to see a fairly robust filings in our court I'll point out that we're a dependent agency we don't control what gets filed in our court we react to the filings that come to us but we do try to project what's going to happen in the ensuing years and so I would expect that we'll see similar numbers or perhaps a little bit more in 2025 next slide please this slide depicts the photo enforcement filings for 2021 through 2024 and I'll just point out that in 2024 uh we exceeded 60,000 actual total

[229:03] photo enforcement filings uh there was a new provision the vision zero program also envisioned the idea of having these new cameras that were enacted or activated uh at some of the intersections throughout the city and so you see that green bar there at 2024 and that represents 6139 speed on green violations that were cited and that all started in about June of 2024 much like our traffic enforcement I would expect that our our photo enforcement numbers will be similar or perhaps slightly more in 2025 next slide please this chart demonstrates the number of criminal filings that we've seen in the last four years uh from 2021 to 2022 we did see a drop off in criminal filings uh and then they've increased in in 2024 we had approximately 19900 uh criminal adult

[230:00] filings and again if you look the orange bars here represent juveniles just a very small number of juvenile filings in our court and that's primarily because we have a a district court that has a juvenile division and so most of the criminal cases get filed in the the juvenile district court and I would expect that we'll probably see similar numbers next year uh it's again very difficult to predict but I would anticipate that we'll be somewhere between 1700 and 2,000 criminal filings in our court next slide please these are the animal cases that we have seen in the last four years the numbers fluctuate a little bit but as you can see again a drop off from 2021 to 2022 uh and then we went moved forward and and uh from 2022 to 2024 the numbers started to increase again most of the tickets that you see here these these violations for animal violations are dog at large uh some of them are violations

[231:01] of the open space areas where dogs are on voice and site control and people violate that ordinance but we also have a lot of aggressive animal citations and our aggressive animal cases are ones that we take pretty seriously so we have people who when they ple guilty to an aggressive animal charge they're required to have an evaluation of their dog uh usually that's done at the Boulder Valley Humane Society but we have a couple of other agencies that we authorize to do those evaluations I really rely on those experts to give us the information that we need and then I can impose sentence conditions uh that protect the community going forward hopefully pre preventing future incidents and so that's what we've had for 2024 next slide please this slide dep picks the parking citations and the parking appeals that we've seen between 2021 and 2024 and and basically our parking filings have been in a pretty narrow range during that period we hover between 80 and 990,000 citations per

[232:00] year most of these citations are resolved without any Court involvement uh we have a very efficient online appeal program which allows people who want to contest a citation to file an appeal with our staff and I give them some guidance but they actually have the Authority as referees to decide some of these appeals for people uh the appeals are really a small percentage of the number of cases that get filed but uh they do help us resolve those tickets that people would otherwise want to set for trial they can get their the resolution that they want through the appeal process and of course if they still want to set for trial they can also still do that and then finally I do offer on Fridays an opportunity for defendants who have parking citations that want to come and speak with me they can do that what we call a parking add-on dock it's a very informal docket where there's not a prosecutor or def or staff there it's really just me and the defendant with an opportunity to talk about their outstanding tickets most of the people who appear at this parking ad- on docket are people who have a lot of tickets they're trying to figure out how to dig out or they've actually had

[233:01] their vehicle towed and so we allow that additional opportunity as a way to resolve these cases for people we've only had about 11 trials in the last four years of parking citations and I point that out because if you think about the amount of resource that would be used if we didn't have all these other alternate ways to resolve these cases we'd have a lot of trials with a lot of uh Community Vitality ambassadors having to appear for trial Park staff from the prosecutor's office and then Court staff involved in those trials and we just don't have that problem so very happy with the way we're resolving these for the community next slide please uh when a party has issued a civil penalty notice or a directive from a code enforcement officer they may have the right to appeal that notice through the city's quasi judicial review process this chart depicts the appeals that have been filed in our court it doesn't depict the actual total number of agency citations that were issued just the appeals that come to our court we don't have the ability to track the number of

[234:01] citations that might be issued but as you can see uh not a lot of appeals but enough that it creates some work for our staff and for the prosecutor's office and the prosecutor's office just do a terrific job of resolving these appeals with the appellants before trial we only had four cases actually go to a full hearing this past year and the types of cases that we're talking about here are rental license violations bear trash violations perhaps somebody's had had their uh marijuana license suspended or revoked they can appeal those and those are the types of things that we see here and sometimes it's a building code violation uh but again a pretty robust process that results in cases getting resolved without having hearings next slide please I wanted to take the book of this short presentation to talk a little bit about our work plan uh if you read the memo that I attached to the agenda item for tonight uh I set for some a little bit of a discussion about where we've been in the last few years we're a court in transition we've lost a lot of really

[235:01] talented people to retirement over the last few years and so we've spent really the majority of 2023 and 2024 recruiting hiring and training new court staff and we'll be doing some more of that that in 2025 uh we also are going to be hiring a new associate judge in the early part of 2025 so those are all important features of what we'll be doing next year we also want to improve the public access to court data uh we uh when we first started having an electronic database we never anticipated it was 15 or 20 years ago we never anticipated that we were going to have the need to really have a data dashboard or something like that but we really are seeing that is that need in the community desire to have that so we're going to have to do some overhauling of our actual process of how we enter data and we're we've started that already um but that's why it's taking a little bit of time we want to enter the data in a way so that we it'll be accurate when we try to retrieve it and we can get good

[236:00] quality information that we can put in a data dashboard and so that's something that we've started uh Devon kissak Kelly and I have had some discussions we anticipate that we will have a data dashboard up by the end of 2025 if we're lucky enough perhaps it'll be sooner but that's what we're committed to uh and I want to point out that we we rely on one person to do all of our data analysis and involved in our data Endeavors and that's Josh Jackson he's been with our court for a long time he's a terrific guy and gets a lot of work done for us but he's just one person and so that's why this process is a pretty a labor intensive process for one person to manage um and I point that out for you so that community members can understand why it's taking us a little bit of energy and time to get there we also want to improve transparency of our court programs uh to the extent that's permitted by the ethical canons for judges I will participate in public discussions about court related programs this fall I spoke alongside Deputy City attorney Chris Reynolds and chief of police redr at a boulder Chamber of Commerce meeting uh I'm not able to meet

[237:01] with individuals to discuss Court programs but I can speak publicly as long as I do not discuss individual cases and I'm going to try to do that because I view these public speaking opportunities as a chance to inform the public about our court programs and our problem solving approach and then finally I would like to make some advancements in the way that our Court addresses the addiction and mental health uh issues that affect so many of our court participants since we are a municipal court we don't have direct access to State programs or County funded programs and that's a challenge for us but I believe we can improve our communication and our collaboration with the state court and with the District Attorney's office so that those who face charges in both our court and the state court have access to programs that truly get at the heart of the issues that these individuals face and so we're going to try to do a little more of that I'll be attending some conferences and interacting with my colleagues around the state to see what others are doing to deal with mental health uh issues there are a couple of courts that have stood up mental health courts and I want

[238:00] to see how those are working for those individuals and see what we can do to improve our our work in that field and then the next slide please I hope this abbreviated presentation format is working for Council it's been a long night for you all I've watched it you you work really hard and I try to keep this pretty short for you but as I have stated in the past data is important and the narrative that I attached to our memo is certainly important as well but the best way to understand what we do as a court is to observe our court proceedings and we do have everything streamed live we have a YouTube channel so if anybody that wants to watch any member of the public that wants to watch our our court in operation see an arraignment docket they can do so I uh included the link on the memo that I attached to the agenda item it's also there's also access to that uh YouTu YouTube channel through our um our city web page so there's opportunities for people to observe and I hope people will take the opportunity to do so I do

[239:00] have Teresa Taylor Tate here to answer questions if they arise that might be more appropriately answered by the prosecutors and Devon kissak Kelly who has also been watching tonight she's available if there's questions that avoid our court involve our court all right judge con thanks so much that was um short but action-packed you packed a lot of information into short presentation which we appreciate um and thanks for sticking with us we got a couple questions for you from uh Tara and Matt actually no questions but just comments if that's okay first of all I just want to thank judge Khan because first of all you're amazing I'm a fan and thank you for doing something with the mental health issues um I'm really appreciate that but most of all I just want to tell my colleagues that I got to sit in on both Community Court which you can see virtually and Criminal Court this past week and two weeks the past two weeks and I've gotten so much out of it it really gave me great understanding and um so I suggest that for everybody

[240:02] it just really helps to understand the court system Municipal Court versus district court and County Court Etc so thanks for all that you do judge Khan I really appreciate you thank you it was great to have you with us thank you for doing that counselor yeah I appreciate that eron yeah I just have one question um it kind of goes to just sort of impacts to your staff and your team I know that uh state laws recently permitted us to enhance and increase the amount of photo Radars we can have around our community and so I'm just wondering as that increase occurs how do you anticipate the impacting your staff and your team processing uh what would be obious I would assume a higher much higher volume of of traffic uh tickets and violations so I'm just wondering how are you guys prepared and and applying those resources as that system uh grows uh quite rapidly in the near future it's a a good question Devon

[241:01] actually anticipated this she was keeping track of it pretty closely over the last nine to 12 months and keeping our staff aware that we were going to have more filings and the prosecutor's office obviously kept us AB breast of the changes that were were coming so we were anticipating that there would be more this year and we expect that there'll be more next year we did have a meeting about three months ago to talk about our process how we were handling those in in the current database that we have and we have a follow-up meeting scheduled I think in the next couple of weeks actually to have a conversation with the people who really manage our database it's a lot of a database issue uh because so many of those get handled either through an online again an online process where people can appeal the citation if they've got the wrong driver took a picture of the wife instead of the husband or something of that nature so a lot of those are be done through an online process where people can appeal and we're trying to make that a little more robust a little more efficient for the public uh so that's number one and and and then with respect to the volume

[242:00] I'm in I'm up a Viewpoint that we're going to be able to manage that volume without any change in Staffing we'll see how it goes in the first six months but I'm anticipating we'll be able to handle it fantastic well don't hesitate to reach out to to us if if things change need more help with that um because keeping our community safe on that traffic side is really important to us but aside from that just want to say thank you for all your great work and uh it's been uh tremendous to see you slide into this role as our judge um and you've just took it uh in stride and are doing great work so thanks again I appreciate that well thank you you guys are great support appreciate it Nicole and then Ryan thank you and thanks so much for the um informative presentation judge con and uh just also making the court more available for us to watch and see what's going on so really appreciate um all of that I just had a couple U more sort of general questions uh one of the things that seems to be a theme through all the different um types of issues that you're dealing with the court is and I just want to make sure I'm summarizing this correctly um we're really focusing on trying to keep people

[243:01] out of the court and if they make it to the court we really want to try to make it so that's their one and only time to be in the court would you say that's sort of a general philosophy of of the work that that you do there with Partnerships with the city attorney's office and city manager and our other um jurisdictions it absolutely is you all of the research points to the idea that the traditional views that people have of court systems that you know and we have these long processes where people come and we have lengthy sentencing and a lot of conditions that are placed on sentences those types of approaches haven't really been successful and so what we what we've done over the last oh I would say 10 years judge Cook gets a lot of credit for this because she was very innovative in her viewpoint as to what we ought to be doing and and it's much more of a let's try to solve the problem let's try to limit the amount of time that people have to spend with us on the more serious violations obviously it's a little bit different approach but on the ones that are minor infractions whether they're minor criminal

[244:00] infractions a dog at large charge whatever it might be we try to try to make it so that it's the impact of having to deal with it for the community isn't as large as it as it had been in the past so I think you're you're right on that thank you um and then one of the other questions that I have and again this just a big question at the national level right we're starting to see some kind of questioning of uh the uh legitimacy of Courts and and things like that within the judicial system and I'm just wondering if any of these um kind of bigger Trends are creating any challenges or will create any challenges for our M Municipal Court um in the coming years I haven't seen it yet it's it's a topic of concern the uh court clerks Association is going to be presenting a a webinar well actually I think it's actually a seminar for their their group that I just learned about today what the content's going to be and it's going to be really focusing on that

[245:00] very issue most of what they're going to be talking about is having the the the Judiciary what it can do to try to enable others to have a better view of us and to have more confidence in what we do uh and and I think some of the work that we're doing a lot of the municipal courts across the state are doing really great work and part of the problem is that that work's not getting out to the communities communities don't understand hey we're we're really helping solve problems and so we all have to do a better job of that and I'm one of the individuals that are a caller Municipal judges Association who going to spearhead a more of a let's get out and talk to our public a little bit to the extent that we can so that we can share what we're doing so I think that's part of of the response to it um and I'm a little bit concerned about where we head you know with people not wanting to trust or even just to completely reject outright what courts are doing and that's why it's so important for me to to stay on that path of being independent and impartial so that we can't be accused of doing something in a political way thank you appreciate that

[246:00] yeah well thank you again for for um all the work that you and everyone else uh in the court and certainly city attorney's office and all your partners there too thank you and I want to thank you for you've been such a good support and come over and spend so many different times with us uh our staff really appreciates seeing members of council engage with us it's really been great ran thanks a uh kind of a transportation cqu but first judge thanks I echo my colleagues uh uh gratitude for your work and also for hosting me for my first Community court this morning um as as an observer I look forward to coming again soon um on Transportation I I think I asked something along the lines a year ago when you did this presentation but now I'm just thinking um yeah it is striking to to watch the the slides go by and show who is coming to appear for you and how much of it has to do with Transportation with with speeding with enforcement red light running with

[247:00] parking and you know I think at some level we're we're all kind of just inur to it that that's just the part of life that that we do that but I think it really fundamentally describes a a defective design it's not unique Boulder you know it's our we do this nationally and Beyond um that we just create the system where people get so trapped in in this and now we have to ask these trade-off questions like man like it's tough that we're having to Bear all these additional you know enforcement actions and anyway I guess my question is um can you just comment a little bit on H how big of a burden is this is that system uh the system of getting tickets and and enforcement actions on kind of like the overall population that you see such that if you imagined it went away because we actually had super great Transit and and you know other Mobility options and and accessibility and proximity you know design that kind of like made it all disappear can you just like you know as a thought experiment H

[248:01] how um healthy or how what kind of improvements would you see and you know health or and maybe I'm overstating it or you know a barking up the wrong tree but I'm just curious if you could think imagine that possibility that all the traffic enforcement go goes away because the problems go away what kind of impact does that have wow that's a big one um and I I wonder if if if Teresa might be better and maybe neither one of us can answer this question because it's a pretty big one um but I I try to stay away from even giving an an opinion about what we ought to be doing all right sorry it does put me in a little bit of a of an area where I like I not try not to go because I'm I'm the I'm not a one who creates laws I just the laws get created by the legislative branch and the Executive Branch goes out and enforces them the police department does and then the the judge is really designed to kind of all right you've you've now filed these cases in our court but Teresa might have a comment because she's she's part of that executive and legislative branch so I don't know if Teresa Taylor Tate wants

[249:00] to chime in oh look at that I'm having trouble getting off of mute there you are we can hear you no you know this is this is certainly a a a very large philosophical question um it would change the complexion of our prosecution office and our prosecution work significantly um and uh you know we always just we stand ready to to um do our part in in uh both drafting the the laws that enforce your PO enact your policy and the enforcement of those fine okay sorry to make you both squirm I guess I'll just leave it as a comment then that it is interesting that we have a system built um that so I don't know Mak makes you squirm when we start talking about the changing it um but yeah I um thank

[250:01] thanks for that Jeff and um that's all I have for now I will say that it's we do we we look at it I I don't know how Teresa looks at it but I I view as our goal is is to try to make sure that the community it remains safe so that if there are infractions that are causing people to to be unsafe we want to consequence that Behavior Uh that's that's important if you didn't have the ability to consequence Behavior where people be being made unsafe you have to have that mechanism in place to to some extent my my experience as a prosecutor long ago and and now as a judge I I think that's important um but we also try to make it so that for those that where it is just a infraction you were going 65 and a 55 M hour Zone we don't want the penalty to be you got to spend three hours in court with us and we're going to give you a heavy fine and we want you to go to a class and do a lot of things it's a oneandone and we have opportunities for people to actually avoid coming to court entirely so we try

[251:00] to make it efficient so that we're not overly uh hindering individuals in their daily lives who haven't really put us at risk thanks for that my next stop will be to go talk to our other folks in other departments who work on the root more the systemic causes of of the behaviors then so thank thanks again all right well not seeing any other hands raised uh judge Khan thanks again so much for joining us along with the other members of your your team Devon and others for being here with us and thanks for your extraordinary work that you do for our community appreciate I appreciate all of you too it was it was interesting to watch what you all were doing tonight so I appreciate it excellent all right well that brings us to the end of our agenda so I will thank everybody for a good meeting it's good to be back together in the new year and take care and we'll see each other again next week online gab is closed at 10:07 meeting is a

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