Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[4:55] shall we get started oh there we are we're all here terrific

[5:00] everyone ready all right good evening and welcome to tonight's study session of the Boulder City Council I am council member Tina Maris and thank you for joining us we have on tonight's agenda three items our first item will be the access management and parking strategy amps Transportation demand management TDM update our second item is the discussion on the city Behavioral Health framework and our third item is the council committee appointments for 2025 before we go into our work item I would like to outline how the meeting will be conducted we will review the staff's presentations and then we will have time for questions at the end of the presentation we will conduct our Council discussion with staff if you have questions please wait for staff to complete the presentation we'll now turn it over to our city manager uh Nua who is in fact um

[6:00] going to be Pam uh for this evening to introduce our item thank you council member Maris and rest of council and thank you for giving me the um humble opportunity to keep nara's seat war for this evening um I just want to provide a brief introduction to our first item this evening our update on the access management and parking strategy and transportation demand management project updates and as Tina mentioned throughout this conversation you'll hear referred to frequently as amps and TDM this item has taken significant cross- departmental collaboration including but not limited to team members from planning and development services transportation and Mobility Community vitality and more like many City efforts this project is highly interdisciplinary and has required extensive parallel and crosscutting work we bring this forward to you tonight with the intention to continue to deliver the scope of this project to be in compliance with the Colorado house

[7:01] bill 24-34 that takes effect June 30th of 20125 regarding restrictions on enforcement of minimum parking requirements and finally staff believes this amps effort represents a chance to enhance consistency for all who interact with the related policies including members of the public developers and City staff alike I'm pleased to turn the meeting over to Lisa hood of planning and development services thanks Pam great intro good evening council members I'm Lisa Hood I'm a principal city planner for planning and development services and I'm joined by my teammates on this project Chris Haggin um with transportation and mobility and Samantha Bromberg with Community Vitality we're excited to bring this update on the amps project and specifically the code and policy enhancements to you tonight you last saw this project at a study session back in August we've been hard at work

[8:00] doing additional best practices research and further developing options and recommendations like Pam already said with the three different departments there also you might remember three different Focus areas we're looking at our off- street parking requirements our transportation demand management requirements and our on street parking management strategies with all of these they're very interrelated from thinking of it as simply as they're all kind of related to parking um but also more comp complicated in that um they all interrelate so um deeply so if we affect one of them it's going to affect the other two so that's why we really wanted to take this project with all three legs of this stool essentially um so what we're working on is reimagining the approach to parking regulation in Boulder updating our transportation demand management requirements that haven't been updated in a long time making sure that they're more streamlined and predictable and also more enforcable for for the future um in

[9:01] a way that can further um influence travel behavior in the city also making sure that we're efficiently utilizing the public right of way uh related to on street parking just some policy background this project also implements a ton of different policies in our Boulder Valley comprehensive plan as well as our measurable many measurable objectives in the transportation master plan we talked about this back in August about using this project to reach these objectives like reducing our vehicle traveled increasing our mode share of um walking biking and Transit and reducing um or improving our um are working towards our climate goals by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions among the other really important measurable objectives in the transportation master plan just a reminder on the project scope we did confirm that project scope at that August study session um but just a reminder that the project scope is to implement the final outstanding recommendations from the amps report that was adopted by Council back in 2017

[10:03] so there's actually just two items remaining from that report that haven't already been implemented updating the off- street parking standards and creating a TDM plan ordinance for new developments um I went into the background back in August so I don't want to get too long into the history but you might remember that this Project's been going on since 2014 um so this is the final uh piece of the project the project was paused for a few years during covid then it was placed back on the staff work plan last year and that was something that was confirmed by Council even though it wasn't necessarily a a council work plan priority project um because it was something already in flight but you might remember at The Retreat Council confirmed the importance of this project and as we reinitiated the project we had a new factor to bring in to play which s uh which uh Pam already introduced the house bill that was adopted by the state legislature which prohibits cities like Boulder

[11:00] from um requiring minimum parking spaces for certain types of development within uh distance of Transit so as we thought through uh the implications of that state Bill and how that would apply in Boulder and affect our um our work towards the off- street parking standard side of this we began moving more towards the idea of eliminating minimum parking requirements and as we moved to towards that we really needed to incorporate thinking about the on street parking management strategies holistically with with these other two items to make sure that we're really um thinking about all things related to parking at the same time in regards to applicability um like any code change or almost every code change that we work on the code changes that you'll see in this project will apply to new development and Redevelopment so just want to be clear that those don't typically apply retroactively um to properties that aren't seeking some type of approval through the city so at the time time of an alteration or addition or new

[12:01] construction that's when these new requirements would come into place but if it's just a property that's not changing it's not something that we would um go proactively and uh require um compliance with these new regulations that's just not how typically zoning standards work I don't want to go through each of these because I know we have limited time for the presentation but just a reminder of the feedback that we received back in the August study session Council confirmed the scope that staff had recommended we talked about a number of different topics and then we also took this to planning board and the transportation Advisory board for their guidance and Direction last fall they similarly supported staff's recommended scope we had a lot of great conversations that have um led us to do some additional research on certain topics and then we were actually back at Transportation Advisory Board last night with the exact same memo that you all saw and the recommendations and um just to be brief uh generally they were supportive of the recommendations for

[13:00] each of the three topics and we talked um had again great discussion on each of those Focus areas all right so each one of the three of us is going to take one of the focus areas so I'm going to give an overview of the offre street parking standard section you might remember back in August um I went through a lot of data collection results we've been collecting parking utilization data for over 10 years in Boulder to understand and inform this project but the key takeaway to remember is that across Ross all land uses more parking is available than is being used at peak times we further dug into this issue over the last couple of months to try to understand kind of the landscape of parking in Boulder and how much space is being used for parking um you can start at the left if you look at the map of Boulder when we think about just off street parking so this doesn't include any parking that's happening on the streets just private parking lots um or any parking lots any paring um areas 10%

[14:01] of the city's land private land is dedicated to parking and you can actually see in the map that's about the the area that would if you put it all in one place it would take up that's 1,500 Acres of parking how did we get here we've had minimum parking requirements for 75 years so might remember minimum parking requirements usually work in a ratio so for an example of a a typical 2 200 foot restaurant would actually require 21 parking spaces which the space for those that parking takes up three times the amount of land area for the parking than the actual use of the restaurant then we dug into how many household Vehicles there are in Boulder there's about three spaces available for every household vehicle that we have and I know you might be thinking we have a lot of commuters that come into Boulder even if you took every single person that works or lives out outside of Boulder if they

[15:00] all came into Boulder on the same exact day in their own single occupancy vehicle and every vehicle that lives in Boulder stays in Boulder we would still have extra parking spaces left over so this is just um to provide you kind of a picture of the landscape after 75 years of uh requiring minimum parking and when we think about a new paradigm without minimum parking requirements that's where these other two items um in the project really come to light so this leaves us space if we're not focusing on minimum parking requirements we can focus more on our transportation demand management and how we're um how we're managing our on street parking and then also just physically how we can reimagine the space that's been used for parking for other uses like Parks or affordable housing or working towards our walkable neighborhood goals so I there's a number of recommendations related to um several topics in your memo I won't go too much

[16:01] into detail because there's lots more detail in the memo but um just to go over each briefly staff is continuing to recommend that we eliminate minimum parking requirements Citywide for all land uses um that was confirmed by ccil back in August but we've done further digging looking at the benefits and drawbacks best practices research there's many many communities throughout the country that have already done this that we can learn from and we do recommend eliminating minimum parking requirements we also looked into maximum parking requirements a lot of those cities as they get rid of minimums they'll Implement maximums and we're not actually recommending moving forward with that we just don't see in the data and research that there's um enough benefit it doesn't move the needle um enough to have a maximum parking requirement to um to basically make the administration of another zoning parking regulation worth it uh thirdly we've heard a lot of comments about our bike parking requirements well it wasn't

[17:01] initially part of the amp's recommendations um bike parking is within the same chapter of the land use code AS vehicle parking so we've been looking at that um we studied the numbers that we have actually if we go back to the first phase of amps that actually was um to create the bike parking requirements that we have now so we've kind of come full circle um but and if we look at other communities we looked at over 30 different communities Boulder is one of the still has one of the highest bike parking requirements for almost every use compared to these other communities so we don't think that there is a need to increase the number of requirements but what we've heard from several people is that um the design requirements could be looked at and we can make sure that we are accommodating the types of bikes that are more common these days like cargo bikes and ebikes by tweaking those design standards and so we're committed to working with um stakeholders that are interested in this topic to develop some changes to those design standards that

[18:00] can accommodate people's needs the final two are topics that came up at that initial study session shared parking and EV charging shared parking is something we're going to continue to look into if we don't have minimum parking requirements it's not necessarily some a requirement we have to put into the zoning code um but it is something that we want to try to understand where the city's role can be in facilitating shared parking so that parking can be used more efficiently um off street parking can be used more efficient L throughout the city and then related to EV charging we did take a look at our EV requirements they're actually housed in our energy conservation code so they're not in the land use code or zoning code um but when we look at other comparable communities they we do have comparable requirements to those other communities and so we don't think that at this time we need to rethink that the energy conservation code was just recently adopted um and it there wouldn't be much purpose to duplicating that into the zoning code so those are all the recommendations related to off street

[19:01] parking and I'm going to pass it over to Chris Hagin to talk about Transportation demand management Thank you Lisa uh good evening council members uh Chris hean principal project manager in transportation Mobility here to present on the TDM component uh of this project uh next slide please thank you in 24 2014 when staff began working on this project they were directed to align the parking code update with a new TDM ordinance for new development uh that works in an environment without minimum parking requirements and one that would set measurable targets for TDM plans and provide the city with a legal mechanism to monitor compliance next slide please the current TDM plan process is initiated by site review requirements uh

[20:02] TDM plans are customized for each project but are really Limited in scope and impact without an ordinance that requires targets or monitoring for our largest projects this customiz approach does not provide enough Clarity of expectations or consistency for City staff the public or developers uh and the TDM plans are primarily focused on infrastructure and amenities since very few TDM programs can actually be implemented by a developer uh from the onset of their project TDM programs are implemented after occupation by employers and residential property managers and then are used by employees and residents uh that we have had success in requiring three to fiveyear commitments for Eco passes uh with a very high rate of voluntary continuation of the programs by the tenants after that period next slide

[21:03] please in the fall of 2024 boards and Council supported a tiered approach to ensure that the focus uh of the ordinance is on the largest most impactful developments but also to manage staffing needs and resources required to manage and enforce a new ordinance uh staff recommends using a three- tiered approach where tier zero the smallest projects would be exempt uh tier one projects would have required TDM plans and annual Financial guarantees paid by the property owner uh but would not have targets or ongoing monitoring tier two the largest projects would have vehicle trip generation targets based on land use location and size annual and remedial Financial guarantees as well as an ongoing compliance monitoring process uh site

[22:01] review is automatically triggered by size threshold ensuring that large uh developments would be subject to the ordinance um besides those smallest tier zero projects staff is recommending some other exemptions including uh zones which already have trip reduction ordinances uh that would be mu4 rh6 and rh7 which originally found in the Boulder Junction area uh and then also to help meet the city's affordable housing goals uh recommending either fully or partially uh exempting 100% affordable housing next slide please staff is recommended using Denver's three- tiered system as a starting point and then adjusting those thresholds for the boulder environment uh and to manage those staff resource needs uh this chart here shows Denver's size size Thresh holds for different types of land uses and we've also added

[23:02] uh estimated employee and residents uh based on assumptions of square foot per employee and and residents per unit uh the last column shows how many projects in each threshold level are currently in the site review pipeline projects that are in the pipeline generally have an age of one to three years because that's how long it it takes to get through uh that process and and from construction to to um occupation next slide please so initial input from boards and Council in the fall of 2024 uh indicated that the purpose of the ordinance should not only be to mitigate the impacts of new development and to provide multimodal infrastructure and access but to really use this TDM plan ordinance to provide an ongoing contribution toward meeting City goals and uh transportation and climate goals go um in developing a

[24:00] TDM plan ordinance there's really two key challenges to overcome uh that we learned through our best practice reports uh one is having a development requirement that's that's on the property owner but knowing that TDM plans are implemented by the tenants uh for their employees or residents also knowing too that TDM programs strategies and services have ongoing annual costs things like the ecopass which is our most effective tool in changing travel Behavior annual costs same thing with vanpool subsidies or parking Cash Out programs So based on best practices and borrowing from um a lot of municipalities in Virginia actually um the overall overall approach centers on expanding the city's current use of financial guarantees for those tier one and two tier projects in that annual Financial guarantees would be put in place by the developer or the owner uh

[25:01] that would provide ongoing annual funding that is used by tenants or property managers uh to implement those approved TDM plans then there would be remedial funding for the highest tier tier two and those funds are used to augment annual Financial guarantees if the property is not meeting its vehicle trip generation Target and is out of compliance uh initial Financial guarantee rates would be based on size uh like the estimated number of employees or the number of residential units and the estimated cost of TDM plan elements um this approach and the use of financial guarantees provides the mechanism for property owners to pay for the annual cost of TDM programs that are implemented by their employee tenants or or residential property managers of course this does equate to a new ongoing cost Property Owners uh of our largest

[26:01] developments but we have to remember that the removal of minimum parking requirements equates to significant cost savings related to the construction and maintenance of parking spaces that those funds those savings could then be used towards these required TDM plans as the house bill uh made mention of the estimated cost of building a single structured parking space is 28,00 and then on top of that are of course ongoing maintenance costs so significant cost Savings in reducing the number of parking spaces uh next slide please so to summarize um staff is recommending that the city use a financial guarantee model really continuing our use expanding our current use of a financial guarantee model um to fund ongoing annual transport uh TDM programs and also a tiered approach to

[27:00] focus our requirements on the largest developments and to manage uh staff cost and resources uh we are also recommending some exemptions to the ordinance namely the smallest projects that are would meet the tier zero uh thresholds uh or be below them uh and land uses with current TDM ordinances uh and either a full or partial exemption for 100% affordable housing uh based on council's input tonight and our overall policy Direction staff will continue working on the details uh with input through a stakeholder engagement process uh this would include details on the specific thresholds and triggers of those tiers uh the vehicle trip generation targets and the evaluation methodologies to measure those uh trip generation targets uh Financial guarantee rates which would be based on land use size and location uh which TDM plan elements would be

[28:02] required uh in our process and finally the monitoring process and compliance requirements with that it concludes my section I will pass it on to Sam thank you thanks Chris and good evening Council uh Sam Bromberg from Community Vitality here to present on the on street parking management strategies if you'll recall from last August we have two main focus areas for this work um one is the to enhance the effectiveness of the existing neighborhood parking permit program and address the evolving needs of Boulders existing residential and mixed use neighborhoods and the second area focus is um recommendations for new and redeveloped areas in response to the the possibility of eliminating elimination of parking minimums Council will also recall a recent IP with the annual update on the NPP program we are holding off on making

[29:00] recommending on recommending changes until after the completion of this project so that we might be able to incorporate this work into future View and changes um on to best practices um to enhance our on street parking policies we analyze strategies from eight cities that have successfully reduced or eliminated parking minimums several cities including Portland and Costa Mesa limit residential parking permits to one per licensed driver this reduces excess demand while providing a fair solution for residents who are reliant on their vehicles Columbus payers paid parking with residential permits in high demand neighborhoods and approach that manages non-residential parking needs near schools and Commercial districts while ensuring availability for residents Eugene and Denver Implement stricter residency requirements for parking permits and Eugene long-term residents benefit from lower annual

[30:00] rates while short-term residents pay higher quarterly fees a strategy that discourages students living off campus from bringing their vehicles with them similarly Denver requires both the maging address on the vehicle registration and the driver's license to qualify for a permit ensuring that only long-term residents are eligible for permits Berkeley Denver and Estus Park have both neighborhood and building specific r restrictions Berkeley ensures residential permit programs are only implemented in areas where more than half of the block is residential in use while Denver excludes large multi-unit buildings from eligibility when on street parking spaces are insufficient both Denver and Estus Park limit permit issuance based on a household's off street parking availability ensuring that private parking is utilized first before on street parking finally Seattle enforces a stricter visitor parking policy

[31:01] allowing just one visitor per household this prevents misuse and preserves street parking for residents and other users next slide please the following are recommendations to enhance the effectiveness of the existing NPP program and to address the evolving needs of Boulders um neighborhoods they include um evaluating and adapting policies for non-residential parking in NPP zones particularly bilon ear schools commercial areas and other high demand zones the this could include replacing the two or three-hour time limits for non-permit holders with paid parking as Columbus does collaborate with Boulder Valley School District to formalize park and walk zones around schools and highly trafficked areas consider reducing the number of guest and visitor permits available in overcrowded NPP zones and consolidating them into a simplified system which ensures availability for residents while

[32:01] addressing U the misuse of those permits um consider limiting NPP permits to one per eligible resident to reduce excess vehicle storage and align parking permits with actual need um and also implementing an escalating rate structure for households requesting multiple permits establish a TDM wallet for NPP residents by working with vendors to develop a program framework to encourage the use of alternative transportation options and consider further limiting the availability of residential and visitor permits on mixed use blocks or for Mi mixed use buildings to ensure that curbside access in mixed use areas balances residential needs with those of businesses visitors and employees of the area next slide please the following are recommendations for new and redeveloped areas and they include limiting and new NPP Zone to areas significantly impacted by

[33:00] commercial activities schools or recreational facilities so limiting the spread of new zones and developing thresholds for when a new NPP is proposed for an area impacted by newer Redevelopment based on utilization data and anticipated new trip trip generation and that concludes my section thank you all right so three three complex topics all brought together in this nice graphic these are all the different recommendations um that we have for each topic and as you would have read in your memo we have three questions that we've laid out for you um essentially we're looking um for your feedback on the recommendations related to off street parking TDM and on street parking there's a lot more words on this but um if it's helpful let me know and I can bring this slide back up but otherwise I will stop sharing and we can take questions okay that was a great presentation I

[34:00] appreciate um The Clarity and thank you very much for all the effort put into it who would like to start us out with the first question uh Tara then Ryan you know what let Ryan go first Ryan then Tara then Aaron thanks Tara um Tina I had a I have a question should we start with our our questions uh so we're doing the first question well yes let's start with questions I have a clarification question regarding what we've heard is that okay to start with yep great okay um I just have a follow-up question about the hotline message that I sent um so just so people know I asked about bike parking and if there might be scope to address property owners who we did not ask to um meet the standard after 2013 which is when our new Modern Standard came in and my question was

[35:00] through some combination of requirements incentives or education do we have scope to address them now and Lisa um you responded to say not right now and I totally understand that um so my question is um Lisa you had said if Council would like to suggest future work in this base let us know so my question to you is do you want to know about that today or um I guess it on things that are maybe outside of immediate scope should we just sort of keep a on that for now or would you like to hear that today I think it's always helpful to hear feedback um I don't know I I know there's some uh rules related to like immediate future work that has you know has to get KN of certain number but I think we've also taken feedback from Transportation Advisory Board and planning board about like what future topics they'd like us to look at for lots of different projects that we' brought to them so I think we can note it for the future um if you want to more officially make a recommendation or direction towards staff I would look to

[36:01] probably Teresa to give detail on how that would happen okay great thank you thanks for that and thank you for your articulate and clear response to my hotline I appreciate it sure okay Tara well good because I will Cally um I love that word I used to not like it but I truly love that um so I've been thinking about Ryan's hotline and I've been thinking about um older develop Vel Ms and I'm sure I'm not the only one that gets pained whenever they see for instance at basar a parking lot that is has barely any cars in it so I'm wondering if we could add to the discussion we're going to have and I agree with Ryan that we should have it sooner rather than later um is is there anything we can do to reimagine those spaces for instance even with tree right now it's like opposite of everything we stand for trees or uh even if it's small

[37:02] spaces you know more bike parking and stuff like that I think I would love to see that added just what to do about these older parking lots the second thing I wanted to um ask you was um or mention to that was um just give me one second I want to agree with Ryan that we should should be discussing this sooner rather than later so Ryan i' give you a A+ in that comment and even though it was out of scope I'm really excited for it to be in scope as soon as possible I guess I want to say about the the the uh secure bike parking and the better bike um structures that can fit the cargo bikes Etc is I feel like this is a super this is a s these are two super important things for us to get anywhere with some of our um goals and I'm worried that if we only

[38:05] do anything with new um with new um not with give me that word everybody news development yeah that's it developments and that we're really going to be missing so many of our old developments could which could use a real makeover so I'm wondering if there's any way that we could think outside of the box as to how to affect the older develops and the older parking uh the older uh shopping the strip malls to for the future I think that could be a something I wish we could do that I don't know if it's possible it's just such a big wish of mine so and lastly um this has nothing to do with Ryan now this is I don't understand I have one question why why does limiting and P

[39:00] pzones why is that an important thing because my big fear is for seniors right now I just want to make sure that we're paying attention to our seniors which is our largest growing group that they have a way to they ha for those that have to drive and those that are disabled I would wish that they would have opportunities to be very close to their house so Tera we're technically not on NPP yet that's question number three okay I'll do that but thanks Tina for keeping me inline anytime and I can take your uh the two questions that you had on the parking I can answer um so you asked about or you noted what can we do with existing developments and I do want to clarify that when properties come in with major alterations or need building permits we can implement the new regulations it's

[40:00] just when they're not doing anything that we can't we're saying that that's not within scope to create kind of a retroactive or a um a a new type of requirement when they're not requesting some type of permit so we see lots of Redevelopment and changes happen to properties that are brought in for building permits where we're able to look at that bike parking and make sure that it's meing the number and design and things like that but I do think there's as we've discussed and it's been brought up obviously there um is a lot of interest in this and we're interested in it as well um just as a future uh future work project so putting that on retro I love that word that's the word retroactive yeah and then your second your other question was what can we do with older parking lots and what came to mind uh immediately was that we're in our comprehensive planning process and so there's lots of opportunity to Envision if we do open up um space cuz those those parking spaces technically are required by the city right now um so

[41:00] if we don't have minimum parking requirements there's so much more flexibility for land like that to develop into other uses and so um I think that could be an important part of the conversation for the comprehensive plan and I'd like to call on Teresa whose hand just popped up for a minute thanks Tina um I do want to remind Council that that um it's while it is certainly helpful for us to have a preview of of what folks may or may not be interested in um would require a trade-offs conversation and so something would have to come off the plate or something new to come on the plate and so just want to make sure that you're aware of that as you're having these conversations um and then also it would require a formal um process down the road of a n of five thanks Teresa and that's a good reminder to me that we're um going to try to stay in scope but we will also find time I'm sure as a council to address some of the other thoughts we have surrounding this issue um so I think the next person was Aon I have two clarifying questions but

[42:02] they're on TDM are we strictly on um parking requirements right now you know let's do clarifying questions for all of it now and then we'll go through the do we support questions okay does that sound good with everybody great thanks all right um thanks so my couple questions on the TDM side um one of them was uh for the tiers part of that were um hooking it on to whether a a project needs site review needs to go through the site review process but my understanding and correct me if I'm wrong is that because of the transit oriented communities Bill we're going to have to pretty uh significantly overhaul the site review process over the next couple of years so I think it requires less discretionary review so I'm just wondering if you all are factoring that future into this plan or would we need to revisit how the thresholds were hit if we do need to change the S Rue threshold significantly well I think you know regardless of the

[43:02] site site review requirements we can set the tier thresholds at levels that we deem appropriate so when a project comes in if it meets the threshold then it would be under the ordinance um you know I'm not sure that uh site review requirements would supersede that U but that may be uh you know a question for City attorneys well maybe I'll just offer a quick thought on that since we're talking about it is to as you write the ordinance you may want to specify specific sizes rather than just say if it if it goes through cyber viiew to Future yes that's a thought agreed great um and then my other question was about the tiers for the TDM requirements and just something that um jumped out at me was the difference in the square footage between office and Industrial and I know that industrial definitely has more square feet per employee but by my rough math the um the

[44:04] per square footage for industrial was three times office but the tier was actually six times the size of a tier for office so I was wondering why that discrepancy um well th those tiers those are the the Denver tiers uh we're just kind of using those as a starting point and then we can adjust them uh you know as needed to focus on the the the number of projects in each year we want to have go through that ordinance in any given year uh and then also to manage the Staffing requirements to do that so uh I think those are all things adjustables what we were showing is just an example uh of the Denver tiered system and the you know employees um or square the square foot per employees those are just averages that come from like the Institute of Traffic Engineers uh they are averages uh many of them have significant ranges within them so but those are all things that we

[45:00] can adjust uh to make it fit right uh for our Boulder environment thanks for explaining that I I thought it was the starting point for our tiers not just the starting point for analysis okay yes great uh thanks for those answers that's all I've got okay for more clarifying questions I think Matt is next thanks U I'm going to maybe piggyback a little bit on clarifying where Aaron was at and it was a based off of note on one of the slides that basically said the current TDM process most TDM strategies cannot be implemented by the developer and I I could you clarify maybe a little bit as to why we aren't seeing that um because it seems like if we've got this process and providing this great strategies and stuff we're not getting that implementation so I just wonder if you could sort of help me understand why we're not seeing that sure so you know when you think about traditional TDM programs you know like a parking Cash Out program uh van pool subsidies all those types of things you

[46:00] know those are things that are implemented by employers for their employees paid for by employers for their employees usually when we're going through a site review process and we're looking at a developer uh a lot of times if it's a multi-tenant commercial building we don't even know who the tenants are we don't know anything about the tenants uh sometimes there are National corporations that come in who have policies you know I remember when uh Apple came into 29th Street we wanted to put an ecopass requirement on them and they say we do not provide any benefits that we cannot provide to all of our employees Nationwide and they were like no we're not going to do that so there are just limitations on what a developer can do during that development process um all of the the real traditional TDM programs that we know they are implemented at the employer level or residentially at the property manager level uh and I think sometimes it really takes knowing who

[47:01] those tenants are to understand which TDM programs and services or incentives or disincentives will work with that specific group and so you know we have had success in requiring Eco passes those have a set cost we've been able to do that through financial guarantees uh but a lot of the other TDM programs it's really hard to think about what a developer can do when it's really the future tenant maybe three years down the line who is going to implement a TDM program for their employees or and good evening Council I'm Brad Muer uh director of planning and development services just to add on to Chris's comments and a reminder um the developer of a property may not be the entity that ends up owning it so there are plenty of developers who develop and then turn over and don't manage the actual building and that kind of feeds then into the scenario that uh Chris is is talking about okay I I mean so this really kind

[48:01] of begs a question here we're we go through a process that has no teeth to it so I'm wondering like one this be either stays in exercise of futility or we modify this so that it actually has some binding power and so I'm kind of wondering if where we are in this current process of thinking about TDM in whether we just throw our hands up and go eh you know do it most don't or do we go another direction we say maybe we start thinking about binding requirements to say we gone through this work this is part of how our community wants to see this happen and therefore doesn't matter if you're the developer and you're the employer or you're hiring someone the TDM stays with the property without ownership and that's the requirement and if you're moving in you're moving in knowing you got a requirement you got to meet that so I I just feel that like even at a high level we're getting in the weeds and we haven't answered the big question of how do gain more efficacy out of the TDM work that we are hanging a lot of Hope

[49:02] on and putting a lot of work in to meet Community needs so that's a bigger question but I'm really struggling with how do we gain more efficacy and and so so I I can answer that so I mean the approach that we're recommending is approach that where the property owner um that could be the developer initially but then the property owner they are putting up an annual Financial guarantee that is funding that goes into an escro count and then that funding is distributed to whoever the tenants are so that they can implement the TDM programs so if we have requirements that there are EOP passes or a parking Cash Out program or vanpool subsidies the money from those annual Financial guarantees are put in place by the property owner it is attached to a requirement for that property and then that funding is used it's dispersed to the tenants and then the

[50:02] tenants use that to fund the TDM program of their approved TDM plan and so their employees or the residents get the benefits of the Eco passes the vanpool subsidies so this is you know really based on some models that we've seen in Fairfax and uh Arlington where they've been using these annual Financial guarantees because as I said the key thing in a in a TDM ordinance is that TDM programs have ongoing annual costs they never end it's in perpetuity and so what we're recommending is that Financial annual Financial guarantee approach that puts the money from the property owner dispersed to the tenant who then has the funds to to pay for the the TDM programs and services in their approved TDM plan for the largest developments that's why they also have that remedial fund because if you're not meeting your trip generation goal you take a portion from that remedial fund

[51:00] to augment the annual fund that provides more money for different programs new programs Innovative programs different incentives that could then see okay we put those in place now are they in compliance and so that's the system that they set up I think it's a really good approach uh we and you know I'd like to model that approach there so that's the mechanism we're looking at so hopefully that explains it it does a little bit I I have a couple more questions so I maybe we can sync into this a little later at a different time but but anyway getting at at wear of the teeth to make sure that this TDM stuff has staying power is key and so it sounds like some Financial incentives may go there staying on maybe just the little track of the TDM and then have one followup question one different question after that about EV charging is and just piggybacking on aon's point with the new state law does TDM now that we're doing with Transit oriented communities effectively frontload all planning and permiting and so I'm just wondering that is that how this effectively Works maybe it's called something different but I'm just wondering does does the TDM now

[52:01] shift to a different phase of the process given that we're basically doing Toc work now for so much of the city yeah uh Again Brad Muer with planning I'm going to invite Carl maybe Carl um guer to speak to that since he worked closely with it I'm sure Lisa can follow up I I do want to just add a little more detail to the comments Chris made about the the financial fee um and just clarify that it wouldn't be an incentive it would be a requirement of that property that would run in perpetuity and essentially fund either the TDM requirements or ensure the funding of it and again that way in year 25 uh because it's imp perpetuity as Chris uh notes when the developer is long gone the current then current tenant is the one that's paying the the shity essentially to make sure those programs are met and we would have enforcement mechanisms if they not me meaning that so I just wanted to clarify that a little bit uh but Carl and Lisa

[53:00] can you kind of speak to the TDM piece or the there's a number of State bills that impact you know multimodal corridors so the one is the parking uh bill that we're talking about tonight that uh does not require parking for projects on certain corridors there's also the transit oriented Community uh bill which uh basically requires a number of units to be built along multimodel corridors in those areas it doesn't speak necessarily to uh Transportation demand management plans other than parking is not required so I think in the sense of front loading I think it it does uh H make Property Owners or developers look at other methods to um try to address that parking demand and deal with access there are some best practices that the state is releasing uh that accompany the

[54:02] the parking bill um but nothing specific in the bills about TDM I appreciate that maybe we flag that for our later conversation on the state bills uh my last question has to do with EV parking I'm just sort of curious um I know that we're sort of like hey we're just gonna leave it as is I my question is how how do we find ways especially for neighborhood centers to gain EV infrastructure if they're not either having a new build or redeveloping which seem to be the only two triggers for Ev infrastructure so are there intermediate ways like we do with energy code updates to say even if you're not scraping a house and you're doing a small remodel you still got to then do the updates to get us up to code as a community and so I'm wondering there's got how do we have any intermediate way with EV charging like I'm thinking Table Mesa Shopping Center I'm thinking Baseline in Foothills I'm thinking Foods I'm thinking REI area like those areas aren't redeveloping within the next

[55:01] decade so then are we just having EV charging deserts until a Redevelopment so that's I'm trying to wonder how do we get to the EV charging infrastructure faster while not having to wait for a Redevelopment yeah I think that's something it obviously wasn't part of the scope back in 2014 um to Think Through EV charging but I think that there's a lot of opportunity in a future project obviously we have this deadline with the state bill but there's a lot of opportunities to think think of other ways other than requirements also maybe it's more of incentives and working with businesses maybe it's something that our climate initiatives department or Community Vitality Works on that's more of um how do we support and incentivize businesses in wanting to provide that infrastructure more than the regulatory side of forcing them to not to say that there's not a place for both of them but um kind of a larger picture of thinking of how do we get that infrastructure I think is a question that would be interesting to answer um again in a separate work project appreciate it thank thank you all right uh next we have Mark then Taisha and

[56:00] Tara okay I want to start by uh seconding uh my colleague's view that if you're going to do this it's got to have some efficacy to it and um uh the financial obligations probably have to run with the property uh otherwise I don't know why you're doing it but my question is um how large are the contemplated 3 to 5e guarantees exactly what kind of Burden are we placing upon the property and obviously the property owners so the 3 to five guarantee year guarantee is what we're currently doing um you know we we have a very limited amount of time that we're requiring things like the ecopass the new approach in a new ordinance would make that the annual Financial guarantees annual and ongoing to continually pay for those requirements so if we have a developer come in and build a large development

[57:00] and we say you know we think you should we we're going to require that you provide Ecco passes B cycle memberships and you know whatever else then we estimate what that Financial guarantee is and that becomes an annual Financial requirement from that property owner that and then those funds are used by the the tenants of that property whether it be employers or it could be a property management for a resident Cal and they would use that annual Financial guarantee funding to implement the programs that we requiring so that's the thing and it would go on in perpetuity because all TDM programs the traditional ones the ones that are the most effective they have annual costs so we are moving from a limited Financial guarantee situation which we have now where we only require it for 3 to five years to one where it is an annual ongoing Financial guarantee if that explains it and have we costed out what that annual guarantee will look like for

[58:03] a large project for a large industrial project what is the burden that we're looking to impose upon uh Property Owners so I mean it you could estimate it in in different ways so like one example may be if you could do it by a per employee estimate estimate you know Ecco passes maybe you know roughly depending on your your size and location of your business about 100 $20 per year um so if we were to say have an ecoast requirement we would look at okay what is the estimated number of employes times the 120 and that would be uh the cost I think the important thing to know is when a developer can build less parking with the average cost being you know $28,000 for a structured spot that would buy Ecco passes for over 200 units so if you had a 50 unit you know uh development eliminating one parking spot could pay for four years of Eco passes for that so that's the trade-off we're

[59:00] looking at is the developer can provide less parking but that savings some of that a portion of that needs to be reinvested in this ongoing TDM program um you know that's what we heard in terms of having a TDM ordinance that has an impact and the way it has an impact is by providing these programs that do have annual costs okay just a couple of other questions on on page 14 of the Mo the three tier approach for TDM management it looks as if only 10 projects seem to be outside of tier zero um and there's some reference in there to requiring more FTE to manage the program why with only 10 uh programs uh um falling outside of the the T tier zero uh exemption why would we need more more ftes to do this well I think it you know it would accumulate

[60:00] over time if every year you had you know a handful of tier one projects and you know a couple tier two year two you're doubling that and so on so on so after 10 years you've got a number of projects that need to be uh monitored um and make sure those financial guarantees are put in place you know so we can you know look at you know what would be the added Staffing that would be needed over time as the number of projects that you're monitoring for this ordinance occur so but again you know looking at those thresholds we can help manage you know the extent of that need um you know we can really focus only on the largest uh you know maybe we only have you know one tier one tier two project every couple years you know something like a CU you South um so that that's part of the management but I think you know when you think about everything that goes into the ordinance you know you've got the planning and development services Engineers that are reviewing plans

[61:01] you've got Transportation Mobility staff approving the TDM plans for the tenants you've got our financial uh people in our budget office that are managing the financial guarantees so there's many different levels to that so we anticipate depending on where we put that threshold we we may need some additional Staffing fair enough and I have one last question um we had some mode share objectives in the 2019 Master Transportation plan which was 80% walking biking and transit for residents and 40% for non-residents um how did we do so we uh we conducted our latest uh resident travel uh diary in 2020 23 and that report came out in 2024 uh the the measurable objective you're referring to is uh related to reducing single occupancy travel for all

[62:01] trips by residents to just 20% uh we are at around I believe 35% of Resident trips are in sovs uh that has come down from the mid 40s when we started measuring so we are making progress in the decline but you know we are not making progress at the trajectory we need to to meet our goal but we are we are making progress and and reducing s so trips how are we doing for the non-residents the non-resident so we look at non-resident employees so we did our last Boulder Valley employee survey in 2022 um these are all available online as well um this has been the harder nut to track to crack um when you look at the non-resident employees who are coming in about 80% uh travel in single occupant vehicles uh um since we started measuring that we've only had one statistically significant drop in that

[63:01] sov Mo chair and that was in 2008 so time of the you know financial crisis and high gas prices um but you know in some ways you know we're fighting an uphill battle uh more and more of our employees are non-residents and they're each year they're traveling further and further away to get to their work in Boulder and oftentimes outside of the RTD service area uh as we look at residential pattern s more north and east um so maybe holding ground we're we're doing okay but that is a measure that we haven't really uh been able to to knock okay thank you and thank you for a uh a very very clear presentation I appreciate it yeah you're welcome all right more questions from Taisha and then Lauren thank you very much um I just had just a couple of questions um the first is really just Universal and that's a question around the fiscal note um we've

[64:00] had a several just in the comments uh this evening there have been a couple of moments where finances whether that be on Staffing or technical um and so again very eager um for fiscal notes and just the fisical implications to any decisions that we're making especially since we have a tight budget we have restricted funds we need to know what's restricted what's not um and the implication to the budget so I'm just going to continue to ask for it until we see it uh and I know that the team is working on it but again and again decisions are being made and we're giving direction without having financial information to guide that and it just feels irresponsible um the second question I have so just a status update on when we can get that because last time I was I inquired about this I was told that it would be hap H it would happen after the budgeting process which we have completed and we're about to go into another budgeting process so my concern is that I we would have to wait another year um so love to get it I'm happy to

[65:00] give you an update we just met on it this morning okay we intend to implement the fiscal note and Associated staff training and guidance in our agenda management software transition so the first sort of formal update to the memo template including the fiscal note will take effect following your summer break this year um but our staff has multiple um great examples of other local governments that are making use of this um and it's it's a change process like any other so we are right okay um obviously I have significant concerns about waiting to the summer um for getting financial information that guide our in to to guide our decisions so I'm hopeful that we can find a stop Gap in the interim um to inform the decision the fin the financial decisions that we make with every decision that we have um another question so thank you Pam I appreciate and understand stand but again it just feels in the political economic

[66:00] environmental climate that we're in I we need to have that financial information and the trade-offs to to help us better understand the tradeoffs of decisions that we make um my second question is around um impacted Outreach um I noticed that residents and staff were going to be inv invited for that and I was just curious if commuters were also going to be a part of that primary targeted um so that's my second question and I just have one more after that yeah I think that we're we're still we're um hoping to get the kind of initial recommendations and options that are before you tonight confirmed and then we're going to finalize our community engagement plan um the engagement of commuters or or folks who don't live in Boulder is more challenging but we have a lot of great engagement staff and ideas on how to get get that voice heard um so that will definitely be a part of it awesome and again I'm just speaking specifically to the two bullet points around the primary engagement that was in the memo and the

[67:02] need to also include the commuters as a primary um so just was I'm happy to know that that's already on your radar screen and then lastly um the low income um subsidies it would be helpful just to know the threshold for those subsidies um and actually I'm sorry there are four um just in general it would be helpful to have outcome data on the work that we've been been doing to date so I know some information was shared um about that but um again um it would be very helpful to have um access to as much outcome data on the policies that we've already implemented and how they've driven us towards our goals or not um so thank you so much and I look forward to um the responses okay Lauren I'm sorry I have the respon I don't believe anybody responded to my low threshold okay sorry that's all right I think that one might be me but someone please correct me if I'm wrong um in

[68:02] terms of um the the discounted we offer discounted residential permits for um low income or income qualified residents and the way that we've implemented it to make it you know feasible for our staff um to to Grant these and and easy for the public as well to apply for them is they just need to attest to the fact that they're enrolled in another program so that might be you know um SNAP benefits or you know they might have uh Colorado First healthc Care so they self attest to the fact that they're enrolled in one of those other programs there city of Boulder programs and then there's County programs and then we issue them the discount it's it is half off of the residential permits this year the residential permits are about 51 50 for a calendar year um so half off is like just over

[69:00] $25 and um we do see that there are folks um uh utilizing the program but I don't have numbers for you tonight so I can certainly come back next time and present on you know just how many people are taking advantage of that option awesome thank you very much okay now Lauren my apologies for that Taisha thanks Tina um and thank you everyone for such great comments I find myself kind of drawn to that particularly related to bike parking maybe some retroactive measures and would be interested in a future discussion I know that's not part of this item um but kind of thinking about what that might look like um and I appreciated Tara's question around what we kind of do with older bike parking lot what we do with older parking lots

[70:02] um and look forward to that discussion as part of the comp planning um and aon's thing about TDM related to um thresholds based on size we're kind of getting into this really intense conversation about um how some of these like the financial guarantees around TDM over time and I really like the direction that staff is going with that I have concerns around you know inflation and programs you know RTD could drastically change the cost of permits and things like that and it's not necessarily that I need you to answer this question now but I would hope that when this comes back I would like a little bit more information about kind of how you know if a tenant moves in who has twice as many employees as we're

[71:00] expecting or half as many kind of how um those programs will work and evolve thank you okay uh I'll call in myself and then actually are we waiting for a response for yours Lauren or is that to be addressed in the next I said they could address it in the future it's sort of too specific for where we're at right now I think perfect I'll call myself and then Tara I had um two uh specific questions the first as I uh had emailed Brad earlier I'm just wondering if this ordinance would describe whether it's okay to charge a car on on street parking from your home running a CT across a sidewalk I'm just thinking about as people might switch their um garages into adus but still want to have an EV um are there different ways of charging and is that okay if they put a map a mat down so they don't trip over the court and and for what it's worth

[72:01] this is already happening in neighborhood so yeah I'm happy to address that uh council member um there's a couple different ways to answer that the short answer is it's illegal to do that already uh under a number of uh highly bureaucratic and Technical interpretations of things as you can appreciate this is not a high priority for uh in this case code enforcement and police um if there was a complaint we would certainly follow up but we don't do proactive enforcement on that I think the larger theme um that's important in your question is if this becomes a standard Practice What what will be a a more broad approach to that and it gets into you know a difficult um uh but maybe important scenario of providing on Street uh electrical service up and down street so um it's an important thing for

[73:01] us to keep an eye out um I do not know that we envision uh needing to put anything in this ordinance or being able to address what is kind of an emerging problem but it's a an important thing to put on the radar and and appreciate that uh Leisa I don't know if you've got anything to add this time on that um just that there's a few cities that do allow um the on Street EV charging with a cord but there's very specific like ADA requirements that you need to have that go over the cord because it is a a safety hazard to have a cord going over a sidewalk um or there's like Vancouver has some system where you can have it like 8 feet above the sidewalk and then the cord goes over so some cities have piloted this um so if it's something uh to look into with a future work program item but like Brad said currently right now it's it's illegal because it's a safety okay thank you um and then my other question is just to follow up um with

[74:00] what uh Mark was asking about um single occupancy vehicles for residents um does the reduction in single occupancy vehicles take into account the changes in the demographics of our population sort of an increased percentage of students and an increased percentage of people who are retired um because I think people with children and younger people tend to drive more uh than students and retirees yeah so when we do our surveys and we've been doing our resident travel diary survey since 1990 uh so we've done it we do it now every three years and and we use a thirdparty consultant that uses a statistically significant uh sampling process and waiting process to uh match kind of the survey results that we get in with the demographic uh that are reported in things like the census and other things so that there is waiting of the response to match our

[75:02] current demographic situation okay thank you all right um Tara you have another burning question before we yes I noticed we didn't have any questions about npps is that for a different section no we're doing all questions and then we're just going to go through with the do you support questions okay so can somebody expl on staff why we would limit NPP zones um at all I'm just thinking about people uh families with children and seniors which they both need mpps right it's not about limiting the existing mpps it's about focusing our energy and resources on for new zones to those areas that are influenced by outside parking pressures that make sense no it doesn't it's yeah it's not it's it's about implementing if if there's a request for

[76:02] a new Zone it would only be for a new Zone that's near an area that has commercial activity school activity or some other activity that brings in um outside F additional outside folks into the neighborhood as opposed to yeah just just just a neighborhood that has no outside pressures and maybe a resident does doesn't want someone else one of their other neighbors parking in front of their house all right thanks Samantha sure okay so then um and Erin if you want to chime in and help me out I was thinking we might want to just do a straw pull for each of the questions um thank you the first one is does council support staff recommendation related to maximum parking requirements bicycle parking shared parking and electric vehicle charging so um I guess do we want to start with some comments and then we'll try to do a draw

[77:00] pull Ryan sorry yeah I just I had a few comments to go along with my stuff so sorry to interrupt you you just you just addressing that I just I thought you're doing a straw poll so I wanted to comment if that's what you're doing but I'll stand back let's do comments first it's going to take a while so we might want to keep it brief so okay Ryan thanks um I mostly want to just appreciate all of the immense work and care that's gone into this by so many staff over the years and also um this just this there's really this is a really big uh memo with with so many things in it and subcontractors Ulta Fox and title and others and I just wanted to say thank you for everybody for this this this work and and also that it's such an exciting time to be making these kind of improvements for our community so I'm I'm generally supportive of everything but I did have just a couple of enhancements suggestions so just briefly um on parking minimums thanks Lisa for confirming the direction is to

[78:01] universally eliminate them um I did want to ask if we could explore um uh I think Tera talked about this but just um explore making sure that existing structures um could benefit from that that Li that new Liberty to to use parking so they're they're you know I don't know how to do it exactly but um just as a principle that we would explore um making it so that a property owner that has a parking lot could now use that you know either to make a little coffee shop or or whatever I'm sure there'd be a million considerations but just as a principle I'd love to see that if we could fit that in the scope if not I understand um and then the I guess I'll just go just quickly to bike parking so thanks Lisa for um your response on everything I totally understand not in current scope to look at um PR pre the premodern the premodern standard and improving that but I would certainly um

[79:00] be supportive of I think that's a really important and exciting area policy so I would you know be look to a time when Council and staff can can um you know help with something to move something like that forward um the other thing about bike parking I wanted to mention it might be also in the future but I just this seems really fundamental so I'll raise it now um and it's that as we move from this kind of older uh parking sort of thinking about parking into a more modern holistic multimodal one um I would love it and think it would be very powerful if we had some kind of a um a parking demand model for park for bike parking something that could tell the many departments around the city the service providers the community Advocates who you know in various ways are trying to help with bike parking that they could see a central you know kind of an analysis of across our 26 square miles thousands of buildings dozens of inner city transit stops what is Network that we're trying to build um from a demand standpoint this this might be for later but um I just wanted to

[80:00] raise it now because if it could be used to design um this part of the bike parking standard maybe this would be a nice time to to think about it so that's what have bike parking otherwise I'm I'm very supportive of of everything in the memo and then finally on EVS um yeah I'm I'm fine with as it as is however if I had my brothers I would have us pricing um uh giving either a a prefer differential pricing to lightweight EVS including especially neighborhood electric vehicles and or a higher price to heavier vehicles that is not a judgment but that is a cost allocation to the impacts that those types of vehicles you know cause towards potholes uh and other issues so I don't know if if we have time or space for that but um I would think that would be exciting um that's it for this one thank you okay any other comments on this one before we do a straw pull okay great um let's for the first one uh raise your hand if you generally support

[81:00] the staff recommendation okay that looks like they've got some good support and but we'll be hearing more when staff comes back and has done their engagement uh for the second one that is about the TM the TDM ordinance um any comments before we go to a straw m want start now yeah yeah I appreciate that Gina um I'm going to circle back to that inquiry about and and I appreciate Chris focusing on that Financial stuff I still think the language in in this modified ordinance needs stronger requirements and mandates for the TDM to really be staying with the property and anchor forward I'd hate for a a tenant to feel like they can sort of say like like you mentioned with apple say no thanks that to me isn't viable and then they need to find somewhere else to be or a different building or what have you um you want to come into our city then

[82:01] you got to meet with our values and if you don't then maybe this isn't the place for you right and I think that there's something to be said especially with regards to our Transit goals that it's important that we hold people to that acquirement so however you feel is appropriate to add even further language of requirement and teeth um I think would be an important one for for us to pursue it shouldn't require too much work to add more stringent you know as as we've learned from our our City attorney shall versus May is is quite a uh a different uh phrasing and so would love for us to explore more stringent requirement on that front okay Ryan and then Tara and let's try to keep our comments brief thanks also supportive of this just just two thoughts um and again I guess I guess take it or leave it for this scope um but first I um yeah I mean very thorough assessment of of peers and really impressed and like love where you're going I would just um ask to consider exploring is there way to also incorporate um a like a a data uh and learning feedback loop in this process

[83:01] such that as as we have um applicants um proposed TDM requirements that we when we get to the monitoring monitoring part that that monitoring includes asking the users like how's it going do you have any Improvement opportunities such that that would then come back to both the developer or the property owner um you know for some kind of iteration and then ideally into a like a you know more to the city too so that we could create more of a like a data a data driven learning process so again take it or leave it for this round but I to me that seems exciting um and then the second one is yeah just to pick up on I think Chris in your one of your slides you just you know spoke to some of the limitations of a of a developer focused um standard I think this is crucial and very important where we're going if and when there is future time I would also love to um look at opportunities be Beyond T TDM that is beyond that which is pinned to

[84:00] developers um specifically I think we should have binding requirements for for employers um I also think there's probably some interesting opportunities to do wider public engagement to tell the story to users about all the exciting multimodal enhancements we're doing how to navigate the system probably both at a broad level and some specific communities so I'll leave it at that for now and just you know voice my interest if if we get to a time where there space to do that so thanks again Chris and de for all your great work okay Tara then Taisha I don't know much about TDM if anything but I at all except what I read here but I do want to just push back and just make mention that we've been trying to pull down costs to businesses and make things less onerous and I just want to make sure before we jump on any new ideas how to mandate more that there's even like enough of a win for us to do that I I'm going to bring up that RTD

[85:02] just added ab2 the the second um bus to the airport after how long did was it closed down during covid so it's not like we have this extensive transportation system here that people can depend on and that is widespread so I just I just I'm I want to be careful that whatever we do we don't bring back onerousness owner what is there a word for being onerous that's a noun there should be that we don't be have things become more onerous while at the same time last week or whatever that was we were try to make things less honorous so we just need enough of a you know of a reason to I would say a big reason okay um and I just want to cqu on Tera I would just be interested in some feedback directly from businesses just to hear what they have to say um

[86:02] Taisha thank you I just wanted to um support the comment on um if we're GNA have a policy I would love it to matter and have teeth to it otherwise what are we doing um so I I Echo that I also just Echo anything more with the bike and bike infrastructure um I do have some concerns just around um increased costs for um visitors coming in um and recognizing that um this is already this our city is already um cost prohibitive to live in and we know sales tax is going down and um you know I think one of the considerations for free parking is that it gets people in and then they pay money other places that compensate for that free there's not Nothing free we know that um so I do have those concerns and and nothing in

[87:00] the documentation alleviates that concern right now um if anything it just sets up our community to be even you know um more um elitist uh and um that's not what we want we want more socioeconomic um diversity in our community and so um that's just a general I I appreciate the efforts on our commuters I also agree with Tina on the businesses um and the impacts there um and not just the businesses that are here but also the businesses that the many many businesses that are elsewhere but come in and work here um there was also something around the schools and I just I noticed there was a real focus on parents and I just wanted to lift up as somebody who worked with and in schools for more than 20 years that there's a whole ecosystem of people that are also visiting and doing work in schools um to teach a class or um those kinds of things and so just thinking about the entire ecosystem of

[88:02] um you know the school setting and and just the different settings that we have um and that's all I have thank you just wanted to double check oh um I also just wanted to lift up although I appreciate again the redu the redu the reduction in emissions I must lift up again that I I'm hopeful to see um more of the benefits around B diversity restoration which is also critical it's mentioned briefly in the pocket part in the pocket Parks uh but I do think that there is an opportunity to increase um the uh environmental and ecological impacts of the decisions that we're making around these topics as well thank you okay Mark I'm I'm going to take a a rather negative um perspective on this um the failure of our of the community to me meet the master Transportation uh plan mode share objectives so

[89:00] egregiously um tells me that our almost exclusive focus on bikes and Es scooters and public transit which we don't really have although we talk about it constantly is really not addressing um one of the things we ought to be addressing which is um people who ride in cars we've defined cars to be an existential evil uh and so we do nothing about that um and yet despite our best efforts we have neither compelled nor induced uh the general population to get out of their cars and um ride our non-existent um uh mass transit system or ride bikes we have an aging population and they cannot ride our bikes and they're not getting on scooters and they're not

[90:00] picking up their groceries at Whole Foods uh in December or February when it's 15 degrees um in their um uh in their electric bikes it's it's not going to happen and so our planning processes have to acknowledge the fact that people are going to continue to drive I hope uh within a few years they will primarily Drive uh electric vehicles uh which will make a big difference in our carbon footprint but the the you know the concept that we only focus on alternative modes of transportation and not the popular mode of transportation um is is to me simply um shortsighted uh I don't think we're going to get to a um an 80% mode of alternative transportation that that's simply Beggars the imagination um and with respect to non-residents um we're at 80% who don't

[91:02] comply and we're trying to get them down to 40% I would like to see a little more realism in how we plan and how we program in this community for people who need to move from one place or another that doesn't mean we can't discuss parking fees and neighborhood um uh planning uh for um neighborhood parking but what we're doing now by and large is um rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and we we are not addressing the major mode of transportation and we're um you know planning board members urge staff to think of the quote significant portion of our population that does not drive well I'm not sure how how large that population is um but it's clearly not enough to to meet our goals um and uh the planing board also

[92:01] urged uh the TDM ordinance to quote stimulate travel Behavior change unquote I think there's a reason we're not stimulating uh you know Behavior travel Behavior change because we can't um that's not how people live and we're not meeting people where they live in our planning processes so that's my two cents on this I know we're going to move ahead and approve all of this but we are um as I said rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic when we do so thank you all right Erin all right well I've heard enough other comments I figured I just have to give my couple scents here um just I want to say a huge thank you to staff um this has been very complicated detailed look and I know the some we've heard from Council Members a real desire to have a requirement here I believe you have designed this to have requirements um so I'm really glad to see that so that um having it go with the owner of

[93:01] the building in perpetuity for those larger projects I think is a great approach um and so I think it it does provide the kinds of requirements that we have been lacking and so I'm really excited to see us take that step forward and um to to Mark's Point uh we're not trying to get everybody out of their cars I think it's about providing options uh certainly people drive uh and this anticipates a certain number of people will drive and that's totally fine um but I will say that in some of our more recent um commercial developments where I've seen some kind of more modern TDM approaches uh taken I've also seen that the the mode share is different in in some of those projects so you may think you're you're not um we're not trying to nor will we get everybody out of cars that's fine but I think you can make a difference in your mode Choice um with these measures so um I'm looking forward to putting them to together and um and while uh we do continue to hope for more uh improved service from RTD we do have some bus

[94:02] service so we'll keep fighting for more but it is it is not non-existent it does it does exist so um I certainly take it on a regular basis myself so anyway just a big thank you um to that and um for striking this balance I think that you're on the right track all right uh if that's um the end of the comments for that section maybe we can take a quick straw pole for generally given the comments that we've heard I'm supportive of moving forward with the TDM section some hands okay um and then finally just a piece on the um strategies for on street parking any initial comments or perhaps going straight to a straw pool oh Ryan just two things um I want to pick up uh and agree with Mark that um this we should not be trying to get rid of cars and making cars life for drivers more difficult and in fact um I'm really excited about this on Street program

[95:00] some of the most important work we're doing in part because we can use pricing um strategies to make parking easier and so I just want to lift up a comment or two I've heard from um or I've seen from some emails come in that point out that there's a there's a body of empirical work led by Donald shup from UCLA who shows how there's a pricing uh Optimum where if you make the price such that you have a spot or maybe two on average open per block um you you create a system where you can expect parking and a lot of the times people think parking is terrible it's it's because they can't find parking and so we can actually create more available parking through some of these strategies so I just wanted to lift up that idea of of of bringing evaluating parking and through that putting a price on it um so that we can actually take care of and Steward that that important resource and I'm really excited about um the work samanth team is doing on that um the second thing is I would also um take it or

[96:01] leave it but I I would be interested to explore differentiated pricing on our parking for vehicle size and weight I don't know if it's possible but you know the park mobile app has your VIN it knows what your making model of the vehicle is there is a social cost that is imposed on on us from larger Vehicles again this is not a judgment it's a cost allocation and if there's any way to um give any kind of preferential pricing to lighter vehicles I think that would be uh very exciting at least is something to to explore um either way I'm happy with every you know everything else and thanks for the all the hard work Samantha Team all right Matt I want to Echo the the praise on staff for the amount of work this is multifaceted and pretty deep stuff so it's great that you we've got us this far um my my comment around um this last piece is just maybe starting with with a a smaller geographic area based really on intensity um I I think it's important

[97:01] where places are already sort of feeling the stressful impacts of an oversaturation of on street parking is kind of maybe where we start to see if these strategies are effective um and there's a number of those areas but there's also a number of areas that don't experience that intensity and so I worry about how much it makes sense for us to impart a bunch of new strategies and solutions to areas where there's no problem and so I think it's important for us to just start maybe the color around the University or areas where we know um there's a high intensity of these parking stressors and and see how these pilot measures work and if they're effective and it's worth expanding then maybe get there uh but I would caution on a Citywide process for these certainly as we come out the gate great job every uh Tara as quick as can be I just want to agree with Ryan and ask um staff to put on their list of possible things in the future to discuss heavy vehicles and

[98:02] maybe we can take that money and fill our potholes which are very our roads are very affected by heavy Vehicles so I agree with you on that that's it all right Mark I also agree with uh my colleague Ryan's comments um and this is an area that I'm very supportive of because it permits experimentation and to the extent that we design programs and can imploy them in in limited Geographic areas um I think that we could find out what works what doesn't work what deserves to to have a wider application um and what does not and some will not and some will uh survive and be uh terrific and I I think that process of experimentation is exactly what we ought to be doing um and I encourage staff to move forward with it he

[99:00] Aaron yeah well well said Mark I agree with that idea of experimentation and um I'm so I'm supportive of where you're going I think this has a little more room to kind of play and explore and test and and try out and then figure out exactly how we move forward in the longer term and then I just wanted to give a shout out uh Ryan has brought up a lot of interesting ideas this evening that aren't probably in scope for this ordinance but um hope we're taking notes and we can think about what we might be able to come back to in the future uh Teresa given that that would be subject to further discussion and potential tradeoffs thanks okay and calling on myself I just want to Second What U Matt said about um possible limited uh tests or Pilots to get some learning about our community all right with that um I'd like to just see if we're generally supportive of this given all the comments we've shared with staff and ready to move to the next phase of this um so if we could have a show of hands okay um that seems to be well

[100:00] supported and with that we're concluding our our TDM parking amps all thing parking um section and thank you again to staff um for being here and answering all of our questions we appreciate it so much and I think we can move on then to the um second item the city Behavioral Health framework thank you Council and we'll turn right to director for H to introduce the next item uh good evening Council I support the Department of Housing and and Human Services um so tonight uh well over the last couple years we've heard a lot uh from community and Council um around the challenges of Behavioral Health there have been questions around who provides what services and what the city's role is uh in this conversation and I appreciate that council's in interested in Behavioral Health and this is our first ever conversation with Council um

[101:01] on this topic um so tonight Wendy Schwarz uh Schwarz will be presenting and she's LED our our work um in HHS around Behavioral Health she um provides input to the regional um opoid settlement uh committee she represented the city on the county uh Behavioral Health road map um and she's also led the implementation of our two be behavioral health programs of search and Care uh one of which she'll be talking about this evening and um she'll also have a host of other City staff County staff um Partners um to answer broad questions um that you may have on this topic and um with that I will hand it over to Wendy will be uh driving the presentation thanks so much Kurt and um

[102:01] just uh for clarity with the clerk staff um I believe you all are going to be running the slides tonight there we go thank you Emily uh so again Wendy Schwarz housing and Human Services and again I would like to thank our great cross departmental teams that worked on these projects and my colle colleagues who are here tonight and also uh specifically those Community Partners that Kurt mentioned that are going to be available for questions tonight including from Boulder County Michelle Webb the Behavioral Health System Manager and from Clinica family health and wellness which includes the organization we previously KN knew as mental health partners we have Simon Smith president and CEO as well as Kate Parker Executive Vice President for specialty Behavioral Health next slide please so in the interest of time I won't go through all these bullets but

[103:01] this just gives an overview of what we're going to talk about tonight our presentation does have two main sections of the city of Boulder Behavioral Health framework and the context around that which will be about the first three quarters of our 20 minutes and then an update on community Assistance response and Eng and engagement otherwise known as our Care Program next slide please these are questions for Council uh the first two are related to our Behavioral Health framework and so we'll pause at the end of our first part of our presentation on that topic to discuss those questions with councel the third question is relevant to The CARE program and so we'll save that one until the end of the presentation after we've covered the care section next slide please I'm going to start out by just briefly defining behavioral health for folks that might not be familiar with that

[104:00] phrase Behavioral Health is an umbrella term encompassing mental health including substance use disorder so why do we have a behavioral health framework in the city of Boulder as Kurt mentioned this is an area that's been increasingly important not only here in Boulder but really Across the Nation and it is largely outside of our traditional local government roles and responsibilities so historically we really haven't had formal guidance about our role in this area and so the purpose of this framework is to define the city's role and priorities in supporting Behavioral Health in Boulder next slide please this slide highlights a few reasons that behavioral health is important to people in Boulder you'll see in the graph on the Le hand side of the slide about nearly one in five Boulder County residents report experiencing eight or more days where

[105:02] their mental health was not good in the past 30 days and if you look a little bit closer on that graph there there's a large percentage that report about half the days in the last month not being good mental health days and that really tracks with NA national data that shows that behavioral health impacts at least one in five adults in the nation in Colorado we have the 10th highest suicide rate in the nation and more than a quarter of our crisis team responses so that's certain care involves some level of suicide concern nearly a quarter of that team's responses involve substance use out of the 50 states Colorado ranks 40th in the nation for adult mental health and 44th in the nation for youth mental health next slide please we're often asked which level of government is responsible for Behavioral Health similar to physical health access

[106:02] is largely determined by payer sources or Insurance status and those things are largely controlled or at the very least regulated by the state and federal governments and this slide shows three broad categories that people generally fall into in terms of insurance status and that is public Insurance such such as Medicare or Medicaid commercial insurance or they are uninsured next slide please this graphic demonstrates some of the challenges especially for our lowest income residents and the providers that serve them through Medicaid during covid people were allowed to remain on Medicaid continuously without redetermining eligibility with the end of the public health emergency in 2023 people had to go through redetermination again and not surprisingly many people fell off the Medicaid roles this graph

[107:01] shows Medicaid enrollment percentage decreases for the states between 2023 and 2024 and you'll see Colorado on the far left with that red bar and we've got the largest decrease of about a third in our Net Medicaid enrollment experts estimate that 65 % of coloradans disenrolled from Medicaid loss coverage due to administrative barriers such as application processing delays and locally we know that more than 70% of Clinic's clients who lost Medicaid coverage are now uninsured next slide please local government generally plays a supplemental role in behavioral health because most funding regulation and Healthcare infrastructure is controlled at different levels of government still the city and other local government Partners have been doing a lot in this area both in Behavioral Health and in something we call the

[108:01] Social determinance of health and when we talk about social determinance of Health we mean non-medical factors that influence Health outcomes such as education socioeconomic status neighborhood andb built environment etc those have been shown to make a difference in Behavioral Health one example would be affordable housing programs four ways the city is currently supporting Behavioral Health Care are direct services so those are Services provided by city employees to the community our biggest example locally is CT and care we also provide very significant funding for Community organizations providing Behavioral Health Services primarily through our competitive fund rounds we do sometimes have unique opportunities with one-time funds like the start funds we provided for the Hope Institute Suicide Prevention Clinic through arpa we also do collaborative planning

[109:00] and strategy work with other Regional organizations and that helps us make more strategic and impactful Investments and finally we employ approximately 1,00 people in the city of Boulder many of whom interact with the public directly including in critical or crisis situations we provide a variety of programs through the city's Wellness initiatives to support holistic well-being including emotional well-being which benefits our employees as well as the community they serve since most of us do our job better when we're well next slide please Boulder County has many similar Investments and roles to the city in addition they have the public health department locally which focuses on some Community level prevention and harm reduction activities in Behavioral Health even though a lot of local government organizations here in the county have been supporting Behavioral Health we didn't historically have a

[110:00] joint countywide vision and shared set of information to Anchor to for Behavioral Health strategy so our partners at Boulder County began a process a few years ago to create the Boulder County Behavioral Health road map which was approved by the Commissioners in 2023 this process included an extensive Community engagement effort with multiple convenings and sources of input over the course of a couple of years with more than 600 stakeholders participating including myself and other City staff as part of the process they also convened an equity Advisory Board which developed trusted system criteria to integrate throughout the process and the road map document itself the vision of the Boulder County Behavioral Health road map is toward the bottom of the screen and it's a little bit small small so I'll read it out loud all community members get the right mental and behavioral health support at the right time create a community of

[111:01] belonging connection to community culture meaning purpose and hope next slide please and here we've got a nice picture of some of our crisis team members our city Behavioral Health framework guides our work under the broader umbrella of the county w road map Behavioral Health is a vast and complex area which the city cannot significantly impact alone and it certainly would not make sense for the city to duplicate or contradict the extensive work and Outreach done to create the road map so these next slides describe the key components of our city framework next slide please so first the principles for our behavioral health support advocate don't duplicate so really making sure we're taking a look at the other the roles of other organizations and levels of government and avoiding uh inadvertently

[112:03] subsidizing things we shouldn't subsidize or duplicating in unhelpful ways collaborate and strategically leverage opportunities we certainly can make deeper impact through Strategic investment that leverages that other funding maximizing impact with Upstream investment we already have a strong strong presence in the city in prevention and social determinance of health and that's an important thing to keep in mind in our principles match roles expertise and infrastructure it generally makes sense to maximize existing Community infrastructure rather than starting something new and finally evaluation outcomes and transparency really building that data analysis and evaluation into our programs and activities next slide please so what are City Behavioral Health roles first augmentations to Services already in scope for the city and so again to

[113:03] use certain care as an example it's already in the city's scope to respond to 911 calls and so this is an augmentation to a service that we already provide and consider in scope policy advocacy with our regional Partners to really advocate for those important changes at at the state and federal level that impact Behavioral Health in our community continued support for local providers and Community initiatives particular particularly for costs not covered by Insurance partnership research and idea incubation to come up with the best Solutions locally with our partners and finally continuing to model behavioral health support and leadership as an employer next slide please the behavioral health spectrum is Broad with a lot of community need across that Spectrum all of those areas are

[114:02] important and so sometimes it is difficult to talk about priorities however as discussed earlier there are we're in a very challenging funding environment and there may be difficult choices in the future about where limited resources should go so the priorities highlighted here are the direction we're taking in approaching our investments in work it's important to know that it's not within the city's scope or ability to fully sustain or fill gaps in any of these areas but they are points where we can show advocacy and work with Partners to improve so first preserving and integrating safety net Services these providers have been taking a big hit for a while now and we do need a safety net to remain in the community to serve everyone including some people with significant need and limited resources when the healthc care safety net fails it ripples into many other community systems such as homelessness child welfare Adult Protective Services and

[115:01] others service navigation and connection even though Services can feel very limited at times it's also true that people are sometimes missing opportunities to take advantage of what is available to them because it's too difficult or overwhelming to navigate next serving people with dual diagnosis and high acute needs there are a lot of limitations for people that have complex needs and this issue again can spill out into the community and other social service systems when it's not addressed finally two issues that come up again and again in various sources of data and stakeholder input and that's Suicide Prevention and substances treatment these are very prominent issues in Boulder with not enough options to meet the needs City actions on any of these priorities are aligned to the key principles and roles just presented as well as with other Citywide plans and Frameworks next slide

[116:02] please and so here we come to a pause for our first two questions for Council uh first does council have questions on the city's role in Behavioral Health as defined in the behavioral health framework and second does council have questions or feedback on the city's priorities or work with partner ERS in the Boulder County Behavioral Health road map okay thank you so much and um if you don't mind yeah perfect so now I can see everybody so let's uh start off with the first question um about the role and Behavioral Health uh or the um maybe we should do one and two well let's let's try it Nicole why don't you kick us off thank you um and thank you so much Wendy for for this presentation I just I so appreciate it having an opportunity to um think through how think through our different roles right and think about the different lanes that each of us can

[117:01] be in so now my question or answer to the question um my my question is really thinking about um prevention and where you all see prevention as fitting into the city priorities like when I look at it um I I'm thinking mostly about the safety net Services just because we know what an impact um trauma and and kind of um severe need early especially early in life has on later mental health um but is do you see do you see that as the place where we as a city can focus within our lane on prevention um as a as a focus thanks Nicole that's a great question and one of the things that we've talked about is really um prevent and those social determinants of Health are a place where the cities had a big presence for a long time I mean that

[118:00] really honestly encompasses not only everything that HHS does but actually some Snippets of a lot of other departments in the city as well and so obviously for instance you you're not going to be able to easily address your behavioral health issues if you've lost your housing or you're about to lose your housing right that you're going to like those types of basic needs are going to be front and center in and affect your ability to do that um and so one of the reasons that we phrased some of our our key principles and our priorities the way that we did is that we don't want to forget our strong foundation in all of those preventative programs that we have and those social determinants of Health but when people talk to us about um about the additional Investments we have or what tradeoffs we

[119:00] might make into things that might seem like um more traditional if you will Behavioral Health Services or more narrowly defined Behavioral Health Services then we really wanted to call out areas that um that seem to to rise to the top as we've been doing this work with our community members and our partners does that answer your question Nicole yeah I know it does thank you um just yeah appreciate that that perspective thank you uh any other questions about this section Aon oh I have one on number two if we with Mo that yeah great so this is about our partners and such so uh Wendy uh thanks again very much for the presentation and all the the work you do in this area along as well as with all of our partners thanks to all you for being here and all the work you do so my I got have a couple questions one is about the uh opioid settlement um Council that that

[120:00] we're participant on as you all are doing that work are you looking at the possibility of a of a big move of some kind that where we could leverage maybe the the resources the annual funding from that over the next however however is it 20 years uh where where we could do something it's not just you know a a set of small grants every year but some larger initiative like treatment beds for example for which we have a deep need in our community is that on the table does that look like a possibility at all uh that is absolutely on the table mayor and um the opioid Regional Council which our city manager sits on has discussed exactly those matters um as have those of us who who support the work um through the operations board and I think there's a lot of appetite to look at those sorts of big collaborative projects um where we we can try and make those kinds of dents in that very

[121:01] difficult problem and Michelle I don't know if you have anything else to add from the county perspective on that well first of all thank you all council members and Wendy for inviting me to join you to answer questions Wendy I think you answered it exactly right um you know there are opportunities coming up there were just recently awards that were made that cover the next two years and so during that interim time I believe the boards will be visiting together to determine what the strategies will be moving forward um Kelly Vite is the person who is responsible for that area from the county and I'd be happy to connect you all with her if you want more details and vision from her perspective some followup information thoughts would be welcome thank you Michelle and okay yeah following up following up on that so that's great to hear and so I'm G to but I'm going to return to the topic of the need for um impatient beds

[122:02] for substance abuse treatment and other or or other forms of mental health treatment so there's the opioid money are there any other um initiatives or possibilities for the creation of more um impatient beds between all of our collaborative work I'm just again talking the Deep need for that do we have anything else in in the works to address that yeah Aon oh and I would I would be interested in I saw Kate um from Clinica just started to jump in and I was about to say I would like uh Kate and Andor Simon to to jump in here um too because that is obviously a big project that um does require multiple partners across the country uh excuse me across the county as well as being able to really pull down some of those state and federal revenue sources that that really go with treatment so go ahead Kate sorry about that Wendy um thank you all for

[123:00] having us here um I just wanted to chime in as you all know with Legacy MHP we had Warner house which provided Residential Services they were called transitional residential services for folks and we are in the process of opening a new building in Lewisville and looking at and I'm going to say 3.5 and that's not going to mean anything to you all um but it's a level of care that we provide and it's higher level of care for substance and residential um there are challenges and you know s Wendy's talking about some of the funding challenges and other um that is not quote unquote impatient as you talk about it it is residential and we do need to move away from social Detox Services so we're embedding those together so that we can meet the needs

[124:01] of this community there is a high cost and I think the biggest challenge with it is going to be Workforce um so we're hoping to open that in April and we hope that meets some of the needs it's not going to meet all of the needs but some of the needs in Boulder County and we made a very conscious decision about not putting it in the actual city of Boulder and I just want to be super transparent and call that out because Clinica serves Boulder Broomfield and Adams and there's a need throughout and so we were trying to look at um what's kind of a central location that we can meet the needs of that thanks for that Kate these are huge problems and that that require a lot of resources and the workforce that you mentioned I know it's not easy to do but when we all work together we have a shot so thanks for that answer okay next I have Taisha then Matt then

[125:03] Mark awesome awesome thank you so much um the first question I have is just around disaggregation so this whole report reads as if we only have one type of population and so I'm eager to get more dis disaggregated data around race and ethnicity um um gender you mention these things in road maps and plans but they're not mentioned um and it's not articulated in the who's accessing Services um so getting that information um is is that information available um and how can we access that and um yeah so that's uh one one of the questions I have and just and it also dovetails nicely with the update on when we can expect the evaluation of programs again I feel like we I I thought that it was supposed to be by the end of the year now we're at the beginning of a new year um and although I appreciate this conversation I would

[126:01] have preferred to have that information prior to hosting this conversation um but I am curious about the status of that um I'm also interested in I noticed um arpa funds were used as startups and so just wanted to um hear more about the finances of sustaining the programs that we had and any other issues um that you see coming um obviously our federal government uh Administration is has changed and I noticed that $14 million is um contributed by the feds and so just was curious um any initial thoughts on that um and then lastly if um um I read that um automating inequality book and um am now curious about if generative AI is used at all in uh identification report writing those kinds of things so um those are some of the initial questions that I

[127:01] have okay thank you for those questions council member Adams um uh I will go through your list as I wrote them down regarding the request for disaggregated data um we were using the boulder County Behavioral Health road map document as a you know as the anchor for our framework and so we've tried to pull subsets of information from the road map um rather than repeating all the information that the county had in the road map so there is additional um additional information about that data in the road map um it may not uh meet all of your uh your requests and I will also note that one of our objectives this year and HHS as

[128:00] we go to the next steps in this process is to um dig a little bit deeper in what data is available what's not to disaggregate some of that information and really improve on the data we have um so that's the answer to your first question um regarding evaluation of programs um I could you say a little bit more council member unfortunately I don't think I am aware of the evaluation you're referencing and so oh I'm sorry is that just exclusive to the housing I'm I'm talking about the Kurt one that we were talking about and I thought that there was a mental health component that let us know who does what as far as delineating roles and responsibilities the fiscal responsibilities as well as the Staffing and of course the quality of the programs we've been implementing around housing and Human Services so so I'll add there's a an

[129:00] evaluation that Wendy will be talking about shortly which I think might be the one you're referring to which is of The CARE program um it will be no okay well no I wasn't it was the comprehensive one so is there are those two separate ones am I mixing up one that we've been waiting for that was supposed to be done at the end of the year that's what I was talking about is that the car the other the other evaluation which will be presented to you on February 13th is the evaluation that was done of our homeless system uh oh that wasn't inclusive but does that in wouldn't that include compon it's collaboration with Boulder County and Homeless Solutions for Boulder County yes but isn't there there would be mental health um and behavioral health information in that study right there would not no okay thank you um regarding your question about arpa and sustainability we were very intentional

[130:02] in our arpa investments as described in the framework to make sure that they were things that seemed uh really to to suit one-time funding so for example um The Hope Institute they gave us a plan of how they could sustain the services with ongoing funding if we provided the one-time startup funding and there are other examples like that so we are overall feeling pretty good about the sustainability of the things that we have funded through arpa and um just point of clarification on that Wendy because I'm noticing I'm on that page I'm on page 25 and Elevate Boulder is on that and so it was my understanding that no funds had been identified to continue that program but what I'm hearing is that it is actually not the case um I will ask Elizabeth would would you like to chime in on that um I I

[131:01] believe you're correct in that instance council member okay yes correct um we're still working on um we just surpassed as you know you're one of the programs so the next steps are to create those scenarios for what it might look like to to continue It Forward okay because $3 million which is actually the largest amount on this list is dedicated to that program so it's really wonderful to know that that's on your radar screen but again when we have documentation like this it and people read it they're going to walk away thinking oh you know that those M those funds have been secured so I just want us to be very careful with that um uh how about the federal funds and any initial indicators or project 25 had a whole section on on reducing human services so I'm just curious if there are obviously we're still early in the administration but I am kind of curious on anything that has come out or any indicators that you all are keeping an eye on that we should be keeping an eye on as well well um we are absolutely

[132:03] keeping our eye on um those factors especially things uh like Medicaid that impact our safety net very heavily um I don't have a more specific answer for you at this time because as you pointed out a lot of where is going to land on the ground is is not completely clear and um again I don't know if our partners from um Clinica have anything else you want to add on that from your perspective yeah I I'm happy I mean I I'm not going to pretend that I can read the Tea Leaves of what's going to happen at the federal level any better than anyone else although I will be in Washington DC in in two weeks I I think our ourly indications from our National Association of Community Health centers is is that certainly there's conversations in some spheres about Medicaid and what level of Medicaid funding might be changed or impacted I

[133:03] think there's a bit of a buoying balance that the Medicaid expansion is popular including amongst uh republican-led Governor States and and so likely there will be perhaps more tinkering than than full scale cuts on Medicaid for example requiring uh work uh work requirements for Medicaid recipients and other things like that certainly looking at um additional screening tactics and things like that along the Medicaid implementation so we will see I think it's a Hot Topic at the state level too because Medicaid is a federal state matching program and and a large section of General funding at the state level goes to Medicaid programming too Wendy Wendy shared the slide about the the significant decline in Medicaid enrollment in our state the worst in the country and that's that's already a significant challenge for Clinica and for other safety net because those those people lose their health insurance they continue to be our patients but we lose

[134:02] the revenue and reimbursement associated with that which puts just severe strain thank you so much and i' certainly appreciate that um generative Ai and its use or not I I don't have any information for you on that tonight council member okay awesome so I would love to get feedback on that and then my last is around just cultural competence it's been written everywhere so I was just curious one if our staffing reflects the communities that they're served I looked at the photo it didn't appear to be the case um but again going back to especially having the cultural competence I know we had a a budget line to do assessments on cultural competence but I am eager to not hear more about how we are ensuring um that um staff who are not um racially andth ethnically diverse um are have the cultural competence to work especially with our um Latino Hispanic um communities as

[135:00] well as um all of the those that are being disproportionately impacted by the immigration policies coming down the pike thank you absolutely um and you're right council member Adams um we have uh had a long-standing goal to um recruit diverse staff for our program s and um we have had a challenging time um in some respects and part of that has to do with an overall Workforce shortage in the area of Behavioral Health and so when there's already a shortage of people in that Workforce area and then you're trying to break it down to subsets of people um the recruiting challenge is uh very significant um we do have um two members of our crisis teams that um do have um U

[136:02] Spanish language proficiency um and um do identify um as latinx and um our goal is certainly to always increase our diversity I mean because our goal is to have our staff reflect the community that we serve and and I saw Teresa's hand pop up want to chime in this is a this is certainly a a complicated area right and um cultural competency is very very important um quotas are of course not acceptable and the city is not looking to to fill any sort of quota but um um but we are always with all of our Staffing looking to reflect the broader diversity that is in the community awesome thank you and again we have racial

[137:00] Equity goals so I'm referring to the goals that we have and not referring to anything illegal but thank you are you all set Taisha okay great I think we have Matt then Mark then Tara thanks CA um appreciate the the update um just certainly a a dynamic challenge in front of us um and and it seems like we're always playing from behind unfortunately um and that's a challenge certainly that may be exacerbated in the in the coming months or years here um and I just wanted to clarify Tina are we responding to sort of question questions around question one or are we sort of doing the the the whole the whole platter we're doing one and two three is our next presentation section great so we'll do one and two um so I first just want to um mention what uh Kate said earlier I just want to thank Kate for the cander of of talking about why there's a new sort of Residential Treatment Facility um not in Boulder um as much as we like to have resources here I think there's also a

[138:01] recognition we we we can't bear all of the resources for a regional problem and so we need to see our regional Partners share in the resources so thank you for saying that and hopefully we can see more of that coming forward um a question I have uh comes really kind of back to state and federal money because at obviously they tend to be the progenitors where the source of the funds go where does that money typically funnel to um is it funnel directly to the city does it funnel to mostly the county I'm just trying to wonder where's the sort of um uh custody of these resources as they flow into organizations like Clinica and others um and sort of just wondering what's that what's that path so um Matt the the that does not funnel through the city or the county generally um the way that those things work and I'll I'll specifically use Medicaid as the example um people who are eligible for the Medicaid Program um

[139:02] which has some income requirements and a few other requirements um once they are in that program then any provider so the the funds flow essentially from the program which is a state federal partnership to providers that um build the program for services like they would build a you know a private insurance company for example and so so really the the flow is um generally from those levels of government to the the providers um in exchange for um that care provided and there's a lot more complexity to some of that funding flow that I I think and and like our super duper experts here like Simon and Kate could um probably get into a whole lot of variations on that

[140:01] theme that are are pretty complex but that's the the easiest answer yeah I appreciate that that that because I think what I where I'm trying to get to is for the sake of certainly maybe the county and the city in particular our our ability to provide resources is largely a self-funding mechanism at both the city and county level so just is that how is that how you characterize that at these Regional levels that is how I would characterize that at these Regional levels all right well I I appreciate that um and so that so what that gets me to is like the build-on question of that is what is the relative sort of funding comparison between what the city invests in Behavioral Health and maybe that of the county um in in Behavioral Health um uh programs sure so um we covered a bit of this in our our um our document and um

[141:03] we have a we have a much smaller footprint um in that behavioral health funding than the county especially if you're looking at kind of if you will the smaller box that's specifically Behavioral Health rather than the bigger box of the social determinance of health and um so we identified that with about 2 million um in terms of ongoing funding roughly in our um Community Investments um our combined certain and Care programs um about another two million um and you know if we got a lot a little bit more specific like that there's other one-time funds but do you want to chime in on kind of the dollars from the county side which I think are going to be a lot more than that four

[142:00] million yes so at the time that the roadmap report was put together their estimate was a little bit over 11 million I believe that the county was contributing towards funding I want to point out that that was a snapshot in time so that those numbers were put together in 2023 I believe what one area of our focus in the upcoming year when we look at actually implementing the road map is coming up with a system that enables us to um give an updated snapshot on that uh certainly we we know you know funding is challenging right now um but to really have an understanding of what it looks like today is important to informing the decisions that we'll all be making together perfect and you know Michelle you almost teed up my next question which I appreciate uh uh is is with regards to the the county road map as a whole um it's it's largely like a 100 million rough1 million of of of of programs and things

[143:03] um and and and so I'm curious what where is the county ready to give a a clear sense of how do we prioritize and Implement and and and more or less really formalize the road map as a path to implementation so I'm kind of wondering when we get the some clarity as to the variety of things mentioned in the road map as to what we can look forward to in in certain orders and and what are the paths to funding those things yes so what I can share with you that that might be helpful is you know what our focus is on for the upcoming year so right now the process that we're in with implementation is very much um around those foundational systems so the project planning pieces figuring out all of the tasks the timelines that kind of thing and and you're right it is an enormous undertaking what we're looking at as our areas of focus for the upcoming year this is informed by in

[144:01] part by our Behavioral Health executive Advisory Board which the city of Boulder participates in um as as does our other partners here Clinica MHP uh we're looking at several different areas so one is as a community of Partners how do we come together other to do that better coordination and Alignment so that we can spot the overlaps in Services spot the opportunities to create more efficiencies ultimately moving towards that goal of greater access for the community uh we'll be working also on that policy work that is referenced as well in in the framework that Wendy presented um looking at how we can partner together so when it comes to those changes that that are coming down from the state are coming down at the federal level we can all be in leadership together to have more strength and influence over those we will also be looking at that funding and

[145:01] sustainability piece so having those conversations across our partners excuse me to look at okay we know some of these fiscal Clips are coming from different areas right different municipalities and the county too how do we address those together how do we partner together in a new way so much of our system the reality is it's highly fragmented and the vision that the road map cast is it doesn't need to be that way we can come together to do things differently so a lot of it is about having those conversations and coming up with some sort of systematic way to do that um we will also be looking at evaluation of our efforts and our progress so putting together kpis and dashboards to be able to Pro um provide you know reports to our community on what on the progress that we're making um and then finally the other thing that comes to mind for the upcoming year is looking at that Workforce piece so we are partnering

[146:01] with the behavioral health Regional collaborative that's a partnership between Boulder County Jefferson County and other Regional areas it's in the very early days um we're not sure where that will go but really trying to plant the seeds for longer term for how do we help support that effort as well so really you know council member Benjamin what we're looking at is what do we need to focus on in the upcoming year to really lay the foundation to have that bigger plan longer term well I I appreciate you laying out and giving a little sneak preview to those Focus areas appreciate look forward to more more clarity on that I know that are I'm certainly looking forward to some greater Clarity but also what we can Champion um because as as we talk about we're working from behind right now on a lot of this and it's not from a lack of great effort effort whether whether it be from the city the county or certainly Clinica and other partners but uh the nature of the of the challenge in front of us so um whatever resources we can get will be quite helpful so I appreciate that thanks thank you okay Mark and then

[147:02] Tara well once again thank you for a really terrific presentation um it was very very clear I only have three questions um the first is I I noted that in 2023 we provided approximately 2 million in funds for mental health to the county um what's that number for 2024 and what's it projected to be for 2025 so um for the the number that you're citing Mark um it that 2 million most of that uh was accounted for by some one-time funds we provided to establish the tribe recovery house um and I in 2024 and 2025 um I believe overall we are more in the area of the remainder of that 2

[148:03] million that was some ongoing Community programming um and I'm not looking at the right page right now so um if I can get back to you in a minute that would be great um and I might need to do some followup about the 2025 no no worries um is that money whatever the number is um is that in addition in 2025 to the $5 million going to the county as a result of the affordable housing tax for services um so I'll I'll have Kurt chime in on the affordable housing tax um but we in general I would say yes and council member wallik um the I mean the way that the funding works that were referencing aside from one-time

[149:01] investment opportunities like the tribe recovery hum which was a larger number um for many years what has been the case is um that the county has some programs that can apply through our community process for um sources of funding like the Health Equity fund and the Human Services fund um and so that is what's reflected in that programming and um I'm just GNA phone a friend a minute here and Elizabeth do you happen to know any those totals for 2024 or 2025 on um the funding through those um those various fund rounds for the county um also I I think I found the the page you're referring to council member wall um some of the F you just introduce yourself really quickly about that sorry sorry Elizabeth Crow deputy director of

[150:00] Housing and Human Services um some of the funds that um in addition to tribe and I I don't have that um number available right in front of me I'm sorry um some of the funds that we also allocate to the county for um that would be in the behavioral health um arena for example we have a relatively small um contract with Boulder County Community Services to help um to help us coordinate the C fund the substance education awareness fund um some of those dollars may be included in that as well that total for 2025 um we're still working on the contract but would be somewhere around $330,000 um and some of the other programs that would be listed um in the appendix for the the grant funds from the Health Equity Fund Human Services fund C fund I believe there are some other County grants in there as well um I don't have the um tribe numbers right

[151:01] in front of me either my bad um but we'll I'll work with Wendy on that as well at your convenience please um two two last questions um Kurt the the 14 million we that that we've allocated um towards Mental Health Services is that money we're spending for affordable housing in the nature of um Bluebird um or other facilities I mean where does that 14 million uh come from and I think you're mute thank you Mark um you could also maybe repeat your first question question about the affordable and obtainable housing tax because I didn't I didn't quite follow your question the the question was is the 2 million that we are providing the county in addition

[152:01] to the $5 million that they are receiving uh as a result of passage of the affordable housing tax so the the the two million that we um invested in tribe that that was um that that's a partnership project where we're providing the um the building and their which they're also contributing to and they're providing the services um I wouldn't really view that as a contribution to the county I would it's a contribution to a program um that we're both uh putting resources into um the the 5.2 million from the affordable housing P tax um uh that the county um that that those are resources that the county is putting into um existing services that they

[153:04] provide for the community um in in part um there will be some Behavioral Health Services in there I'm sure I have not seen a a breakout though of what services are included in that 5.2 million but they have described it as such that those are services that support individuals in hous and my question for you was in the staff memo uh 14 million was was uh included in the mental health category from our affordable housing funds and I'm asking is is that for facilities like Bluebird or is it some sort of General allocation of of what we've spent in the affordable housing Arena okay I I believe those were um investments in affordable housing generally um which is um as

[154:00] Wendy spoke about earlier one of the soci determinance of health so it's It's associated but it's not a direct um a directly funded um Behavioral Health Service um Wendy was previously making the distinction between Direct Services and uh Social determinance and Health and affable housing is a big part of that okay I do suggest that that that kind of distorts the picture a little bit because most people who are in uh uh clients of our affordable housing efforts are not receiving uh those kinds of services and it's just a little misleading to me um my last question um I counted contributions to 35 different providers of services for a total of $2.05 million the question is should we not be seeking some greater efficiency and

[155:00] consolidation among these groups I mean it seems like we are parsing out money in $10,000 increments um and not necessarily looking at how it can be spent most efficiently thanks Mark um so first I want to note that um I did locate the number that you originally asked for um for 2025 roughly $292,000 so just under $300,000 going to a variety of um Boulder County um projects through our fund rounds um so that's the answer to your first question and I think I mean you know your your next question is a very good one and um we've had the Human Services fund for a very long time and um we we've had and there was a a time in the city not too

[156:01] long ago right where that was um kind of our only Behavioral Health um funding actually through grants to um what used to be called MHP and then the Health Equity Fund came along with a very specific set of um of goals and um and guidelines that were approved by Council and and some of them part of the statutory language and so you know so I think as a community if we think about where our money is going in this area one thing that's noted is I think you're right that it seems less clear to some people to talk about uh the social determinance of health because that is those are things that support a lot of of basic needs and things around our environment that that help us sustain ourselves in overall well-being but when you look at that list of programs that's part of our um appendix then those most

[157:02] of those programs are um not specifically just Behavioral Health some of them are but we really used programs that incorporated Behavioral Health as one of their their goals and um and so as we think about the different needs of of people and the the organizations in our community that they look to then you know if we were to change course in those fund rounds and um carving off a certain amount specifically for Behavioral Health for only one source there there might be trade-offs we might be we might be losing things even though we might gain some in this this very challenging C prohibitive environment and it looks like Elizabeth Elizabeth I think you wanted to make one comment M about that as well yeah thanks Wendy just um echo echo what Wendy has said and and and add that one of the intentional strategies we

[158:01] have with the fund rounds is since since the framework for our funding programs Health Equity Fund Human Services fund Etc our um are focusing on specifically on our low-income population which is a much more diverse population part of the goal is really to go where people are already gathered and Wendy Wendy mentioned this really but if there are organizations um that are serving a very particular population and those organizations are primarily led by the people they're serving people who identify with the people they're serving um those are really trusted organizations and people are more likely to have those receive those Services um in a way that's most useful to them if they can go to those trusted organizations and and get it there really well integrated with other programming um the list is there happy you know to go into more detail if it's

[159:01] helpful but but that is very much an intentional strategy um for supporting um programs that are providing essential services to community members and that have the ability to add and integrate Behavioral Health into it all right I think we'll we'll probably agree to disagree a little bit on on that but it's a very reasonable explanation and I thank you and that will be my last question all right uh Tara well first I want to thank you for bringing the subject up because as you said Kurt it's the first time but I think our community is extremely interested in this it's one of our biggest challenges as a city it's also so expensive to make a difference in people's lives and so very complicated um first when I want to say thank you for your beautiful screenshot and my first question is how can I get a screenshot of that background you can I know it might be um rogue rogue background BL uh branding

[160:03] here I'll be in touch with you to find to find out how to do it my main and only question is um that slide where it shows how abysmally we were doing when it came to keeping people on Medicaid and how great North Carolina was doing and why are we doing so poorly is it because we're so bad at Administration is that really the reason and so I don't want you to spend like more than a minute because we're super behind schedule but it was a shocking it's very sad it impacts people so greatly and it impacts our the way we can spend our money so greatly so I'm hoping that the state is doing something about this or not are they not that's really my only question yeah and um I see I see Simon smiling here and um and so he might have something to add but I'll say that um you know it's I don't think all the reasons for Colorado um

[161:01] being at the bottom of the barrel on this are um are completely known I will say when you look at like what I looked at that North Carolina line and I was like well what the heck um there are some states that were sort of late adopters to some of the Affordable Care Act provisions of Medicaid expansion and so what happened was when they expanded medicaid during the same period that this was happening they it kind of balanced out for them because it's that Net Medicaid enrollment and so they like they look a little bit um nice on that chart kind of because they dragged their feet on doing some stuff that the rest of us did years and years ago um and then there there really have been um some outdated technology and problems um in Colorado um you know I think the state would would argue some of those things um but I'll just see if Simon or Kate

[162:02] have anything to add on this topic well I I think you know we all like to be proud of Colorado leading lists in lots of different categories and this is not a proud one to be leading it's it's horrible and it's horrible for our populations I think it equates it it equates to hundreds and hundreds of thousands of coloradans who've lost their insurance and many uh are likely still eligible for Medicaid but because of like poor Administration Antiquated systems uh hyper complex enrollment processes including I think a a 40 plus page application like there's so many reasons there's a lot of anger frustration um at the state level towards how it can be improved I think there's is some slow work to Improvement some some slowness to acknowledge it on of the State Medicaid agency so there's a lot of like half answers to your question and a huge amount of frustration and hopefully starting to see some movement in action because it like for providers like us I mean Clin had to do two rounds of

[163:01] layoffs in the last year we've had to cut millions of dollars of programming and most of that is because we had a double digit drop in Medicaid coverage for patients we're still providing care for with no longer receiving that reimbursement so it has real powerful impacts on us as safety net providers and and first first and foremost on clients who are likely eligible in many cases but couldn't go through that owner risk process terrible real quick go ahead and and I'll defer to Wendy and Simon on what happened in Colorado but my sister lives in North Carolina as a social worker they opted into Medicaid last year um so the reason why their numbers would be way up for last years they only opted into Medicaid expansion last year but that doesn't explain why we're doing badly no and that's exactly right so so North Carolina was a late adopter of the Medicaid expansion Obamacare expansion program so they have that number going up just for some perspective the balance of Medicaid to uninsured patients that

[164:01] Clinica is taking care of now is is essentially at where we were pre- Obamacare in 2014 2013 2014 so we we saw a significant rise and now we're back down to a level of uninsured that's equivalent to wiping out 10 years expansion and growth that's a hard number to swallow it is um any other questions on this portion before we move to our next portion that talks about the care and SE program all right well thank you to all of our partners at the County uh for being here was just so appreciated from all of us as we try to figure out this complex landscape of uh Behavioral Health and we're all hopeful for that the work you do will better serve all of us and um thank you again so with that let's move to the next uh P part okay so Emily I think if we can put the presentation back up we should be

[165:00] starting on slide 15 there we go perfect thank you so much um so um you're on the home stretch here because um that part was three quarters of our presentation this is the last quarter uh and this is about our community Assistance response and engagement program otherwise known as care and Care responds to 911 or Police non-emergency line calls that don't require a police officer and may be better suited to that Health focused response it is staffed by City mental health clinicians paramedics and case managers it was launched four days a week uh in December of 2023 and then was fully staffed to 7 days a week starting mid-march of 2024 the program operates from 9:00 a.m. to 700m 7 days per week and it complements our existing Crisis

[166:02] Intervention Response Team otherwise known as CT which pairs mental health clinicians with police officers in responding to calls next slide please the goals of the program are first to help people feel supported and able to manage challenges while staying in the community to increase positive Health impacts for community members sered by care and reduce future Emergency Services calls for those individuals through connection to ongoing Community Services to better use police and fire Resources by diverting calls that could be more appropriately served by an alternative response next slide please in 2024 care had a total of 299 responses followup and case management contacts this represents approximately 2% of fire department responses and slightly less than 1% of police

[167:01] department responses and the monthly breakdown of those 299 calls for 2024 is shown on this slide uh responses you'll kind of see where the numbers and the Peaks are here um started low we experienced an upward Trend with significant dispatch changes we did in July and then we followed overall dispatch trends of reduced volume in November and December of last year there are also some seasonal trends that happen in dispatch overall that also impact The CARE program and we don't have quite enough data yet to separate those seasonal Trends from results of things like dispatch changes next slide please this slide shows Peak demand for care with higher demand times shown in red and orange and lower demand shown in green and yellow hours of the day are

[168:03] across the top of this graph starting with zero for midnight and days of the week are along the leftand side starting with Sunday the busiest times for this program are weekday afternoons and early evenings so that aligns pretty well with 00 a.m. to 700 p.m. 7 days per week next slide please a few other highlights from care in 2024 suicidal ideation and substance use issues those really mirror the larger Community Trends we talked about in the first part of the presentation um it's not surprising that they are very frequent concerns that care responds to um there have been some instances where police or ambulance assistance was required after care was dispatched to a call in the case of police that was 22 times in 2024 and for ambulance service

[169:00] that was 37 times over the course of the year and three of those times overlapped when there were both police and ambulance services involved um there were three arrests in 2024 on care calls and zero uses of force a note about some of the police assistance um that often involves Transportation so for example if somebody voluntarily wants to go to the walk-in crisis center and that has to do with the way our secure Transportation law Works in Colorado it's a relatively new law and our staff are currently pursuing a secure Transportation license to mitigate some of that issue also in 2024 there were 202 referrals to immediate and ongoing treatment options in the community and more than half of the clients remain in community after contact with care and um and so that means they they work on safety planning or another solution

[170:01] where they are they don't have to be immediately transported to a more urgent solution and and that's one of our measures that we look at because the research shows that generally people do better when they're able to remain in community next slide please so the next steps for care uh we do have a cross departmental team with staff from HHS fire rescue and police dispatch that meets monthly to analyze program data and make adjustments and that's going to be continuing this year we have also contracted excuse me with an external evaluator to do further analysis of care beginning in the second quarter of 2025 after the first year of full operation is complete and so with that we can go to the next slide and we have our final question for Council does council have questions on the update related to The CARE program all right Wendy thank you so

[171:02] much that was a great overview um do we have any questions Aon hey when you thanks so much for for that update and I know you've worked hard on that program so really appreciate everything that you put into that um just a couple of questions and that that data was really interesting and helpful I'm seeing um once the the numbers went up a little bit by mid year in the last six months it's been averaging maybe a little over a call a day I think um you know 36 35 28 that kind of a thing which seems relatively low and so just maybe your thoughts on why there aren't um more uh opportunities for care to respond or if there are any procedural changes that might increase those number the number of responses sure Aaron and um the team we agree that that is is lower than we'd like um and so one of the things we are

[172:01] going to be working together on is looking at what adjustments we can make to the program to make sure we are really maximizing the use of those resources in response to community needs interestingly enough um even though it is certainly a priority for us to increase the utilization uh we we took a look at star um to just kind of think about um how we're comparing to a program like that especially one that's more established and a couple of just interesting data points uh for consideration first of all on three different occasions we have sent staff on Star ride alongs because we um well to learn um especially when we were starting up the program on all three occasions they went on one call per shift um and the you know and the discussion with the staff has been that you know maybe averaging two or three

[173:02] calls per shift and um and so you know we just found that interesting because that is a program that's been going a little bit longer it's in a much bigger more densely populated city um we also we did a little bit of of math um Wendy actually just for for for the folks at home star being the similar program that Denver has been running for the last few years thank you Erin that's that's a great um clarification so so in other words two answers to your question Erin which is yes we absolutely agree that um those numbers are lower than they need to be and part of our team's work this year is looking at the adjustments that are going to work best for the community and for City resources and two we are actually somewhat in line with the experience of other

[174:01] programs thanks for that answer but one other question is um if somebody were calling dispatch and were aware of the star program would they be able to say hey I'd love for the startup program to come out to this call if possible is that something we would do you mean care Erin yes sorry I got myself switched up K somebody yes they would and I know Brad rigan our our dispatch manager and PD is on this call and so Brad I don't know if you have anything you you want to add to this um so people can certainly request the program as they are describing the situation to dispatchers it may the the dispatcher may have to explain that they might have to send a different type of response because of something going on in the call is there anything you'd like to add Brad uh no good evening Brad ran uh police and fire dispatch manager um just to add when callers call

[175:00] in a Dispatch they go through a pretty rigorous triage process um they can certainly request care um but it goes through a triage process program that we have a piece of software that kind of walks dispatchers through question by question um and and codes out that call appropriately so so um while the requests care we do want to make sure there are certain factors like scen safety and there's no major medical issues before we we send that response so hopefully that answers the question yeah thanks Brad for being here tonight and for um answering that question and the work that you do and that makes total sense you wouldn't expect to just be able to be Grant be able to grant that request all the time but good to hear somebody could make that request and it would be please great um that's all I got just I'll I'll look forward to that uh full analysis after the onee anniversary of the program and see what that tells us thanks so much all right

[176:01] Matt uh that's an erroneous hand that showed up somehow so my apologies don't know how making up some lost time okay uh any other questions about this section about care and ah Taisha yeah just a very quick question um would somebody uh mind unpacking a couple examples of situational reactions it was the largest primary concerns of the care it's figure three just some examples would be helpful absolutely and for that I'm going to ask um Lucy larbalestier who's our crisis team supervisor to go ahead and chime in with a few examples here hello uh good evening can you all see me yes we can Lucy great um Lucy lies Behavioral Health crisis response manager um that is thank you for that

[177:00] question council member Adams uh situational reactions are you know things that happen in somebody's life that cause them to have some sort of reaction that um leads either themselves or somebody else to request some further assistance so that could be something like um uh somebody sometimes we interact with uh kids in school whove done really badly on a test and they get pretty emotional about it um or they have a fight with friends um or it could be somebody who's going through a relationship breakup where it's not necessarily tied to a mental illness or a particular but it's really just it's things that happen in your life and sometimes that just the reaction is very large and um folks need more support okay and it was more so the confusing piece for me was anxiety was listed on on the list and and just some of these other pieces so I just wasn't clear on

[178:00] that so it sounds like a formal di diagnosis of anxiety aggression versus I don't this I I thank you it's still a little slippery is there something else I could further clarify there for you um you know I I think it's more so just the differentiation um again I can imagine situations that involve drugs so would that be a drug substance abuse I can imagine situations that would make folks feel depressed I can feel you know what I mean so aggression is another when there's you know aggression of any kind um so I'm just trying to differentiate because that one has the largest and I just wasn't sure if that's more of a catchall if there's no formal kind of after the formal screenings or and it kind of Falls there yeah no I would say so uh the clinicians on the team can select up to three um uh categories so they we have a list of kind of buckets of things that we've

[179:01] found over the years that crisis situations tend to fall into and certainly um substance use substance intoxication those those are one categories that we um include and so folks can fall into multiple categories right that it might yes somebody um might have a substance use history they may be using substances and then on top of that something happened and they had a reaction and there might also be um a more formal diagnosis or something going on that we also note thank you yeah you're welcome all right I'm not seeing any other hands um so with that I just want to thank everyone who worked on this presentation as well this is really helpful and I know we're all looking forward to see how it um how the analysis is so thank you so much um with that I think we can move to our last item which are the council committee

[180:01] appointments for 2025 so there was a request um to let for to council members to express any interest in changes uh we didn't receive any request outside of that of uh council member Wallock who wanted to stay on the long-term finan fincial Services team if I have that correct Mark that is correct thank you okay and then I see tesa's Hands Up yes um I saw that the NLC um spot was empty and so just wanted to raise my hand for that um especially since I no longer have the Stewardship Council um which has been dissolved so just wanted to lift up that um I have additional availability did check in with some folks that have more things to see if they wanted to keep theirs they did so just wanting to lift that up as an opening I also just had a comment around I had asked um maybe six

[181:01] months ago to get an update on count uh Council appointments and I just think it's curious that we have time slated for this conversation which doesn't even seem to be necessary um and not time for the update so just kind of curious um where that request Quest landed and if there is um opportunities to provide updates um from the councils and appointed committees that we are serving on okay I think I'll let's see who wants to raise their hand to address that all right Teresa I'm happy to defer to the mayor okay well I can just address half of it just that Taisha um we generally uh uh reaffirm our commit committee assignments on an annual basis so each year near the beginning of the year um we pass a measure that essentially

[182:01] appoints people to those committees so that we have official staing on those committee so I'll I'll let Teresa answer the question why we're not talking about your other requests but anyway that's why this is coming not because we do that well I guess I it's more of just a disappointment that time has been slated to do this and not to allow us to provide updates on our respective committees I know that I have some that I would love to be able be able to share outside of a hotline and there are some appointments again around Boulder housing Partners right like there's some serious um support and it's wonderful that we're able to follow up um thank you to my fellow council members who provide informations on their respective appointments but again I think it's helpful for us to have that conversation I know I'm breaking the rules and it is what it is because apparently that's um but it's more so just something that I'm I'm expressing frustration around um and concern that uh around having that so

[183:00] again I I will make the request again but it would I mean and and also even you know if we're trying to make those kind of transitions it would be helpful to know what is the state of the of the work what is the nature of the work um those kinds of things so um yeah I I um yeah I'm sorry I did not have the NLC request in in in advance but um can I call can I call on that um just for clarity I believe uh the NLC is a unique one where anybody on Council can participate in that so it's not limited or anyone has to reserve that so in that one in particular I think is kind of a is an open one for all in that particular I think I I have that correct with regards to NLC which is kind of nice because then people aren't buying having to you know pick and negotiate so that that's a that's a one that anybody can attach for so have at it and enjoy well I think it's more so similar to n

[184:02] see um C CML right we have somebody who's appointed to that they are supposed to go and we don't have somebody appointed to the National component so um there seems to be some inconsistencies there that I would love for us to think about addressing so if this isn't the Forum to do that um then I'm happy to do that you know again if you're not going to the NLC conference if you're not going to the Sydney Summit then you're not representing us there so um you know I'm going I'm planning on going again to the to the National I went to another city Summit as well I read emails I share opportunities around webinars Etc I'm already doing the work um and I'm offering to to to you know be that point person in lie of the ad Hawk which has not served us in at least since I have been on Council okay uh Erin oh just that I was just going to thank uh Taisha thanks for

[185:00] stepping up on the NLC to move from the ad hoc to dioma would be great to have a formal representative to that body because we get a lot from it so thanks for stuck up to that and and aarin can other people still go to the conference if they're interested yeah they're actually Council that send their entire city council to their conferences and we have a Colorado section and it's very popular and we have meetings and we talk to each other and all of the wonderful things so I hope other people thank you um Nicole and Lauren for joining me last year and I'm hope I'm hopeful that others will join as well okay great um well that's a good addition to our appointments are there any other comments about uh the appointments for next year for the upcoming coming 2025 uh Alicia hello Council Alicia Johnson over you as your city clerk I just wanted to just reiterate that with the NLC like

[186:00] Matt said any council member can go um and if there is any other council member that wants to be the official member please let us know we'll go ahead and document that on the um paperwork that we're going to submit for the appointment of the uh committee members so thanks aw thank you and again I also attend that CML conference so Matt it's wonderful to have you but it's also wonderful to be able to attend those as well um I did Tina is also just want to Tina is also our our rep at CML as well so we get we get two reps at CML which is quite awesome yeah I would love us to have two for NLC as well so um but in the interim I the national league of cities one I do want to clarify apologies council member Adams um back with our contacts at that organization if there's a formal committee that you would be sitting on or not it's not clear to me um and just because this is a formal um motion to vote on assignments for specific representation

[187:01] if we don't know what the job is um we'll want to clarify that before preparing the consent item so we'll follow up with you on information how we currently interact with NLC just so that we don't say yes to a position that doesn't exist and then we'll clean up our list as well okay great thank you so much um one sec Teresa has her hand up yeah um I just wanted to add to what Pam said that we're not actually voting on anything because it's a study session anything but we're I'm coming at consensus um and and expressing interest awesome thank you um I did want to just share a couple of time sensitive things around the Stewardship Council which was disbanded um to say that there is a Downwinders day um on Monday um January 27th at the arv library um again there are still concerns around um the site

[188:00] and there was a collective interest to continue to stay a breast although we were not going to be formal members so I did want to let folks know um that that is happening and there's also going to be a film screening of half-life of memory America's forgotten atomic bomb Factory uh which is going to feature Rocky Flats and that is um going to be at the Denver University um and I will uh share that information with Megs um to to get that out as well um but as that um that council is disbanding I just wanted you to know um that obviously I won't be going but I will still continue to stay a breast on all things nuclear thank you thank you for that Taisha so with that I think we're at the end of our meeting and and uh about 11 minutes early um if everyone's okay I'd like to call us to an end and thank you all for your time so bye nice work Tina thanks Tina

[189:00] appreciate time take care everybody bye everyone good night e

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