April 10, 2025 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[4:36] Alicia, tell me when to start. Did she leave? You're in charge, so you can start whenever you'd like. Okay. All right. It's 6 o'clock. Good evening and welcome to tonight's study session of the Boulder City Council. My name is Council Member Tara Winer and thank you for joining us. We have on tonight's agenda two items. First, we will hear information on, and

[5:01] this is a long one, Nexus study for affordable housing impact fees related to residential demolitions and large additions. And the second item is the core arterial network or CAN initiative update. Before we go into our work items, I'd 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 their presentation, we will conduct our council discussion with staff. If you have any questions, please wait for staff to complete their presentation. And we will now turn to our city manager, Nuria Rivera Vandermide, to introduce our first item. Thank you so much, Council Member Winer. Uh and this our first item uh is something actually that is first came up as a discussed as a council priority in 2023 and I know it's been of great interest to you and to our community. Um I know we've got a consultant uh who did some work on it. Um but I know Kurt will

[6:02] give us a little bit of an intro before passing it on to staff. So with that I'll ask our director of housing and human services Kurt Fernhoer to kick us off. Kurt. Thank you and good evening, council. Uh, so I'm Kurt Fernhau and I support the Department of Housing and Human Services. Um, as Maria mentioned, back in uh the fall 2023, we were before you to discuss an update to inclusionary housing ordinance, and you had passed that ordinance. And then that evening, you asked that we look at an approach that would also address single family homes with large additions as well as small homes that were scraped and rebuilt into much larger homes. and your concern was the the impact of this type of development on affordable housing in our community. So tonight we'll be presenting to you a nexus study and nexus is the starting point that

[7:02] provides a financial analysis of such development and how this increases the need for affordable housing. And for clarity in our discussion tonight, the basis for an impact study is different than that of inclusionary housing. Inclusionary housing ordinance are based ordinances are based on the development of new housing units as the impact we will be looking at tonight is not related to new housing units but existing homes. We will not be addressing inclusionary housing. So I will hand the presentation over to Sloan Wahlberg who is a housing planner within our department and oversees fees and inclusionary housing. Her presentation will be followed by our consultant. Ratchford who will go over the nexus study. His work in this process is done and the nexus study is complete. So tonight will be your chance to ask for

[8:01] clarifications. Um I'm also joined by Jay Suggnet who oversees our affordable housing programs um to also answer questions at the end as needed. And with that I will hand it over to SL. Um well thanks Kurt and good evening everyone. So, um, yeah, as Kurt explained, the intent tonight is to present the findings of that completed Nexus study, which was on the impact of demolitions of smaller homes and replacement with larger homes, and then also the impact of significant additions to existing single family homes. So, the intent was really just to present the study and sort of open up a discussion for feedback before we embark on the implementation. So, um, yeah, as Kurt discussed, I I'll get into some more detail, but essentially an impact fee could address current shortcomings in our IH program and would

[9:02] also ensure equity in how residential residential development and additions contribute to affordable housing in the community. Currently there's sort of an equity issue whereby the same types of housing whether if it's a new build on a vacant lot they are subject to IH and pay a cash and new contribution where if you have an existing home and you demolish and replace so you're not responsible for meeting inclusionary housing. So we're just trying to sort of address that shortcoming in the inclusionary housing program. Okay. So, I um these are the questions that were in the memo. I just sort of wanted to bring them up in the beginning so that we're we can sort of understand what our feedback that we'd like. Um so, we really encourage you to ask questions about the Nexus study itself because we won't be having the

[10:01] consultant with us in future meetings. So, it's a good time to ask questions about that. Um, and also, you know, if you have recommendations as we move into implementation, we'd love to hear it. Um, I also would love some feedback on sort of the proposed schedule for the project and the approach to community engagement. Um, so just as an agenda, I'll cover some of the background that Kurt uh may not have addressed. Um, and just talk a little bit about the affordable housing tools and the current inclusionary housing methodology. I'll talk a little bit about the trends in these types of projects and then I'll hand it over to Andrew Ratford to do his presentation. So um as Kurt said, the need to examine these types of projects was identified in 2023. Um at that time it was recognized that this was an inequity in how we were

[11:01] um applying affordable housing requirements. Um so we were directed to um pursue a nexus study and I would just note that there was a lot of support from planning board and the housing advisory board at that point and also um just from the public when we did community engagement related to the inclusionary housing update. So, in terms of sort of a why statement, um, as Kurt said, single family redevelopment in the city often removes some sort of smaller and I would say relatively affordable or more affordable homes and replaces it oftentimes with a very large expensive home. Also, um, substantial additions also replace those more affordable, smaller homes with larger, more expensive homes, which also reduces affordability. Um and so an impact fee could address these shortcomings in our inclusionary housing program and would also ensure that equity and how um affordable

[12:00] housing requirements are applied. So, just to speak to how a possible impact fee would fit into the larger affordable housing toolbox, so to speak, uh the city currently has several tools to generate affordable housing like annexation, inclusionary housing, um local funding tools like property taxes and linkage fees. Um, I would just know in 2015 the city adopted an affordable housing impact fee on new non-residential development and those fees are assessed based on sort of defined rate categories. So this would be similar but would apply to residential development and as shown in this graphic since 2015 the city has received over $129 million which includes that portion of federal funds. So, the funds from these tools are directed into the city's affordable housing fund, which provides an ongoing dedicated revenue source to support public investment in affordable housing.

[13:01] These funds pay a crucial role in drawing additional state and federal funding through leveraging. Um so monies received into this fund are solely for the construction, purchase and maintenance of affordable housing and also some um related programs related to affordable housing. So, just to provide some background on IH, um the inclusionary housing program requires developers of new residential development to set aside 25% of new units to low or moderate income households at below market prices. The requirement can be met through four options. providing the units on-site integrated into the development, providing the affordable units off-site, making a cash and loop contribution, or dedicating land for future housing, affordable housing development. So, as Kurt mentioned, inclusionary housing can only be applied to quote new residential development and the rationale is that

[14:02] replacing units in smaller developments does not utilize land in the city remaining for the de for affordable housing development. So that is sort of um the reason why we have to pursue pursue a nexus study to um address these types of development. Um and as part of the last update, we changed the methodology of our cash and loo calculations to be a per square foot methodology, which would be similar to how an impact fee was imposed. Um and the cash and ll right scale with development size. So I just want to be clear that cash and loo is not considered an impact fee. It's just simply one option in meeting the inclusionary housing requirements. So all this said um the like I said the inclusionary housing requirements can't be applied to these scrapes and rebuilds of small developments under five units. The vast

[15:01] majority of these um waiverss to inclusionary housing are single family homes. the vast majority are. So the the inclusionary housing requirements can be waved um as long as the unit is demolished and replaced within three years. So as a result almost all newly constructed single family homes in the city are exempt from affordable housing requirements. Um there's very and like I said there's very little waiverss for developments with less than five units. So what this means in practice is that someone who purchases a property with an existing home regardless of size or condition does not pay a cash and leo contribution whereas someone who builds a home on a vacant lot in the city is required to pay a cash and le contribution. And the current rate for single family homes is $15.34 per square foot. So for a, you know, a 3500 foot home, that would be roughly

[16:03] $54,000. Um, so just to show sort of an example about our to demonstrate the current inequity and the current regulations, the parcel shown in blue and orange were previously developed as one property with a single family home built in 1957. The property was then split into two lots and redeveloped as detached single family homes. This was in the past few years. The lot in orange received a waiver to inclusionary housing and paid no cash and loo. The parcel in blue was required to pay cash and loo. Um so you can see sort of the inequity even between um parcels adjacent to each other. Um here's another example of sort of an extreme large lot example. This was um on the upper left that was an approximately 3,000 foot home that was built in 1956 that was demolished. It

[17:01] was replaced with a 8,500t home. They received a waiver. If they had paid cash in loo, it would have been um approximately $130,000. Um, so to sort of speak to the second circumstance, um, currently substantial additions are not subject to any linkage fees. Um, so even if they're substantially larger, in this case they popped the top. I think this was about,00 foot edition. Um, just in terms of trends, you can see there's sort of a relatively steady amount of these types of projects. And you can also see in the um second column that the majority of homes were exempt from inclusionary housing. It averages about 23 replacements um a year and about 35 additions a year. Um and I think the consultant will talk to this a little bit, but um they

[18:02] estimate that revenue from a possible impact fee would be about $1.2 million annually. Um so just sort of speak to the schedule and approach. Um the proposal is to start sort of initial engagement and policy alternative and analysis um until July and then come back to council for code changes in the fall. Um we're planning to sort of use the racial equity assessment to inform considerations in the public process sort of analyzing who would be negatively impacted, who would experience the benefits. Um we're planning to engage with HAB and planning board um the development community uh like market rate home ownership developers, housing professionals, and the general public. So at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Andy to present the findings of the Nexus study. And Andy, let me know if you have

[19:01] a problem bringing up your presentation. I'm pulling it up right now. Okay. All right. Am I good, Sloan? Yep. Looks good. We can see it. All right. I'm Andy Ratchford. I'm with Gruin Brewin Plus Associates. We prepare the Nexus analysis. I'm going to try and essentially run through what's a long technical As far as the methodology, the study examined the relationship or the nexus between uh significant home expansions and affordable housing needs in Boulder. The analysis is specifically focused on detached homes and the impacts that result from expansions to these homes,

[20:01] meaning added square footage, not necessarily remodeling a home that doesn't change in size. So, there's two types of possible linkages or nexus between these kind of projects and affordable housing needs in Boulder. Um, one is a demand nexus, the other is a supply nexus. And Sloan, you touched on this a little bit at your intro. We considered a possible supply nexus, but found there isn't likely to be a direct relationship between these projects and a loss of previously affordable housing. Um, consider that tear down lots will typically sell for at least 700,000, frequently much higher, some as much as 2 or 3 million. So, while these projects do certainly remove um lowerpriced or less expensive homes from the housing inventory, in most instances, this isn't this doesn't

[21:01] equate to a direct loss of housing that would have been otherwise affordable to low, moderate, or middle inome households in Boulder. Thus, the analysis or the nexus is really focused on the demand side. The demand nexus works through a chain of economic events or linkages that lead to an increased need for affordable housing units in Boulder. So, as higher income households spend some of their income on goods and services in the community, these expenditures then stimulate a need for additional jobs. And as there's more local employment available, you experience an increase in the demand for affordable workforce housing. There were three scenarios that are outlined in the report that were developed for this analysis. Each of them is describing what we found to be a prototypical

[22:02] tearown or home expansion project. Um, I won't go through all the details of these, but the gist is we've got three different scenarios that are bracketing these types of projects. They're adding between 600 square ft and 2500 square ft of living space to an existing single family lot with a home on it. The new or the expanded homes are estimated to increase in value by about 875,000 to 3.5 million. This is again the increase in value, not what the expanded homes would sell for. So for example, in scenario A, which is the purchase of a smaller 1,200 ft² home for a little more than a million dollars. That purchase or 1.1 million is the land value. the home is demolished and replaced with the larger 2800 foot home that we've estimated would

[23:00] typically sell for have a value of something like $1,100 a square foot which is a little more than 3 million. So again, the increase in the home value still just one unit is around $2 million. The next step in this analysis is to estimate the income required to purchase this expanded home. Um, the annual income required to purchase these homes is estimated to range from $200 to $640,000. Again, higher than the incomes that would have been required to purchase the smaller homes they're replacing. So, if you're kind of following me so far in the logic, we've established two connections. Number one, that new or expanded homes do sell for considerably more than the smaller homes that they're replacing. and two that these new expanded homes are more likely to be occupied by much higher income households. The next step is to quantify

[24:01] how these households and their higher incomes um do contribute to increased workforce um demand in Boulder. Based on an economic impact analysis, we've estimated that about three quarters of one job to a little more than two jobs are likely to be created for each one of these three home expansion scenarios. The last step is then to convert these additional jobs into affordable housing needs. Um, this calculation factors in household sizes, assumptions about commuting, income levels, and so forth with the bottom line results indicating a need for additional affordable units that basically ranges from 0.15 to 0.45 units per project. So roughly um one additional job for every uh two to six home expansions, if you will.

[25:04] Um the affordable units needed reflect an assumption that twothirds of the workforce generated by these types of projects will live in Boulder. The remaining third of workers generated are assumed to commute into Boulder um whether for lifestyle preferences or other e economic reasons. So, we've established what um what the employment impacts are, what the workforce generation is, and then what the housing needs are related to these two items, but we haven't quantified what what it would cost the city to address address these affordable housing needs. And that's where um the example up on the screen of a gap analysis, that's where this becomes relevant. And what we're doing is quantifying the difference in typical cost between a market rate housing unit

[26:02] and an affordable housing unit in Boulder. Um so purpose for the purpose of this nexus fee and analysis, um I'd say we're basically estimating the one-time subsidy that would be required to house these workers generated in modest existing units in Boulder. So, let's consider an ownership unit that would be affordable to a household earning 80% of the area immediate income. We've estimated a gap of about $220,000 per unit relative to a market price for an existing condominium or town home in Boulder. Um the average resale prices over the last year for smaller one and twobedroom units I think were about $540,000 while an affordable purchase at 80% AMI for these types of units would be about $320,000. So that's where this gap of

[27:01] $220,000 comes into play. Um, when you consider the full spectrum of housing needs generated, you know, at different income levels and different household sizes, the average gap is estimated to be about $100,000 per affordable housing unit. This is be the $100,000 gap is less than what I just reviewed. Um because the gaps are lower for rental units in general as well as for ownership housing that would be affordable to higher income levels like 120% of AMI. The last step in the demand nexus is to quantify what these two things mean as far as a maximum fee that could be justified or substantiated. So, for a smaller lot tear down and replacement, uh, which is scenario A

[28:01] here on this table, the maximum fee is about $25,000, which equates to $15 per square foot of additional living area. The same process repeated for a few other scenarios. Scenario B, which is a larger lot tear down. Um the maximum fee would be about $44,000 or $18 a square foot of added living space. And the maximum fee for a smaller home addition, not a tear down, um could be around $14,000 or a little more than $20 per added square foot. The reason the fees aren't one um consistent number per square foot doesn't really have anything to do with the size of these uh hypothetical projects per se. Um it's because slightly different assumptions like uh what the finished homes would sell for,

[29:01] what's the relationship between a buyer's income and the sales price. um assumptions like those differed um for these scenarios just so we could rely on secondary data and applying consistently. Um and I'm only mentioning this because it's not to suggest that we're trying to split hairs per se and imply that uh scenario A and scenario C should have majorly different fees applied to them. We've got a couple examples and before I review them, I just want to emphasize that um the maximum fees I just reviewed of roughly $15 to $20 a square foot as well as all the assumptions and estimates that are used to arrive at those numbers. These are Boulder specific estimates with characteristics and data that's specific to the city of Boulder. It's not drawn from other

[30:01] communities or case studies, if you will. However, I do want to summarize a few other um impact fee programs or taxes that apply to single family units in different places. And my hope is that maybe this provides a little bit of context for the recommendations. And I also think it demonstrates that there isn't necessarily a standard approach um for this type of a fee. As far as housing, most other policies vary pretty widely in both their structure and what kind of projects they apply to. Um, quickly a few examples. Evston, Illinois, Northshore Chicago, they have a demolition tax. This is just a fixed amount per home if you demolished at least half the structure or more. Denver has linkage fees that apply to smaller single family developments, including tearowns. um they exempt uh additions that are

[31:02] smaller than 400 square feet and um starting in a few months the fees are basically5 to dollars 5 to8 per square foot. Uh Los Angeles has a similar program except they exempt um much larger additions and the fees are much higher. Aspen has mitigation requirements. They're essentially the same as an impact fee and there's different calculations required for different projects. Um, regardless, the fees are very high, ranging from $40 to $45 per square foot. As far as what we're recommending based on the nexus analysis, if Boulder does impose a fee, we'd recommend establishing one per square foot fee that would be applied equally to all projects. And based on the analysis I just really quickly walked you through, um, we think the fee

[32:02] probably shouldn't be any more than $15 per square foot of additional living space. So, for example, a home that replaces a demolished structure with 2,000 additional square feet would pay a fee of about $30,000. Um, similar to one of the examples Sloan had up earlier, let's say a second story pop top or home addition that's adding a,000 square feet would be subject to a fee of $15,000. We've suggested limiting the fee to um only new construction or alteration permits that increase the home size by at least 500 square ft. So this means if somebody's adding a smaller ADU of say 400 square ft that would be exempt from this hypothetical impact fee. It also means, as I touched on at the beginning, um that major remodeling of existing

[33:01] homes wouldn't be affected by this fee. Um if they're not adding square footage, uh these kind of activities aren't really increasing um the amount of housing on a lot per se, and there wouldn't be a direct linkage to additional job generation and affordable housing needs. given the number of these um replacement and expansion projects that have occurred in a typical year in Boulder at least going back to you know 2017 2018. Um the imposition of the recommended $15 square foot fee would probably generate around $1.2 million each year in affordable housing funds. U most of this is for replacements and tearowns, not smaller home additions. Um and then for some more perspective, we've just shown if the recommendation

[34:00] moves forward, what it would mean in dollar amounts for these scenarios and how that compares to a small list of other communities that have similar fees. Again, they all differ in what kind of project is exempt um how the fees are calculated, but the gist is Boulder would be comparable to um Denver, Portland, Santa Cruz, California, communities like that. Um that's the end of my prepared presentation on the study and happy to try and answer any um any questions you have. Okay. Hey, do you want me to take it from here, Nuria? Uh, yes, you can, Tara. Okay. Okay. Awesome. Okay. So, my first question is is you're going to take this presentation down so I could see everybody, right? That'd be great. Can you remind me how I know who goes

[35:00] first? I think you should see some hands up. And I I see Lauren's hands up right away. Yeah. What I'm saying is is how do I know who's first? Ah, when I click on panelists, it shows me who's first. There you go. Alrighty. I remember now. If folks can take the slides down, that would be terrific. And I think if you can do clarifying questions first. You bet. Okay, let's start with Lauren. Clarifying questions. Thank you, Tara. Um, and thank you team for the presentation. Um I just had a couple of questions around some of the information you shared. So um Aspen's mitigation fee did they is that based on a nexus study? I'm just I'm a little curious how other communities have, especially within Colorado that are under our same

[36:02] legal framework, have assessed fees for demolitions or for replacements when it seems like um it might be challenging for us to do so. Um, thanks for the question. I don't know specifically what nexus study was used, but I would make an assumption that Aspen used a Nexus study um to sort of show that linkage between the new construction and affordable housing. Obviously, there the gap analysis is going to be so much bigger, hence um the rate. Um, and what I would say is on a lot of those examples that Andy showed is those impact fees are trying to close the gap in the inclusionary housing program. So, for an example, Denver um they have it I think it's nine units and

[37:01] below it applies to and the reason for that is because their inclusionary housing only applies to 10 or more units. So there's not there would be a nexus study for any anything that is technically an impact fee. Um if they're usually using inclusionary housing in tandem with those impact fees that were shown. Thank you. Um, in relation to the Denver fee, I was noticing that their fee is, you know, lower than what was suggested through this study for us. But for um, example C, the resulting fee was much higher. And I was wondering if you could explain what's going on there. Andy, would you be able to answer that? Um, I'll take a crack at it. Denver has, let's have two

[38:03] categories, but let's say one of the fees is $8 a square foot. That $8 applies to the whole new project. Meaning even if you're only expanding a home by 500 square feet, so the home ends up going from a,000 to,500, you're paying $8 time,500. Um, we've suggested a fee that's based on the additional square footage, if that makes sense. Um, so when you compare apples to apples, um, the tear downs would be similar in price. I'm sorry, in cost between what we've suggested and how Denver collects the fees. And there's some nuance in the way they impose these four additions. I couldn't tell you a whole lot more. We didn't really study it or try to mimic it other than asked a few questions to make sure what we were presenting was

[39:02] accurate. Um, okay. I I'll let some other people have some questions. I might have some more later. Thank you. You may ask more later. Okay, next we have Ryan. Thank you Salone and Andrew and team. Um for a very nice presentation, very easy to follow. Um welcome Andrew. Um I just have one question I think and forgive me if if I've if I'm missing this. Um but listening to the presentation and also seeing the hotline from council member Wallik and Kurt's response to that um I just wanted to explore the um the sort of idea that this could be something to drive behavior or it could be something to um raise revenue. And the the strategy is um deliberately not to

[40:00] change behavior, but rather to rise, excuse me, to raise revenue in order to cover impacts on the community in a way that will not deter um the the developers building plans. So, if I have that right, I guess I'm just would love to know a little more about um I guess the the the point of that decision. Um, and maybe this is like super basic and I'm just missing something obvious, but I'm just I'm just curious to know about the the prospects of a policy that would be more focused on um encouraging well improving the economics that would induce developers to consider smaller andor more efficient multifamily type um uh settings and if that's something that we had looked at and then ruled out um or it's just not legally possible or whatever, but if you could

[41:01] just talk about what what got us to the decision of saying this is going to be um for raising revenue and not behavior change. Thank you. Yeah. So, you are correct. We're not trying to sort of encourage a certain type of behavior and that um is really tied to the legality of an impact fee. I don't know if Teresa has anything to add, but it has to be to avoid a takings clause. You have to show that direct linkage between what you're asking from a developer and the actual impacts on affordable housing. So, it can't be an artificial number to sort of um discourage a type of development. I mean I I would say that there are some ways in the implementation that you can um encourage you know say ADUs or something like that but um the intent can't be to um encourage or you know discourage a certain type of behavior. Okay. Okay. I think that's it. Thank

[42:02] you. Okay. Oops. I'm not used forgot it's my turn now. Okay. Uh, Nicole, I believe you're next. Or Tina, did you raise your hand first? Do you remember? Does anyone hear who goes first? Um, yeah, thank you and thanks so much for the presentation. Uh, and I love the memo as well. It was just a very, um, easy to follow report for some really complicated material. So, thanks for that. Um, my question is just around the, um, job estimates that were used. Did the job estimates account for the jobs that were involved in or that would be involved in building the home or doing the res renovations or does it really the jobs estimate just sort of starts from when it exists after that has has been done? Yeah, Andy, could you take that one? Sure. The employment impacts are referred to are for permanent jobs in

[43:00] Boulder related to household spending. So the short answer is no. It's not quantified temporary. You are muted. Terra, do you have any more questions? Nicole, is that it? Okay. All right. Well, I didn't hear from Nicole. Sorry, I was shaking my head, but no, I'm all done. And that was it. Okay. Thank you. All right. Tina, you're next. Hey, thank you. Um, I just had a question about the model itself and the predictive value. Was it what was the time period that was used to kind of create the the modeling? I think it's called the rims model of the rims model. Um, and how our numbers are very small. We're a fairly small city, but how would

[44:00] we have noticed that impact even just looking out into our community and experiencing our community? Yep. Go ahead, Andy. Yeah. Um, so the data is always a few years old. There's a sort of a long lag with some of this information that was used, but it's the most currently available for Boulder. Um, as far as noticing how these projects have affected jobs and needs on the ground, is that your question or am I understanding correctly? Yeah, I mean I it's it's these numbers are so small that I'm not sure this is even a good question, but um you know I I hear more of retail closing and so and one of the big job categories was retail, right? And so because it's so small and there's so many other you know factors happening with online shopping or with AI increasing

[45:01] productivity or merging of health services and teleaalth um I was just curious if we would really actually see those impacts because of some changes in the in some of the high highly indexed jobs that were in the the model. We haven't assumed or made assumptions about the future. Um, we're just trying to capture a snapshot of yesterday, if you will, and apply it to what we know is happening with these sorts of projects. Um, so I hear your point being, you know, retail industry is increasingly moved online. Um, so those jobs may not be in Boulder. Um, so I'd acknowledge that it may be imperfect, but it's as precise as we can get on the subject. And obviously, as you mentioned, you know, it's it would be impossible to trace um on the ground how many jobs created for 32 new homes and the households that are living in them when you have jobs being lost or relocated for a myriad of

[46:03] other factors. So, we're just trying to isolate what the possible impacts of um spending from the households and these kind of projects might support. And then I had a general question which is perhaps out of scope, but we have a another um another impact in our community where we transition affordable single family homes or more older single family homes into um multi- multi uh or rental units for students basically. It's we're you know in a college town. Has there ever been a nexus study about what impacts might happen in that case when a it goes from a you know a home that was more affordable with maybe a couple or a couple and a child to four to eight college students? I'm not I'm not aware of us doing an study on that. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

[47:02] All right then. I have a bunch of questions. Um, it looks like Oh, Lauren, did you want to ask your question first? I see your hands up again. You should go first. You haven't asked any yet. It doesn't matter. I You go first. All right. You're running the meeting. Um, let's see. I guess I just wanted to confirm because Tina was getting into a little bit of like what this nexus study does and doesn't cover in terms of the capture in terms of the um reductions in affordability. So is it correct to say that this only captures reduction in affordability due to increases in jobs related to new larger homes and doesn't include kind of the intrinsic loss of affordability due to making our more affordable housing stock less affordable.

[48:00] Um I'll I'll try and answer this Andy and you can jump in if you want. So um when he had the slide that kind of showed the supply and demand nexus, the finding was that the actual removal of relatively affordable housing um was not what we not to the extent that we expected. the real um impact was in that jobs um spending impact in the community and the you know the impacts on the need for affordable housing rather than the removal of relatively affordable. Um I don't know Andy if you want to jump in. I think it has to do with just the the land cost and the cost of buying one of these properties that we're calling relatively affordable is so high that um they just don't fit into the category of what we would consider affordable housing. Correct. So, um again, we're only

[49:01] talking about detached single family homes on their own lot. And as far as this uh the analysis and the fee, we've suggested by affordable housing, we're referring to 120% of A&M or below. Um so even a relatively affordable $700,000 home, certainly a lot less than 2 million, it's still not affordable to anything close to 120% of AMI. So, uh, I guess you're the answer to your question is correct. We're not quantifying any loss of affordable housing. We're only quantifying additional needs for affordable housing, if that makes sense. Yes. Thank you. Okay. See, that that was one of my questions, Lauren. Um, and then I had two more. One is like

[50:01] so with uh demolitions, is it possible to do a nexus study for demolitions? Is that something other communities have done? Is like with Aspen? Yeah. I mean, I guess with the mitigation fee, it seems like it must be, but Yeah. And to be clear, this would apply to demolitions. So this applies to demolitions and replacements and additions. And I think um Aspen is the same situation and the other examples that were being shown. Okay. It just seemed based on some of the examples that like a scrape might be treated differently than an addition in some of these peer communities, but that it wouldn't be based on the study that we're looking at. Yeah. I mean, it it would apply to a

[51:00] demolition and I mean when they replace it would apply, right? Um but there's some differences in how it's actually implemented, right? Like Andy said, are you looking at the total square footage or just the net increase? That kind of thing. Yeah. Um and then can the fee increase with inflation? Um so that is a possibility and that is how our proposal would probably be to just follow the same methodology that we applied to the other linkage fees which is um yeah there's an increase for inflation every year. Thank you. All right I'm going to go now. So my first question is is so this is mostly focused on the supply nexus didn't work out. This is how I as a lay person listen hear it. But you're focused more on the demand nexus. But I guess my question is is I don't feel like we'll

[52:00] ever in the world have enough affordable housing for both people that work here and people let's say our unhoused community. We're trying to find places for them. There's a lot of things we use um affordable housing for. So my initial reaction was why can't people just come here who work here come here like commute from other um close towns? Is it just because of the environmental impact would you say or am I just looking at this the wrong way and you can say I am because I'm just a lay person. Um, I don't know if I'll say it as eloquently as Andy, but I don't think the intent of the Nexus study is to um necessarily speak to human behavior more than the intent of the Nexus study is to be a legal foundation for an impact fee. I see. I got it. Yeah. So the the document that is so when you're

[53:01] questioning sort of why we would focus on the demand nexus it it would have to it goes to the legality of imposing an impact fee. Awesome. Andy do you have anything to add to that? No I that sums it up. Okay. So my next question is actually comes from the packet and being a lay person there. I'm not going to say this was the easiest to read. I at least read it twice. But on page 22, can you explain to me what this means? The average feasibility gap between a market rate unit and affordable unit weighted with a 20% allocation to units at 50% of AMI and 80% allocation to units at 60% AMI is estimated to be approximately $81,200 per affordable rental unit. No matter how many times I read that, I didn't understand it. help me. Go ahead, Andy.

[54:01] Sure. That's the sausage being made, if you will. Um, and the re the reason for that is we need to come up with one gap for an affordable rental unit. Um, but that amount is going to vary based on the income level for the unit. So, I think my memory is correct. We were mimicking the way the city does it for inclusionary housing purposes of an inloop fee. I get it. So, we're just trying to not reinvent the wheel. It's a I get it. Thank you. Wow. I actually get it. Good for me. Um, so when you picked $15 per square foot, did that have to do with the 25% inclusionary housing fee or was this random or how did you come to that $15? You might have said it in the packet, but um it was somewhat random as in we weren't specifically trying to come up

[55:00] with a fee that was similar to the other fees you have. Um we the short answer is it's the outputs of all the assumptions and estimates that I quickly ran through for three different scenarios. So if you remember they range from 15 to 23. That would be the maximum. We're suggesting that um you focus on the lower end so you're not exceeding the maximum for certain types of projects which could be why would we even do the maximum? Why wouldn't we do like 10? I'm just wondering you anything below the maximum would be legally permissible. Okay. Okay. I I understand. And then the 500 square feet, was that also random? I I don't know if you want to answer that, Andy, but um I mean, I mean a mean way. I'm just um I think for SNAF staff's perspective, um it, you know, essentially is random

[56:02] and that we were trying to pick an appropriate number to evaluate what a significant addition constitutes. Um and then in terms of how it would be applied, it would, you know, allow for more moderate income families to make um you know, additions and improvements to their home. Um you know, allowing for like an extra bedroom or something like that. Andy, do you have anything you want to add? Um one of the reasoning is it also overlaps with the size of a ADU typically. Um, meaning if you want to exempt ADUs, you could just exempt projects that are adding less than X square feet. So, I wouldn't say that it's random. We thought about it. We looked at how many of these projects in the past have added more than 500 square ft, but they haven't torn down or replaced the home. As well as we looked at other some of

[57:01] the other examples I presented with other communities as far as the exemptions. So, I think that could be up to your discretion or suggestion. Um, yeah, I get it. I mean, I was just looking at the fact that a whole of like at least four of those communities were less than us. We were in the top. I'm trying for us not to be in the top, but that's just me, you know. Um, okay. My next question is, can I call a on that, Tara? Please. Um I just had a related question which I I had thought that I read in the report that part of the reason for the 500 um square foot cut off as well is that um anything under 500 square feet didn't necessarily have the jobs impact that something over 500 square feet did. Did I am I just imagining that or was that part of the logic as well? No, you're not imagining it and that's correct. The smaller you get, the harder

[58:00] it is to substantiate a linkage between this project on partial A and fractions of affordable housing units needed. So that is part of the the reasoning if you will. Okay. Thank you. So just just from like a justification perspective as well, um 500 square feet is kind of the the cut off there. I see. Thanks, Nicole. All right, two more questions and then I'm done with my questions. The first one is is a community member wrote this. I agree with members of the planning board who said the fee should go further and earmark the money for middle inome families, many of whom are not eligible for affordable housing benefits. So I guess my question is is we're not allowed to use this money for middle income, aren't we not? Or am I mixing something up here? She said she heard it at planning board, but I and and um I wasn't I didn't hear the planning board meeting. So, I'm

[59:01] wondering if this can or can't be used for middle income earmarking. I don't think it can, but I wanted to confirm that. Uh well, it would be an implementation choice. We do have current programs aimed at middle income, so it would go into the affordable housing program and as a policy, uh we could utilize it for that. I don't know, Kurt, did you hop off mute for a reason or Yeah, thanks along. Um, so it would be able to be used for uh affordable housing projects of different PMIs from zero up to 120% of area median income. So it would cover middle income. um because it's a um I I I think it would be a challenge though to um target um the revenue from uh this impact to a particular aspect of the affordable housing program. Um so I

[60:01] think keeping it broad would um probably have the biggest impact. Okay. Okay. Here's my last and final question everybody. a community member who's also on the planning board, Mark McIntyre, he wrote an email and it's and it asked why. Okay. So, let's say that you're you you know, my biggest problem is with for some reason with um these additions because if you live in South Boulder and your house is like a thousand let's say square feet and that is pretty small and you you want to double it to 2,000, that's not like gigantic either. Um, I don't want to disincentivize people from building additions because I want to keep families here and not I don't want them to move to Lewisville so they can get more for their house. That's my personal thing because a lot of those people are in the middle class that we have. So my question is is why wouldn't you or can

[61:02] we instead Okay, so let's say that you build a 600 square foot addition. So that means you're 100 feet over. Instead of paying 100 times 15 square feet uh times 15, which is 1500, you have to pay 600* 15. Is that right? Square. Am I doing that wrong? Yes, it that is one option. But you could have, you know, waiverss like I'm assuming you're speaking to. Well, I mean, wouldn't what would it be possible to start at 500? Let's make believe we picked 500. Okay, which I'm not even saying I want to, but let's just say we did. Why would we not start at 500 and then every like everything under that is exempt? So, if you're building 600 square feet, because I don't want to I don't want to like disincentivize, you know, whatever word you want to use. Why wouldn't you?

[62:02] Or can we just do the extra from 500 to 600 let's say square feet? So like 100 times 15. So 1,500. So that the impact of the um addition is less than uh a massive amount. I mean like somebody's entire furniture budget, right? Because a lot of the people we're talking about, especially in South Boulder, Martin Acres, etc., They have pretty small houses that families are going to have a hard time living in. Plus, there's a lot of them are old, but I saw them and not awesome. So, I'm just asking if it's possible for us to do this because I did like his idea. Yep. That that's an implementation possibility for sure. All right, then. That just about wraps it up for my questions. Now, what's next? Nicole, did you have I have another colloquy. Sorry, it came up in relation to yours. So, one

[63:01] of the other things um was that the this $15 per square feet um fee was was low enough that it wasn't expected to disincentivize um anybody from from building kind of what it is that they would want to. But um you know to Terara's point there is there any evidence that the size of the home or that that the starting the size of the starting home um has a differential impact on the uh on whether or not $15 a square foot is going to disincentivize somebody from like doing what Tara just said of going from say 1,000 to 2,000 square feet. Andy, do you want to cover that? And that was I'm assuming covered in your feasibility analysis. Um yes, there's a section of the analysis if you need some bedtime reading. Um at the very end that's

[64:00] taking this maximum fee at $15 a square foot and applying it to those three typical projects. And the short answer is um we don't think whether the it's a small lot with a tiny home on it or a large lot with a giant home on it that either way it's going to have a substantial effect on the feasibility of homeowners or builders doing these projects. Um great. Thank you. I'm allowed to disagree with that though. Right. All right. Where are we? We finished our questions. What's the next thing we want to do? I think you can ask staff questions and we put those in the chat. Okay, we have our staff questions. Who question? Let me just open that chat. Question number one for council members. Okay, we already did that. Does city council have any questions and any recommendations? Aha, we did not do

[65:00] recommendations. And does council have any feedback on the sales proposed schedule and approach to community engagement? It's now 7 o'clock. We have a half hour left. Um I think we did questions. Do we have recommendations? We can do that first. I already gave my recommendation. So we can move on to other people. Let's see. We have Lauren. Lauren. Then we have Tina. Thanks. Um, so I really appreciated the time put into these recommendations. I um feel I don't know 500 square feet to me is a pretty big addition. I guess I'm interested in looking a little bit more at kind of options around that size threshold. Um, I'd also be interested

[66:01] in potentially exempting ADUs entirely if that's possible. Um, because I think that they are an intrinsically sort of more affordable kind of housing in our community. [Music] Um, and then if there was an option for maybe doing a tiered fee basing based on the resulting square footage. Um, that would also be something that I would be interested in. Um, but but generally speaking, I do like that we have an exemption for smaller additions. um and would like to see that continue. Thank you. Okay, next we have Tina. Did you put your hand down? Well, I did because you were going to call on me. Okay, go.

[67:03] Um so I am also would second the exemptions that Lauren just mentioned. Um the possibility there. I also would just like to explore or clarify what would happen if someone added 500 square feet but in the process they converted a home to a duplex a single family home in areas where duplexes are allowed um because that's a behavior that we're we have a you know a special kind of interest in or a triplex um and I I would just like to explore that if we could. I also noticed Sacramento had added into its um its fee an exemption for properties that are owner occupied for a certain period of time afterward. Um you know, as we look for ownership incentives in general, I'd be curious about ways to uh lift up people who are going where it is going to be an owner occupied rather than a investment uh property. Um I'm

[68:02] not sure if it's feasible. I don't know if it if it fits within the nexus fee and the legality of it, but it's something I'd be interested in. Um, and again, we're not making a decision tonight, but those are the types of things I'm I'm looking for. And also, as much as our whole town is sort of not affordable, if unless it's affordable, part of the affordable housing program, I I do want to make it easy for a younger family to add a bedroom if they need it or for people to build space for an in-law or a grandparent or whatever um without having to leave the city if it feels like that fee is going to become um prohibitive for for those people. So uh in the engagement strategy I noticed you had first tier engagement was the housing advisory board and the planning board and the um cityapp appointed uh housing another one I can't remember the acronym sorry and then secondary was developers um but I would

[69:02] be I'm wondering if we could do outreach as well to property owners and property owners with with children I think that's a it's tough and I don't want to expand the scope too much but I would be interested in some input from homeowners outside of the development and the advisory community. Thanks. That is number two, which we didn't get to yet, Tina. I'm so sorry. Well, look, time. Because I agree with you. I'm out mad at you. We definitely should reach out to homeowners, especially in the neighborhoods where the houses are small. Yes, I agree with you. You have more to say. Okay. So I am just going to repeat what I said but emphasize it that I am worried that we will be disincentivizing or taxing people for wanting to stay in their neighborhoods. I mean, for me, like, let's say you live in South Boulder and right now your kids go right near there to school and they bike to

[70:01] school and you bike to center city and they have all these friends there already and but they have their house is just too small. I just would rather them stay in Boulder, stay in their neighborhood. You know, I I lived in West Philly for a long time and my house got too small because I had three kids. So, I added like a giant addition because I didn't want to move and I love my neighborhood in West Philly. So, I just can't even though the study's great, I understand. I get it. I really do get it. I just can't bring myself to say yes, let's tax people for like uh a 600 square foot edition. So that idea that Mark McIntyre had of not um of starting at a threshold whatever we pick that I'm interested in. I'm also interested in when you did all the

[71:02] cities I'm very interested in like the pros and cons. So all these cities that did this were there any negative impacts positive impacts? Just because the numbers like you said were random. I sure would like to. They weren't they weren't totally random, Nicole. Um, but they were somewhat random. I would like to know what are the pros and cons of going lower um than $15 and have any other communities that have done this had any positive or negative effect? So, that's number two. And then, um, do I have any else for number three? Um, I think I'll just leave it. I think what I want to say is that these are just numbers to us, but it's actually people's money. So, oh well, big deal, $30,000, but that's a big deal to a lot of people. So, I don't want to just treat it as let's just see how much money we can get

[72:00] for affordable housing, even though I love affordable housing because it all also affects people staying here, not moving away, keeping our kids in our schools because we need uh we need, you know, to populate our schools. There's a there's a lot of different things that are going on here that make me say that it's a serious discussion. And we're also missing three other council members. So who I'm sure would have a lot of important things to say. So I want to really tread carefully and and the other thing that really scares me and it scares all of us is what's happening um in the uh federal level and whether or not we are being you know whether or not this is the time this year is the year for us to consider this type of thing when there's havoc and the stock market is going up and down and we're not sure what's going to happen with tariffs and people losing their jobs. So, you know, I'm mixed on

[73:03] many levels. And so, even though you were talking about 2025 being the year, I don't know that it needs to be the year. Is there a reason why it needs to be the year? So, let's I would like us to consider not doing all these different things that we talked about last week and also this in the same year. All right, that's everything. Oh, it looks like we have more customers, Ryan. Okay, I uh first want to really compliment staff for finding a new way to raise revenue for our badly needed inclusionary housing uh program and in a way that improves equity and is consistent with our goals to increase transit oriented middle housing. generally agree with the recommendations from staff um and include w with incorporating everything that Lauren said and also that Tina said. Um, no.

[74:01] I also want to acknowledge Tara Tara's comment about, you know, not being too relaxed about just raising fees to try and find revenue. But um, well, and what we are doing here in part is improving equity among the those who are funding our programs. um given that partly we have a situation that multif family dwellings pay for this single families do not and um that's a really important alignment to to try to get right. Um so just a few thoughts in terms of uh some additional constructive things. Um I am in the camp of of being interested to try to use this as a tool to improve the economics that will induce smaller more efficient multif family kind of orientations to the extent we can legally. And um I hear

[75:02] I've learned more in the presentation that we probably are quite limited in being able to do that um legally, but I did hear that there's some some space to to to try. So I would just say as a principle, I'm very interested for us to try to use this tool to try to, you know, induce those types of forms. Um, one one thing I I I guess I missed this on the question, so I'll just sort of state it as a as a comment. Um, with this $15 fee, if if we could make it be a progressive fee that's higher a higher rate at higher um higher levels of square footage, that would be that would certainly be interesting to me. Um, if it's to the extent it's permissible. Um, and then related um on the there was some discussion about the the memo from Mark McIntyre. Um, one thing I saw in his message that I thought was interesting was the distinction was distinguishing to say the the current

[76:01] proposal would make 500 uh feet a threshold such that the difference between 499 and 501 would be would be very significant for the developer. But if you could think of 500 as a simple exemption so that up to 500 it's free no matter what and then it starts. So I to me that sounds interesting if you can sort of make that work mathematically um to prevent gaming and to just you know encourage a more um you know the type of aesthetic and meeting the kind of needs people have. Um, I also wonder if, and again, if I'm getting in the weeds, I'll just try to move on quickly, but um, if there's maybe more of like a continuous function, um, where it's I guess it was sort of what I was saying before about, um, if you could just have a a progressive, um, at a higher rate. Um, so there's that. And then, um, I I noticed in the memo the the the feedback from planning board was, um, was quite varied. So, I guess I would um I know

[77:00] there's there's a lot underneath a lot of it and I would just my my general advice or hope would be just to look at pricing types of of uh mechanisms that will tend to encourage ADUs and multif family and smaller more efficient units to the extent we can. And then final thing and I'll stop. Um this is planting a seed. Um I I saw or heard a lot of discussion some discussion about the um like what's in the impact study and like what what is the scope of what we consider to be impact. Um, this seems to me like a really rich area uh that will um that gets at a lot of the things that I I think we don't have time for today, but that I hope as we um in the future look for additional ways to induce um the kind of housing we need, maybe have chances to take a look at what do we consider to be really good practice for impacts um types of evaluations that that best meet our needs. Um so, thanks again to the whole team for this this

[78:01] work. Ryan, can I ask you to say one more thing? Do you have any comment about number two? Does council have feedback on the staff's proposed schedule and approach to Sure. Um, yeah, I was just I thought I think it was Tina who was talking about parents and um you know, I'm not sure if this fits in well, but if there's any way to engage with uh BBSD or you know, families with with kids like directly. I'm not sure that's it's to BBSD itself, but I I think that would be that's a group I'd love to hear from to the extent we can. Also, thank you very much. I forgot the second part of Mark's um email where I totally agreed with scenario B and how a lot of the giant homes went from small, let's say, in my neighborhood to like massive with two people in it. that I feel is a great way for us to uh get our uh some money for um our affordable housing. So, thank you for reminding me about that second part. Appreciate you. Next

[79:02] person, Nicole. And also Nicole, answer number two for me and then Lauren. Great. Um I uh generally felt uh comfortable with the policy recommendations that came um from staff. So, this is having one $15 per square foot fee applied to um the net new above ground living area. Um this amount uh isn't enough to disincentivize uh behavior um but also generates a significant amount of revenue. So, as um Curt's hotline noted today, um this is not an insignificant amount that will be added to the affordable housing fund. Um I'm comfortable with exempting smaller projects that have less than 500 um net new square feet. Um this seems to be what we have legal standing for. Um I'd like to know how the revenue projections would change if we exempted ADUs. Um I

[80:01] personally would rather find alternative means to incentivize ADUs than to use this process because this Nexus study um it isn't meant to impact behavior. It's really just meant to account for the additional jobs and the need for housing that people making 120% or less of the AMI um can use. So again, I'm not I'm not concerned about this disincentivizing people from um building ADUs. Um and I agree with the policy recommendation of periodically adjusting the fee like we do with other um city impact fees. And um just kind of on a personal note, I uh wanted to mention that I am one of those South Boulder families with school age kids who lives in a a relatively small home. Um I certainly can't speak for everyone down here who shares those identities, but um I just wanted to explain why I'm not concerned about disincentivizing families in small homes from um changing their house to fit their needs. Um I've

[81:00] got a pretty small house. is about 1500 square feet and it served us just fine with two kids and two adults and multiple pets for 15 years. Yes, it got a little dicey during the pandemic lockdown when we were all here together all the time. Um but but we still made it work. U but with 500 square feet just to give get a sense in my house. Um if I added 500 square feet, I could add two to four more bedrooms um in my house with 500 square feet. So like that that's pretty significant, right? Um, and there are some folks in my um, neighborhood who've done larger um, or uh, expansions um, of about that size that have added a couple bedrooms um, to help meet their growing family's needs. U, but those of us on smaller lots um, typically those smaller homes are going to come on smaller lots too. And so the space is limited anyway. Um, but you know, given that my house has doubled in value in the time that we've had it, I would be totally fine with paying um to offset any impacts of the uh development uh as well into affordable housing, too.

[82:02] So, I think that's kind of the other thing to think about um for for those of us even in smaller homes. it it I have not seen any evidence that it would disincentivize to have um a fee here, but I think it would uh address some of the impacts um that lead to a higher need for affordable housing. Um and with regard to the engagement, uh the plan sounds good to me. Um the group that I'm interested in just making sure we're talking to our um seniors. This is uh the fastest growing segment of our population. Um and especially given that um household sizes are going to get smaller over time in the next 25 years or so. I am just interested in also making sure that we are talking to folks who um who just have smaller household sizes and households without children too. But thank you. this was a really um great study and it's really exciting to see this work uh kind of coming to fruition because um it feels like it it's been a while since we talked about

[83:00] it. So, thank you. Thank you, Nicole. I really enjoyed hearing your perspective. Okay, now we'll have Lauren's perspective and after that Taiisha's and don't forget to answer number two everybody. I just forgot that I had another part which was related to kind of the scrapes. um when we initially started talking about that, that was a major part of what I think um what our conversation that led to this work um discussed and and it seems like something that this isn't really addressing and I understand that might not be possible within the scope of this project, but it would be interesting to to know if you know what other avenues um we might look at to address that in the future. Um, just because I think that that at least for me would be helpful in my thinking about this as it moves forward.

[84:01] Um, related to engagement. Um, I think that there's understanding what goes on in a development process to go through like expanding your house. There's so many pieces and the cost, you know, just just understanding all of that. Um, there's a fair learning curve to it. And so I think engagement with people who are going through that process or have recently gone through the process might be helpful um in terms of kind of targeting what families or various other what homeowners we might reach out to because I think your typical homeowner might not necessarily be thinking about that process in enough detail to I don't know have a ton of feedback off the bat. Thanks. really good points. Thank you, Taiisha. First time we've heard from you

[85:01] and I'm looking forward to it. Well, thank you. Um I thank the uh team for the level of rigor. This is certainly a huge learning curve as far as the different things that we talk about on council. So, just really really appreciate the clarity and I also appreciate the pointed questions um from fellow council members before again and also the response from Kurt and the team um again really helped me uh to set me up for success in this conversation. I feel compelled to remind us because I'm feeling anytime says people say affordable housing, it's giving charity vibes. And so I'm just wanting to share uh a reminder around our founding of the town of Boulder in 1859 with a $1,000 a lot uh during a time that people were making $500 a year if they were paid at all. Hard stop. And so I just I just want to make when we're talking about

[86:01] affordable housing um and the affordable program, this is not charities. These are these programs are a debt owed for the economic loss aka theft of stolen land. This is about 300 million at the very least for the city of Boulder at my estimate based on the historic loss report as well as stolen labor. Um, as you know, I'm an I'm an a descendant of the original de investors of the city of Boulder uh by the purchase of the lands here. And so again, I just want to remind us, you know, and I appreciate again the staff for thinking about uh diverse ways to support that program, especially in light of the current um federal administration and the um the current um u loss, economic loss of some of the the programs that that have been so critical. So um so I just wanted to lift that up. As far as my com my my

[87:02] feedback to the proposals as given, um I appreciate knowing that this nexus study is a legally required or required document um that helps to create the foundation because it is very hard to know that we paid for a study that tells us stuff that we already know, right? It just hurts. It hurts. So, thank you Andrew and your team. I know that you did a very strong level of rigor, but as I read that, there was not a thing in there that that I have not already read uh based on the level of rigor of our staff and and the the previous board information that was provided to me when I was on boarding. Okay. Um so, thank you for that and I'm hopeful that we have enough foundation to to to move on to the next step. So, I I I am not interested in doing any deep further study on any of this. Um, I would like to limit that as much as possible. I agree with Lauren's comments, Tina's, um, Tara's specific to

[88:03] I would love the recession proof or the recession edition of all of this. This is not business as usual times. We are entering a recession. I just heard Joe Nakus share that uh, in a hearing in a federal hearing recently that he that he, you know, anticipates a a recession and we need to be acting accordingly. So, this is my question in charge. If we're going to do any research moving forward, that's the kind of research that I would be interested in. Um, but as far as um the thing that makes me feel especially comfortable about the direction that we're moving in is Mark Wallik's comments when he said that these fees are not going to be a problem for people who would afford these houses. That's all I need to know. And so, and I agree to the point of we do need to find a solution for our middle inome families, right? That is an absolute need, but there is um trying to pull blood from a stone and and there is

[89:01] we got big fat cats that are sitting around just not paying into our system at the at their cost. And I was real disappointed to see that that Taber work did not move further along at the state level. We need that money back. Um, and so unfortunately we do need to find all these different ways to compensate and I absolutely respect that. I appreciate the 550 foot square foot threshold. I would consider an exemption of ADUs because I do think that that is a meaningful way to have more density and more families. And to the point of of of this cost and and and you know even the people that can afford it, why are we doing this? It's not just the economic comp component of reducing miles, vehicle miles traveled, but it is also about we need more children and families and that's just the bottom line to keep this uh city alive otherwise we become Scottsdale and I didn't move here so I can come into a a community that of you

[90:02] know that that has no children. So um those are my thoughts. Uh did I answer the second one as far as engagement? I echo what has already been shared and then I also would love to make sure that we are rigorously engaging those families that are also already in our affordable housing programs because these are opportunities for them to move in um as their families are expanding. Many of them are in are homelocked because there's no place for them to move as their families expand. So then they move out into one of the L towns. So I would love to see be able to see that progression as well. Thank you so much. Yes. Hoquing on UT away. I want to say that when we do talk about affordable housing, it's not cheap. By the way, people spend a lot of money paying for affordable housing, both rent and ownership here. So, I just want to make that

[91:00] clear. And I want to make double clear that even though I carried on for probably way too long about additions, pardon me for getting in the weeds. I will say that particularly like scenario two, Mark exactly was right that we're talking about such expensive housing on such big lots that this is a key way for us to um get some more money into our um inclusionary housing fund. So, I'm very excited about that. Sorry for uh like what? Obsessing on that's the word I'll use for obsessing on um the uh additions, but anyway, moving on. Look 27. We did it. So, I want to thank first of all, I want to thank Andy and Sloan. And has a question, Tara? Oh, sorry. Oops. Who has a question? Who Kurt? Kurt. out. Um, thank

[92:00] you. Uh, Tara, if I could just make a couple, um, observations of imposing finance. Um, if that's okay. Um, I want to, uh, address four things. Um, first, very quickly, uh, Tina brought up duplexes. Um, so duplexes would be covered, um, under currently under inclusionary housing. Um so this um approach would not um have an impact on that unless the square footage um increase significantly um for one of the units um and um we can go into more detail of that um when we bring that back as well. And then um uh Ryan talked about um uh sort of a a goal of creating through this creating affordable housing that was more transit uh oriented um uh better use of land um

[93:01] tighter development that sort of thing. Um, typically this resource is coming from single family homes on small, medium or large lots and the revenue is going into creating the kind of I think affordable housing that you're you're uh aspiring to. So I I feel very good about um the direction of that. Um uh and then um maybe afterwards um uh Lauren, we could get a little bit more detail on on what you're thinking about with the scrapes. We don't need to take that time here. Um so we can understand those concerns better. And then lastly, um and really appreciate Tesa's comments. Um generally um when we talk about engagement for this type of project, we often think of engaging with the single family homeowners who will be

[94:00] paying this. Um, and I think the the nexus is engaging with the people who are actually who who are would be in this affordable housing and and service servicing our community and creating this and and really doing the service jobs uh within our community. So, it's a it's it's a little bit of a challenging um exercise. Um, and I appreciate the different areas in type in population uh identities that we can we can reach out to. We'll definitely do that. Um, but I think it really it it it impacts our our wider uh community uh much more than the 34 40 you know single family uh residents uh per year uh in the city of Boulder. And this has been a very rich conversation. We really appreciate it. I think it's going to really uh help us uh

[95:00] in bringing importance forward to you um uh later this year. Thank you, Kurt. And I want to thank council because besides already thanking Andy and Sloan and Kurt, I want to thank council because this was a really robust conversation. I tried to put in my comments some of the letters that I received. So they from community members on purpose um because I was really I could have gone either way in a lot of these things. But also each one of you really gave some great feedback. I'm not you know I wouldn't say that if I didn't feel it was true. So I really wouldn't. Um so thank you each one of you for your perspective and I learned a lot listening to you all. And so with that we can move on to our next subject. Are we good with that? Moving on to the next subject everyone. Great. All right. Take it away

[96:03] staff. Uh our next subject is um our CAN study, our core arterial network study. Um, and super excited to bring this update um, as we move forward. Uh, I didn't know if Alicia was going to pop in. Um, but if not, I will just move forward. Um, so excited to share this update on the Core Arteria Network Initiative. As you'll recall, it was one of council's priorities in 2022 and is in direct alignment with the city's vision zero goals and ongoing commitments. Importantly, I'll say it's one of our priority actions in our strategic plan, um, which was to prioritize transportation improvements that work to eliminate incidences of fatal and serious injury, uh, and traffic crashes to achieve our community's vision zero commitment. And while there's still work ahead, there's also been a lot accomplished. And I wanted to appreciate Valerie's leadership. And I know uh, this is not

[97:01] something that she would like me to highlight because she's so modest. um but want to appreciate her leadership and the whole team as they've continued to advance the ways and we make sure our city has comfortable and safe connections along and across our busiest streets. So with that I will pass it over to our interim transportation and mobility director Valerie Watson. Thank you so much for that, Nuria. And good evening, Mayor Pro Tim, members of council. Again, Valerie Watson, interim director of transportation and mobility. We have much to celebrate together and with our community in terms of the incredible progress that we've made since 2022 on so much of our street network. Travel safety for all is at the heart of the project status updates that you will hear tonight. And in concert with our vision zero action plan implementation progress, we are surely transforming our transportation network to honor our community's vision zero commitment that when mistakes do happen

[98:01] on our system, they don't result in death or serious life-changing injury. I'd like to recognize my colleagues in transportation and mobility for the unprecedented acceleration of our project development process. In response to council's bold vision, we have aligned our department structure and created new internal processes to accelerate our work while still performing inclusive, equity focused community engagement. We have strategically pursued external grants and realigned our limited local dollars for both design and construction funding to support this tangible progress. And we have kept to a rigorous schedule to keep the initiative on track. often navigating multiple intensive project processes simultaneously. Over the last year, staff have certainly raised the bar and I am honored to support their efforts every day. Tonight, we're interested to hear your feedback on this progress and

[99:01] confirm what you need to prepare for consideration later this summer of the two seeps currently underway for both the North 30th Street and Fulsum Street projects. We really appreciate all of our TAB and council members who have come out to our community engagement events to date for these two projects. And while we aren't looking for specific design feedback tonight from you, we are prepared to present highlevel information to prime you for the process and decisions to come. There have been a few questions in hotline about funding and we're prepared to speak to that tonight and respond to some of the others via email soon. I will quickly mention that we are optimistic that we will retain our current grant funding and continue to compete well for the external grants that fuel this progress and that we will be able to navigate any changes in the funding landscape that may occur. This department has been successful in winning grants through many federal and state administrations over the past 25

[100:01] years. We are built for resilience. And now it is my pleasure to turn it over to Melanie for the presentation. Thanks Valerie. And hello city council. I had asked for someone to advance my slides. Is that possible? Great. Thank you so much. Next slide please. So as Valerie said, my name is Melanie Sloan. I'm principal project manager in transportation and mobility and I'm joined by several colleagues who are advancing work on the core arterial network or CAN. And tonight I'm presenting an update on the T department's work plan for the CAN along with some updates on active CAN corridors including the three priority corridors. I'll share next steps and close with an update on the CAN funding strategy building on what you just heard from Valerie. In tonight's study session, we're here to provide background and new information on the CAN program with a focus on two CAN projects. And our questions ask you to focus on that can progress funding

[101:01] strategy and the community and environmental assessment process or seep because you will need to make two decisions on these project seeps this summer. The presentation highlights a lot of the content you've seen in the memo and we look forward to your clarifying questions about the can and seat process at the end of the presentation to prepare you for those future actions. Next slide please. So let's start with a look at the work plan. Next slide. This map remains our north star. The can corridors and study areas prioritized for our department by council in January 2022 and reaffirmed as a priority in 2024. Next slide. We've updated our work plan schedule. That's an attachment to your memo and it reflects our current activity. And of note is the accomplishment of the goal of initiating community engagement and conceptual design by 2025 for the three priority corridors, Baseline Road, Iris Avenue,

[102:01] and Folsam Street. And there's more good news to share. Next slide. So, let's take a quick look at some of that. Next slide. Since our last update to you in May of 2024, staff have advanced or completed multiple CAN projects detailed in your memo. are 15 active projects in various stages of design, engagement, and construction. Next slide. Highlighted in blue on this map are CAN projects recently completed or having begun construction. And these include things like safer street crossings, the second protected intersection in the city, nearterm safety improvements with paving on Colorado Avenue near CU's main campus, and rapid steps towards realizing the East Arapjo Avenue transportation plan vision. Next slide, please. Finally, the lighter blue on this map shows the realization of a network that safely and comfortably

[103:00] connects people to where they want to go, no matter how they travel. And this is possible through staff's effort and from your continued commitment to the CAN. Next slide, please. So, let's take a look at those CAN priority corridors and their progress. Next slide. The first priority corridor is Baseline Road from 30th Street to Foothills Parkway. Next slide. Baseline Road is being completed in two phases. This second phase builds on lessons learned during phase one and is making permanent the interim protected intersections installed with paving in 2023, including at Baseline, excuse me, Baseline Road and Mohawk Mohawk Avenue. It also will be completing transit speed and reliability improvements and adding a new protected intersection at Baseline Road and 30th Street shown here. Construction of phase 2 begins later this year and will take about 15 months to complete. Next slide,

[104:03] please. Iris Avenue from 28th Street to Broadway is the second priority corridor. Next slide. From summer 2023 to fall 2024, staff consulted plans, federal guidance, and community input to identify important safety improvements for Iris Avenue. The project used this community and environmental assessment process or SEEP to evaluate and identify a recommended conceptual design shown here at 19th Street. The SEP and this design were unanimously recommended by the transportation advisory board or TAB in August of 2024 and unanimously approved by city council at its September 19th, 2024 meeting. Final design of IRS began in January of this year and will be completed in 2026 and construction will begin once funding is secured. Next slide, please. The third priority corridor is Folsam Street from Pine Street to

[105:01] Colorado Avenue and the team began work on this project in December of 24. And that's notable again because it accomplishes that city council priority, our commitment to initiate community engagement and conceptual design by 2025 for these three corridors. I'm going to tell you more about the Fulsome Street project during the next section of this presentation. Next slide, please. It's at this point I'm going to talk about both the Folsam Street project and the North 30th Street project together and in more detail. And that's because they are using the seep to evaluate designs and identify recommended alternatives. And these seeps will eventually need your action this summer. That sounds straightforward, but the seep is inherently technical in nature. These project seeps will build on the learnings from that Iris Avenue project seep. And because of that, I anticipate some of the technical nature to be familiar to you. And some will seem new because staff have evolved and learned since our work on Iris. My discussing these projects and their seats together

[106:01] today is meant to share that learning with you and to help you prepare to take action on each seep this summer. Next slide, please. So, what is the SEP? Well, it's Boulder's formal review process that assesses the potential impacts of capital improvement projects to help select the best conceptual design alternative. The SEP uses project specific evaluation criteria, the SEEP checklist and community input to identify a recommended alternative. In June, you will be asked to take action on the North 30th Street project seep and recommended alternative. And in July and August, the TAB and council will be asked to do the same for the Folsam project seep and recommended alternative. So, let's talk a bit more about the two projects and their draft seats. Next slide, please. I'll start with the Folsam Street safety improvements project. Again, focusing on Fulsum Street from Pine Street to Colorado Avenue. Next

[107:00] slide. This section of Folsam is a um vital corridor to the city. Its unique challenges like varying roadway constraints and differing land uses leads us to consider the street in three segments shown here, north, central, and south. Each segment experiences diverse travel patterns and user needs. Next slide, please. For example, the north and central segments see the most vehicles and the south segment sees the most people walking and biking. But despite these variations, the street is multimodal. All segments serve thousands of people walking, biking, riding transit, and driving the corridor every day. Next slide. And yet, crash patterns place Folsam Street on the Vision Zero Action Plans high-risisk network and the Denver Regional Council of Government's high injury network. Those who drive experience the most crashes, but about 17% of all crashes involve people walking, biking, and rolling. And seven

[108:00] of these crashes result in serious injury. Alarmingly, 100% of serious injury crashes involve these vulnerable road users. of note. Also, 50% of all crashes happened in the central segment between Canyon Boulevard and Arapjo Avenue. Next slide. The Folsome team has been in the community since December of 24 talking to businesses, students, community partners, and others both in person and virtually to hear their priorities for the future of the street. What staff learned is that the community and businesses share a common goal, a safer, more vibrant, wholesome street. People want slower vehicle speeds and for everyone to have the space and time needed to travel more safely. Travel time and reliability, including for transit, is also a priority. And everyone saw potential for Folsam to become more intuitive, welcoming, and vibrant. Next slide. So staff developed three conceptual design alternatives that each

[109:02] balance the key community and business priorities of safety, travel time, and urban design, but they do so differently. For simplicity, I'm only showing the central segment from canyon to Arapjo. The three alternatives look a little different in the s south and north segments. And that can be seen those endto-end designs for each alternatives are in your memo for reference. So, alternative A prioritizes maintaining existing vehicle lanes between and at intersections, potentially minimizing space to improve intersection safety, requiring narrower sidewalk and sidewalk level protected bike lanes. and in some places combining these two in into these two types into segments of multi-use path. Alternative B prioritizes safety with protected intersections, improved midblock crossings, widening or adding sidewalks and on street protected bike lanes by repurposing vehicle lanes at and between intersections to create the needed space. Alternative C seeks a compromise

[110:02] between alternatives A and B by selectively repurposing vehicle lanes between intersections. That's a northbound lane north of Arapjo Avenue and a southbound lane north of Gos Street while widening or adding sidewalks and on street protected bike lanes. Next slide, please. Now I will switch to the North 30th Street preliminary design project focusing on 30th Street from Arapjo Avenue to the diagonal highway. Next slide, please. North 30th Street serves a diverse community of people living in market rate and affordable housing communities shown on this map, including several Boulder housing partner properties from Boulder Junction north to the Diagonal Highway. It also serves a significant amount of multimodal travel with thousands of people driving, walking, biking, and taking transit on a typical day. Next slide. But the street poses serious safety risks. Most drivers who exceed

[111:00] the posted speed limit of 35 miles per hour do so by about four to five miles an hour. And existing intersections designs contribute, resulting in 56% of all crashes happening at three intersections, Arapjo Avenue, Pearl Street, and Belmont Road. Tragically, 13% of all crashes involve people walking, biking, or rolling. and two out of three serious injury crashes involve these vulnerable road users. For these reasons, North 30th Street is also on the Vision Zero Action Plans High-Risk Network and the Denver Regional Council of Government's high injury network. Next slide, please. Engagement focused on people who don't typically parti participate in city processes by meeting people where they are at places like the bus stop, grocery store, school, and holding focus group discussions in neighborhoods and apartment buildings including Orchard Grove, Boulder Junction, and Bluebird Apartments. At all events where

[112:01] Spanish-sp speakaking community members may have been in attendance, Spanish language interpreters or bilingual staff were available. and staff heard a lot of ideas from the community and businesses for how North 30th Street could be better. Their priorities were consistent and clear. And people want improved safety. They want reduced vehicle speeds. They want safer connections and access across and along North 30th Street. Travel time again for transit was also important important as was preserving trees and other urban design elements. Next step, next slide, please. So staff developed three conceptual design alternatives to balance the key priorities of safety, travel time, and for implementation feasibility. Implementation feasibility is a priority because the city was awarded safe streets for all federal grant funds for final design and implementation on 30th Street from Pearl Street to the diagonal highway and at the 30th and Arapjo Avenue intersection.

[113:01] As with uh the Folsam Street project, I'm only showing the central segment, which on 30th Street is from Belmont Road to Mapleton Avenue. That's for simplicity. You can see the endto-end designs in your memo. Alternative A prioritizes travel time by maintaining vehicle lanes, but that minimizes space for safety improvements like protected intersections, wider sidewalks, and protected bike lanes. Alternatives B and C prioritize safety by repurposing lanes to make space for important safety per um improvements, but the this increases travel time. Also, alternatives A and C, they provide protected bike lanes at sidewalk level, which will require roadway reconstruction. Alternative B provides protected bike lanes within the existing roadway and so would not require roadway reconstruction. Next slide, please. So there are trade-offs balancing the community and business needs for safety and comfort with travel time and

[114:02] reliability. For Folsam, the importance of urban design is key to this main street's vitality. And for North 30th, implementation feasibility is key because of the awarded safe streets for all funds. Emergency response is key to both streets, but especially North 30th Street because both the city's police and fire departments have stations directly on or near the corridor. And the community prioritizes the environment. So each alternatives impact such as to flood planes and air quality are also key. And let's look at each of these to better understand their role in the draft seep evaluations. Next slide, please. People consistently prioritize reduced vehicle speeds on both corridors. And we know that doing so is a powerful way to reduce crashes and crash severity because vehicle speed increases the risk of serious injury and death. Reducing vehicle lanes helps to reduce vehicle speeds. Both projects

[115:00] include alternatives that repurpose lanes. Next slide, please. People also see the multimotal these multimmoal streets as needing to provide space for the many users of the street at intersections and between them and repurposing vehicle lanes can provide the space needed to ensure everyone can travel comfortably and safely. Again, both projects include alternatives that repurpose vehicle lanes to create this space. Next slide, please. Sorry. Um, I apologize. Uh, fewer vehicle lanes also reduces the number of conflict points for people driving, makes it easier to move on and off the corridor, and shortens the crossing distances for people walking, biking, and rolling. Removing right turn bypass lanes like the one shown on the right at North 30th Street and Canyon Boulevard reduces potential for conflict at intersections, too. The North 30th Street Project

[116:00] looked at the number of people using bypass lanes and used traffic traffic modeling to determine where removing them is appropriate. Several bypass lanes are no longer needed because of the changing land uses and shopping patterns on North 30th since the last time improvements were made to the street. Both projects include alternatives to reduce conflict points, but only the North 30th Street project includes designs that remove right turn bypass lanes. Next slide, please. In addition to providing space, people want to have time to make their travel safer. Providing dedicated signal phases at intersections and the time needed for people walking, biking, and rolling to cross the street, that adds time for everyone's travel, whether or not any other safety improvements are made on the street. The project teams consider any increase to travel time seriously because it's important to the community and businesses, but also because it impacts travel uh transit service. Both Folsam

[117:00] and North 30th Streets are important transit corridors to the city, each serving portions of the highfrequency hop route along with other local and regional routes like the Bolt, the Bound, and the Flex. The Folsome project alternatives are similar in their travel time changes, but on the North 30th Street project, there are significant differences in travel times between alternatives. Next slide, please. A key factor for Folsam Street is the ability to better organize and and support the essential vibrancy of the street through design. Providing space for organizing and beautifying this constrained corridor is only possible through strategic lane repurposing. Even a little bit of space in key areas improves a street's form and function. The Folsome project has two alternatives that seek to provide space for urban design. Next slide, please. Realizing the CAN initiative in

[118:01] the next four to five years depends on designs that are implementable using available funding. The North 30th Street project alternatives are evaluated for whether they can be implemented with the awarded Safe Streets for all funds by 2029, the due date for that grant. The Fulsome Street alternatives are evaluated for the relative time and cost to build. The simplest indicator for time and cost is whether or not an alternative relocates existing curbs. Each project includes alternatives that relocate curbs. Next slide, please. For both projects, the teams considered emergency response and the environment when developing designs. Emergency response is especially important for the North 30th Street project because both the city's police and fire departments have stations located directly on or near to the corridor. Staff have been collaboratively working internally with staff from City of Boulder Police Department, Boulder Fire Rescue, and the City and County Office of Disaster

[119:00] Management on develop development of design alternatives. Repurposing lanes could reduce the space available for emergency response. So each project's alternatives include lane widths, bike lane separations, and medians designed to ensure emergency response is supported to the maximum extent feasible. The community prioritizes the environment and so air quality, greenhouse gas, and other environmental impacts are evaluated through each project's seep checklist. And more detail on that is in your memo. Next slide, please. So what does it all mean? Well, for Folsome Street, the draft SEP evaluation shows the three alternatives balance the key priorities of safety, travel time, and urban design shown here. The full draft evaluation is in the memo. The project team will be collecting community input this month and will consider that when finalizing the SEP and identifying a recommended alternative next month. I want to be clear that the recommendation will balance all SE criteria with an eye

[120:01] towards these key priorities, but the recommended design may not achieve all desired benefits. Next slide, please. for North 30th Street. The draft se draft seat evaluation determined more work is needed because no alternative adequately balances the three key factors of safety, travel time, and implementation feasibility shown here. Again, the full draft SEP evaluation is in your memo. Input from the public and you will inform that further design work. As with the Folsam project, any action on the 30th Street project seep will be challenged to approve a pragmatic balance here between safety, travel time, and budget, recognizing that the optimal solution may not achieve all desired benefits. Next slide, please. And so these are the next steps for the Fulsome and Nord North 30th Street project seeps. The team shared

[121:00] the draft seep evaluations with the community this month and will consider the input received to finalize the seep evaluations and identify re recommended alternatives in May. Seep actions by you will take place in June for the north 30th project and in July and August for the fullsome projects. Next slide please. All right. So let's talk a bit about funding and how that relates back to our updated work plan. Next slide. The city was awarded $23 million in federal safe streets and roads for all funding in late 2023 to fund specific actions from our 2023 to 2027 vision zero action plan and to further the city's vision zero goals and objectives. $9 million of the safe streets funds are specifically to complete final design and implement the recommended design on North 30th Street from Pearl Street to the diagonal

[122:00] highway and at the 30th Street in Arapjo Avenue intersection. As of this presentation, as you heard earlier, the city has not received notice that any previously awarded external grant funds, including Safe Streets for All are impacted or delayed by changing legislation or policies. and staff are continuing forward with project development activities. The other grant opportunities for city projects shown here on the slide haven't been affected by potential federal funding changes either and staff will continue to monitor the grant landscape and adjust efforts accordingly. That's all really good news because these CR grants are a central focus to helping fund the planning, design, and implementmentation of CAN projects. Staff will also continue to look for ways to advance CAN goals through internal programmatic activities like the pavement management program and the vision zero action plan shown in light blue on this slide. Next slide please. These are the questions I teased

[123:01] at the start of the our discussion tonight and I share them here because your clarifying questions will help us to advance the next steps for the CAN. And with that I end my presentation and look forward to the discussion. Thank you. Thank you so much Melanie. That was great. Okay, can we put the uh the questions are already in the chat. Oh wow. Thanks Alicia. Okay, question number one. Do you have any questions on the progress of the CAN core core arterial network? And wait before I ask say that I just want to say what Valerie wants. This is the first thing I'm going to tell you. She does not need us to give our detailed thoughts on Folsam Street or 30th Street. You need not do that tonight. Okay. Just these qu You're laughing on me. just these qu questions

[124:02] are what they want to answer so they know how to go forward by detailed I mean like how many trees etc etc something like I would do which I'm not going to do tonight okay so first question do you have any questions on the progress of the core arterial network and its three priority corridors any questions let's see do we have any questions and if you don't that's okay you don't need to make them up if you don't have All right. Uh Tina, yeah. Uh thank you for the presentation and um Tara and Valerie, thank you for providing a a nice scope for this conversation which could go in a lot of directions. Um my question is a little similar to one of the hotlines. I think uh we've done some work on baseline and and initial work on parts of Folsam before you get to Pine Street. Um, and also this is following up on an article in the Colorado Sun, which was great

[125:01] about um elevating the work of Boulder on on safe streets. Are we already seeing progress um in terms of reducing crashes in the places where we've been active? A lot of our data is the last seven years, sometimes the last six years. So, it's kind of hard. It's not to just to get. So, just sort of in the last two years past pandemic, how are we doing? Right. Thank you so much for that question, Tina. I think um if I'm not freezing, um what I would highlight is that our Vision Zero program is really calibrated to monitor um the the crash landscape in the city um continuously as part of informing the the actions of the Vision Zero action plan. And so, you know, we we publish a safe streets report. That's really kind of where that work shows up. And um you know, I think we presented to council a while back on

[126:00] how even despite trends that are leading to higher crash rates, especially for severe crashes in in other jurisdictions, we're holding steady in Boulder and that's a testament to the programmatic and corridor level work that we've been doing over two decades. Um but a lot of it most recently and I think something I could highlight um would be that when we implement things like left turn phasing at signals um the the implementation we've done to date across the city has yielded a 68% reduction um in in those types of crashes which is pretty remarkable and and substantial. Um another would be um red light running crashes where we've put the red light running cameras. um we've seen a 73% reduction. So in our data citywide, we are seeing that the interventions we're doing are working. Um you know, I think when it comes to the projects that you were were mentioning, um you know, we haven't seen

[127:02] any fatalities on those streets, um Folsam or the stretch of baseline where we've implemented our phase one can improvements along with our pavement management program. Um, and that's, you know, our our north star and our most important metric is, um, making sure that when crashes do happen, they don't result in death. But our goal is also to make sure that they don't result in serious injury. Um, and so I think we typically look at a three-year plus um, data set to really be able to tell us about trends. Um, so it's a bit too soon for baseline phase one. And I'll just um reiterate what Melanie had mentioned in the presentation that we are coming later this year with the funding we were awarded through grants to implement phase two of baseline. Okay. And then just a quick clarification that we're completing the design of Iris but we're not funded yet to implement Iris. Is that just to make it abundantly clear? That is correct.

[128:02] And you know, with the project development that we've done to date and council's approval last year, um, at the end of last year, that poises us, um, that kind of shovel ready, that project readiness, um, and its benefit to the regional network, that really poises us to go after grant funds in in the next cycles that come up. Thank you. All right. Is that it, Tina? All right. Next, we have Taiisha. Although I've appreciated your comments about our federal dollars and everything, I'm going to go back to this. what is the recession edition of this? um how would it be repprioritized based on the uncertainty and and and again I go back to our representative Joe Nagus um you know he doesn't use those words lightly and so I think it's going to be really essential for us to to really have a plan of of of of you know tears

[129:03] of worst case scenario um on the front end before we're actually in it and having to make card com heart decisions. So that's still what I'm not seeing in this work is what is what is the priority and how um you know and the pri and what is the criteria even to determine the criter the crit uh the priority based on the current economic cultural uh realities that we're living in. So those are are my comments and I again I appreciate the front loading. I was in DC talking to our the transportation people were there and they didn't look all that all that assured. So I will just I will just say that they're they did not say that in words but I'm good at at reading the feelings. I'm a Canarian. So having said that thank you very much for the time and uh thank you for the hard hard work and again I I would hate for it to to be sacrificed because of this but we are

[130:00] not in good to great. We are in you know holding the holding it um during these transit trans transformational times as we're composting. Thank you. So, Taiisha, I'll I'll take um a couple of your questions and then also um maybe call on Garrett Slater to join me um in this answer, but um one thing I want to highlight about the work we do, these are multi-year um efforts. Um they span multiple administrations and um election cycles. Um and that's something that we are you know trained to um be very aware of in in the work that we do. Um what I would say is we have been successful you know over the last um two decades plus in in garnering funds at the federal and state level. Um, and I know that, um, you know, to speak to your question, Taiisha, that there's, you know, just a different landscape right now, um, and maybe lean times ahead, um, you know,

[131:01] that is where we lean on some of our existing programs that really leverage local dollars where we get creative with what we do have, um, to to maybe fill those gaps um, when the funding picture isn't as robust as we hope for it to be. Um, so as Melanie presented earlier, our pavement management program is where we can actually couple our um, safety improvements with our scheduled pavement uh, maintenance and things like that is where we we can get scrappy. Um, Garrett, I don't know if you maybe want to speak a little bit more to um, you know, our funding landscape and some of of Taiisha's other questions. Sure. Garrett Slater, capital projects manager for transportation and mobility. And um to add to what Valerie said, I would uh say that the um the in all the work that we do, we look for scalability and phasability. And so as we are uh moving forward with

[132:02] these corridor plans for Folsam, um 30th and Iris, just as we did on quarters prior like 30th and Colorado, we segmented these projects into bite-sized pieces. We always pursue grant opportunities uh at the at the at various scales. Um and so we've chased grants uh on on these some of these projects that were as little as a million dollars and some that were as large as $10 million uh to help bring them to fruition. And so while u the funding picture is uncertain uh on the federal level, we uh from from some of the folks we've been talking with um they expect that the grant opportunities will continue. maybe not at the level they have over the last few years, but they will continue. And so that gives us the opportunity to keep um chipping away at these corridors. And I think a really great example of the scrappiness that uh Valerie just highlighted is um not only are we leveraging our own programs like the payment management program, we're leveraging the programs of others. So

[133:01] Cedot is going to be repaving Arapjo from 28th to 63rd this summer and we have partnered with them on a project to repurpose uh one of the general purpose lanes to a bus lane. So we have taken a few of our dollars to incorporate a long-term vision for a rapole that was uh put in place uh over the course of a quarter study years ago. And so it's just an example of how we are taking our sort of pennies and turning it into a really great project that benefits the the region. I absolutely appreciate those comments and those examples and I have no doubt about the scrainess of this group. But we are in a poly crisis and I need us to stop acting like we're business as usual. In addition to the recession, we also have our climate crisis which is again billion dollar disasters that are escalating at a pace that is out outpacing any climate forecast. That means that the monies

[134:01] that we are talking about are not just going that way, but they're also going that way. And so what what I what I appreciate about your response is the bite-sizeness of the options. And what I am asking and offering is a recommendation on how we prioritize based on the levels of where we are so that when it's time when we're in the crunch we don't have to figure those out. we've already made some some you know had some hard conversations be you know um I I was listening to a psychiatrist or one of the brain people at the C uh CWA conference in journalism and AI and he was saying that oh I wish I could get the quote quickly but I can't so I'm just going to paraphrase him I'm sorry sir um but it was something to the effect of um um stressed out people do not make good decisions. That was essentially the thesis. And so I'm just imploring our

[135:01] council, our staff, and our community to make some of these prioritized considerations before um it becomes much more difficult. That is what I'm offering. And again, I hope that my main takeaway is we are in a poly crisis. This is not business as usual. this is not anything that has happened in my lifetime. And so I think that we need to that so therefore um we should be acting accordingly. And I'm really leaning on the expertise, the scrainess, the the relationships and everything that this incredible team has done to get us here to get us past this and moving towards something um that is regenerative and and can be multigenerational. So, thank you so much. And again, it is not a criticism on your expertise or or your experience. It is really a reality check for all of us. I need us to stop acting like we're on business as usual. Thank you.

[136:02] Okay. Thank you, Taiisha. Next, we have Lauren. Um, I just had a question about some of the the criteria checklists. Um, I appreciate a lot of the environmental aspects to that. Um I see like loss of mature trees but I don't see anything that's kind of about like urban heat island effect and kind of similarly there's um you know changes in water usage. But interestingly, that actually gets positive scores for paving more things and like having less trees planted, which conceptually I get, but I I guess I was just hoping you could maybe speak to a little bit more of where the criteria checklist comes from and if we have any um wiggle room in what kinds of criteria

[137:03] we track. Thanks. Right. So, as you saw with the Iris project and and what Melanie mentioned in her presentation earlier tonight, um you know, really building from that work, um these two projects that will come before you later this year, um they are using a um combination of established criteria um in the SEEP checklist that that all projects in the city that use the SEEP um integrate um as applicable to the project. a mix of that and project specific criteria that we develop for each project that's really based on the conditions of the corridor as well as what we're hearing from our elected officials, our appointed officials and the community and throughout our engagement um and really tracing that thread through um of all the engagement we're doing um into our seat uh criteria. Um, Stephen, I don't know if there's anything else you want to add on that um, in terms of

[138:01] Lauren's specific questions around environmental criteria. Yeah, I think you did a great job um, and answering and I'll just reiterate that the SE criteria is a specific list and really doing our best to apply that to the values of the project and what we've heard from the community and our engagement. So, I think, you know, happy to discuss some of that interplay you referenced. Um, but really, you know, listening to what the community has told us to prioritize in these projects and trying to score those alternatives accordingly. Thank you. Next, we have You're done, right, Lauren? Okay. Next, we have Nicole. And by the way, we're going to be done at nine. So, we have 45 minutes and many more questions. I'm gonna the first question. Okay. Well, I'm I'm just gonna I'm gonna blend the first and two, so hopefully that gives a good transition there, too. Um, so I I guess my my uh first of all, just

[139:02] want to say um I appreciate how quickly you all have u made progress on this work. It is really impressive. Um I don't think that a couple of years ago when we u made this a work plan priority, I ever would have expected we would be here. Um so so um few years later so uh it seemed like it was a much bigger bigger goal. Um so I guess my question it kind of relates to um what Taiisha was um asking about blending the the funding and just the process in general. um what's the process for checking back in on the design if funding isn't readily available when we are um kind of ready when when the design and you know everything is finished and we're ready to begin construction um because we are so scrappy and so creative and I am just blown away by this team's grant writing skills. We've been so successful in in that route. Um, if we do run into any longer than anticipated delays between design and construction, is there

[140:01] anything that this council or a future council would need to do to ensure that the designs coming out right now incorporate the new technology and the new circumstances? So, just as an example, um, Tara, this isn't about trees, but it's kind of about trees. It's just not a detail. Um, if we need more trees for cooling because temperatures are rising faster than expected in 5 years, is there anything that we need to put in place now in these discussions in 2025 for you all to incorporate that information into the kind of construction buildout phase when we get there? I really appreciate that because um you know I think you you and and other council members have asked questions that just relate to the uncertainty that we are feeling across the board um with funding for our city not just for transportation. So appreciate that and I'll start by answering and maybe ask Garrett to add anything else that that he'd like to highlight. Um, I'll start by saying that we, you know, with when

[141:00] we bring our projects to a level of conceptual design and we bring it to you for decision, that is um not the final design. That is not the most detailed level of design. Um, and so often we either leverage local dollars or um grant money to complete that final design at a future time. And that gives an opportunity to refine. Um, I think you you made a great um example of what happens if if trees just really come into the forefront um for the needs of a community in in that neighborhood. And um and so that final design phase is is a is an opportunity where we do refine and and look at things that aren't wholesale um changing the nature of the project. Um and Garrett, I don't know if you have anything else you'd like to add there. Yes, I uh uh as is my um I'm prone to do. I'm going to give an example. Um, so 28th Street, the project that uh is under construction from Pearl to Iris right now is a project that had a seep

[142:01] approved in 2008. And we are building the final segment now in the year 2025. And so what we thought 28th Street would look like in 2008 is mostly similar to what we're doing, but there have been some changes which are reflective of the different ideology and thought uh and and in and practice on how we deliver multimodal projects today. And so when we got to this final phase, we recognized, you know, the last time we did engagement was many years ago. we really need to go back and and talk with uh the community about how to deliver this project and make sure it's still consistent with our values and um our goals. And so we did that. And so because we have an approved seep doesn't mean that we can't go back and revisit with the community and say there uh you know it's been a number of years. So um should we make some changes here or or is this still the right thing to do? While delivering on the core tenants of what councils uh prior uh in prior years had approved, we're still um taking an

[143:01] opportunity to sort of calibrate as the times change. Great. Thank you. So, um what I'm hearing is that we don't really need to do anything. If there uh are changes needed later and there's a little bit of a gap, then um the council in the future would would get that back and have a chance to talk through it. and you all would bring your your your input into it as well. Thank you. That's it, Nicole. All right. Awesome. We are going to move on now to the next question. Now, I will say that we mostly talked about this next question. So, don't feel obligated to raise your hand because I want to spend a lot of time on the question after that. Do you have any more questions about the funding strategy for camp? I don't see any. Do I see any hands? I Tina better talk fast. No, I'm kidding. Tina, what do you want to tell us? Ask us. See. Okay. I would have combined it.

[144:02] It's getting back into trees, but in this case, I'm just wondering specifically about how to break out the maintenance costs for changes in designs. And, you know, we get feedback from the community about um I don't know why I turned off my video. Sorry about that. um about how we're not really maintaining our sidewalks and that we have different kinds of vegetation and landscaping and at the same time when I look at some of the alternatives just the ones that you showed us there's one side that doesn't have trees and one that does and I think people would be more likely to engage in the multimodal options if they were beautiful um rather than just straight concrete. So is there a way to add Hold on. Hold on. Are you asking us about question three on folsam and 30th because we're not up to that? Well, this is any of them. Just if we can understand the maintenance implications because I will always want something with more trees and with things that are well-maintained and have

[145:01] a lot of trash cans and, you know, things like that. And how can we add that to the scoring for the long-term financial impact? Um, so that we don't build something beautiful and then can't keep it up. Um, and and we're I feel like we're struggling with maintenance through the city. So, that would be my question. Yeah, thank you. Um, you know, life cycle cost, um, I think is something that we consider when we're offering you an array of, uh, design alternatives that balance the different considerations and needs in different ways. Um, so whether it's the provision of something or um, it's, you know, long-term um, cost um, you know, I think uh, protected bike lane element would be a great like the vertical element we use would be a great example of that. we we're thinking about um not just the cost to maintain it, but you know the do we have the width for our equipment to fit. So those are things that we're thinking about and they might not be reflected overtly in in the analysis

[146:01] that you've seen to date in our um public materials. Um I'm going to also defer to Garrett if you have anything to add there about um the consideration for maintenance and life cycle cost. Yes. So I I guess in addition to what uh Valerie said, um we find that um finding the right conditions for street trees to thrive can be a challenge. Um and on when when trees are planted along the outside of streets, they're typically the responsibility of the adjacent land owner to to maintain and take care of. And some um there can be some inconsistency about the way that's done. So, we want to make sure that we're planting a tree that the the adjacent land owner can uh uh we feel confident we'll be able to take care of. And then when it comes to medians, um part of the reason we see uh some of the median struggling around town is that we had a number of ash trees planted in our medians years ago. And of course, the

[147:00] MRL ash boore um uh took u a lot of those trees out of service. And so now we're trying to recover from that. So, I think we're working closely with landscape architects and our friends in u in parks and wreck to make sure that we're selecting a tree pallet that works in the uh tough conditions um that are existing in those medians because we also uh want the place uh there's a lot of studies that talk about how um people are more likely to walk and bike uh and and vegetated treelined locations. And um we want to encourage and invite people to have that same experience on these projects we're working on. Thank you. And then my other funding question is a lot of the projects seem to have a mix of city and grant funding and you know we during our long-term financial strategies conversation we looked at the long list of unmet infrastructure needs. Um can we in this process just understand even though it it it's it's usually sort of a deal we

[148:00] spend a million and we get you know eight or something like that. Um it would be helpful for me if we are hitting an area that is going to be very rocky financially to understand what what part is going to be the city versus the grant or what we would contemplate you know like because we're these are every single one of those is and I agree a little bit with Taiish is going to be a trade-off discussion and we have unmet community needs um and also to identify if the city money that we're using can be used for other things that are not infrastructure. So for instance, if we see an urgent need for community members who are particularly vulnerable right now or in crisis, do we do should we have that conversation in some cases or is most of this money coming from a bucket that's already dedicated and can't really be transferred over to sort of an operating uh bucket? I think that's kind of complicated, but

[149:01] yeah, I I I hear the question. um you know, we we currently have um you know, a dedicated sales tax that funds much of our transportation fund. And so for that inter transferability that you're describing, um I'm not the budget expert here and and would have to lean on our finance team to follow up on this. Um but I think, you know, we really are are using dedicated funds for uses like this. And then Garrett can speak more to how we budget for local match in our CIP um annually. That's something that um that we've had great success with. Um being able to be nimble and and use those local dollars. The the return on our investment has just, you know, really paid off over the years. Um anything else to highlight there? I I think I would just add um council usually is um seeing transportation when we're talking about the exciting things we do, the enhancements. We don't come

[150:00] to you to talk about um the sidewalks we build or the multi-use path bridges that we're replacing. And um I would say 70% of our CIP goes towards capital maintenance. Um and we're not talking to you about that. So I guess I would just like to provide uh reiterate that the reminder that um there there's a lot of core infrastructure maintenance that the team is super dedicated to delivering every day and I I really appreciate the everyday delivery and the unseen work because we do tend to see what what's more visible and that's the work that is clearly keeping this city going and I'm particularly interested in that. I think the better way to ask my question is when we need money that's not from the dedicated transportation sales tax, could we flag it so we know that we're making a trade-off decision for an alternative use that may come up that I could I I simply couldn't identify what that is. So, I'll I'll jump in for a minute and and a just appreciate the the

[151:01] sexy work that is filling potholes that we don't see all the time because it's important work, right? um and just appreciate the team for all they do for for that be behind the scenes um uh core level work that's done. But I I'll say this council member that increasingly um that is precisely what we have been doing in budget. We have been um making sure that um the dedicated budgetary uses in departments are actually used for those services to liberate general fund dollars, more discretionary spend dollars for um for uses that can be uh used in a variety of other purpose. Uh uh we have been doing this for the past few years um and making sure that uh dollars that are needed in our to use this example um in transportation uh are rightfully coming from the transportation fund, right? Dollars that are used for aviation

[152:00] improvements are rightfully in um the airport fund, right? because we know that we need to make sure that our more discretionary dollars are uh as liberated as can be because we have those emergencies. Um when we have those choices to make certainly we will be um conscious of those uh because we know that we are living in uncertain financial times at the moment. My current phrase is creatively constrained um because we will need to have that creativity and that flexibility. So we will be thinking about those tradeoffs and and highlighting them as we come along. But know that we are consciously being very thoughtful to make sure that every area in which we can rightfully use dedicated funds are going into that direction. Can we go on Tina or you got more? All right, good. We're moving on.

[153:00] And just a reminder, we have a whole another section left and we only have a half hour. Okay. Um, Taiisha, um, I'm not sure which questions were as answering at this point. That's right. You want to uh you we were actually we were on the uh what is it? The funding which I you did talk. Oh, I already talked about that. Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna go for the environmental assessment then. Do we talk about that one? Um, we are now going to talk about this. You ready? All right. And you'll be the first one to answer. And after that, I want to hear from Ryan, who's been quiet, and it's transportation, so that's odd. Okay. Do you have questions on the progress? No, I did that. No. Don't laugh. Please. Do you have any questions or requests for additional information to prepare for upcoming community and environmental assessment processes on the following for the Folsam Street

[154:00] safety improvement project and for the North 30th Street preliminary design project or you can obviously if you have just a question about SE you should just ask it. Awesome. I'm right on time then. Um, so I just wanted to say I remember hearing at the beginning of the presentation something to the effect of that was centering our community and business needs. And I just invite us to also center our habitat and wildlife needs. Not as something that's in a plan, a climate action plan, but as meaningfully, as a relative, as a kin. Community and business. Business and community are not two things. first are not interchangeable things. So I just want to honor that. Um and and the fact then that you know we need to elevate people and planet and center that and let business be of in service to those two things because right now

[155:01] some of our businesses are not in service to that and it makes our climate goals more challenging. Um and it goes back to again we're not only in a recession, we're also in a climate crisis. So we are in a policy crisis and I didn't even mention the cultural element which does not pertain to today's conversation. The only thing I would add that we have yet to discuss is our earthly gifts and trying to get as much renewable energy as possible in our uh transportation efforts. And so um I am interested in when we're doing these assessments not just uh and community and in environmental I'm also looking and curious and we actually need to know um the possibilities around energy generation. Um it is going to be absolutely critical. I don't know if you all saw but the US uh Department of Energy has um identified a site for data centers for our AI infrastructure here

[156:00] by um you know the former Rocky Flat site at Enrow. And so therefore um we know the direction um that our administration currently is moving in. Um and it is up to us um to to be proactive as possible um in that energy generation so that we are not um continuing our nimi tendencies. Thank you so much. All right. Next we have and should I repeat the question or you guys want to look at the question so you'll know what it is? No need chat box. Okay. Anyone else have anything to say? That can't be that nobody does. Okay. There we go. I'm gonna Ryan, I'm gonna pick Ryan next. Nicole, because he hasn't said a word. Is that okay? Nicole is first. She should Oh, come on. You haven't said anything at all. We all want to hear from you. I know, but let him bring it home. Why? He wants to bring it home. Let him bring it home. Well, um Valerant team

[157:01] aren't aren't making it easy uh to ask questions because they've um provided such a thorough presentation and a building building up to this. Um so I do have one question but u first let me just agree with uh I think Nicole you had appreciated how productive the team has been in the last 9 to 12 months to paraphrase but I I really agree with that and speaking of sexy work that was Nura's language um I know that you Valerie and the team are raising the bar with respect to how efficiently you're spending staff time and hence our money at some point I hope we can take that up in the financial strategies um work. Um and sorry, just one other little comment on um just as far as this this current moment which has come up in a few ways. Um, clearly making streets safe and accessible is at the heart of climate and equity. And I am really proud to see this the team upholding our city's

[158:02] values and our long-term strategic plans. And clearly the the range of possible futures with respect to funding and economic conditions is wide and uncertain to say the least. But I I know um through just various conversations with the team that you all are thinking about this and you are thinking about being ready as different possible futures unfold. And I appreciate that right now your focus is on creating the future that we want. So my question is um Valerie, you and the team have implemented a number of community engagement events over the last several months. um some or maybe all of them you've invited city council and TAB members to join and I'm just curious if you found anything that's worked particularly well um with council and boards attending the events that you'd like to see more of as we go

[159:01] forward. Yeah, thank you for asking that. Um we have you as you've seen in my many emails to you inviting you to our um plethora of community engagement events um we've been putting you to work and um you know offering you all um ideas on um what can you do when you are in those settings with us um and how can we work in partnership and I think that has been working very well um all of you that have um you know come and you know sacrificed time with your families in the evening to be there with us. Um it really uh helps I think to partner in those environments when we are engaging in um very uh you know intense conversations sometimes with community members who have a lot of questions and they have um you know just a a really strong desire and curiosity about not just the work that we're doing and how it might um manifest in their neighborhood but why are we doing that

[160:00] work and I think um it's been really productive and I think special and precious to have you all there to speak to some of um the policy intent um of the work that we're doing and I think we would like to continue to partner with you all. Um I'd like to call on Melanie Sloan. Um she and and other members of our team have been so instrumental in just the the um choreography of all the events we do. And we don't just do open houses, we do lots of engagement events around the city. I I think in the pictures you saw tonight, we're at the bus stop talking to people um when they're waiting to catch the bus, things like that. Um and Melanie, I don't know if you have any other um you know, feedback um for our council tonight in um in this question of of what else can we do to continue our partnership? Yeah, thank you Valerie and thank you Ryan for the question. I think it's been really fantastic when TAB and council members participate in our marquee events like our in-person open houses. One for Folsam Street just happened this

[161:01] week and uh it was really great to see partners including from this council at at the events and I I can echo what Valerie said. It really helps the community make the connection between your work and what we do and their experience and future in the city. Um, I do want to hold up both uh the Folsam Street Project and the North 30th Street Projects are both active right now. And when I say active, it is exactly what Valerie has said, very active in engagement outside of those big marquee events where we haven't necessarily tailored invitations to Tabin Council. And so I just, you know, I think to the point of your question, when we are out there having focus group conversations with say businesses in the central segment of Folsam Street or we are riding the hop bus with transit riders to make sure we understand what their experience and desire for the street is or we're sitting down over dinner with members of the Bluebird apartment or Boulder Junction um Boulder Housing

[162:01] Partners communities that we're really listening deeply and trying to learn as much as we can about what would be most impactful for their transportation. And so while Tab and Council aren't there with us, I think what's been really great is for you to know that work is happening and to have confidence that we are out there and listening deeply and broadly to try to make sure that what we bring forward represents as much of our community as possible. And I think that's that confidence in the engagement is that other piece that Tavan Council's participation in our work is really important for. Okay, now we have Nicole and then I'm going to speak and it could be that that's it. So, we'll be ending early. Nothing because I have I want to make a little speech about how much I love the transportation department, but it'll be very short. So, Nicole, awesome. I will not do that part then, Tara. Okay. Thank you for your work. Um, and

[163:00] just to answer the last question explicitly, no. Um I for me the SE checklist was um pretty straightforward when we did it with Iris and and what you brought there was really all I felt like I needed as a policy maker um given the the checklist that we have to adhere to. So um anyway so that just no to state it explicitly there's nothing else that I need um if it's similar to Iris. Thank you. That's it. Oh wow. Awesome. Okay. So I go and what I'm gonna say is first of all who doesn't love Valerie? You are the best. whenever I have a worry about transportation, you're always there for me. So, first of all, thank you for that. Also, thank you to the entire transportation department. I think everybody said how, especially Ryan, how thank you for that, Ryan. how uh confident we can be that you have our backs here in every way, that you're listening to the community, that you're doing the next best thing for this planet, for transportation. And so this

[164:04] section, this is just a delight to listen to and to celebrate what you've accomplished in just the few years that I've been on council with KN, all that you've done, how especially like, well, we brought K up and said this is our priority. nine of us said yes. So that was a 100% all of us and the way you really took it on and made such a big difference with the stats that you gave us earlier etc. So I can't even thank you enough plus also you're awesome. Okay and then the last thing I want to say is I'll just say one word about um Falsam and 30th. I do really care about trees and I really want trees to be there. So when I was saying don't be in the weeds about trees, I was kind of just kidding. Um, and thanks Garrett for telling us how hard it is to have healthy trees on these carters. Um, of course for me my dream would be to make 30th Street in Falsome just such beautiful streets with uh mature trees

[165:02] so that we could have shade. And um it's exciting to know that we that you have confidence that we'll get the funding that we need to make for instance just 30th Street which has so many people living on it now between affordable housing and Bluebird and regular uh apartments. I would love that street to be absolutely beautiful and a haven and uh likewise for Falsam Street which is such an important street. So, thank you for all you do and um I just want to hug you all all of you and everybody on council too because I'm in a good mood tonight. I see Lauren smiling. Okay. Um so that ends my thanks and it looks like we have nothing left. Is it true? It could be true. 41 and before I say that this meeting is 41, you including you, Nuria, you all have an one more

[166:01] very short one minute opportunity to say anything else that you want as long as I can cut you off at the one minute mark. I believe we're good. Okay. All right. Well, it's been a pleasure and have a great night and we are ging this meeting closed at 8:41. Yes. Nice job, Tara. Thank you for Thank you, everyone.