August 28, 2025 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[5:03] the Boulder City Council. I am council member Shuhard and I thank you for joining us. We have only two items on tonight's agenda. First, we will hear information on the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan preliminary analysis and trade-offs. And our second item is the healthy buildings stronger community roadmap discussion. Before we get into our work items, I would like to outline how the meeting will be conducted. We will review the SAS presentation and then we'll have time for questions. At the end of the presentation, we will conduct our council discussion with staff. If you have questions, please wait for staff to complete their presentation. We will now turn to we were going to turn to Nuria. Uh but I think we might have a substitute. Who's our substitute? >> Yep. >> Is that Chris? >> Ryan. >> Okay, we will turn to Chris Mchuk uh to introduce our first item. Thank you, Chris. >> Thanks, Ryan. Good evening, council members. Uh I'm stepping in for Nura

[6:02] here uh and we're excited for the two study session topics that we have for you tonight. Uh the first item here on the comprehensive plan uh as the team will outline is uh they're starting to move into uh the analysis section and some of the ideas that are coming forward. So uh with that I'll turn it to Brad Mueller, our director of planning and development services to kick it off. >> Thanks so much Chris and good evening council members. Uh I am Brad Mueller, director of planning and development services. I'm lucky to support that group and I will say that while um council gets to think about many big things on a regular basis, it is ex uh especially exciting to be able to step back and look at the city comprehensively. And that of course is what the comprehensive plan does is look at all facets. And it's also exciting to be able to take a break and step back and look at 20 years into the future and and think about the big uh items for uh

[7:02] a vision for the future in conjunction with uh colleagues at the county and of course all of the community members as way as well. We are about halfway through an 18-month process. Um, so we are seeing uh great progress. Uh, we'll report to you the thousands of different points of input that we've gotten so far. And while we uh are halfway through, we still do have plenty of time uh for input from uh community members, from stakeholders, from visitors, and from yourselves uh as well as the other deciding bodies, the planning board and the planning commission and county commissioners at the county. Um, this represents kind of a funneling down. So, we're kind of midway in that funneling and you're going to hear uh about some of those ideas that that we'd love to hear your feedback on. I will say too that we very much appreciate the vision

[8:01] that you helped uh articulate when this process kicked off a year or so ago and really challenged us to think bold. So, with that, we're going to um give you one of several bold ideas and uh look forward to continuing through this process. With that, uh we've got a whole team here. Uh they'll introduce themselves as we go along, but uh right now you're going to hear first from Christopher Johnson, our senior manager of comprehensive planning. >> Great. Thank you, Brad. Uh and um good evening, council board or sorry, council members. Uh Christopher Johnson. I'm as Brad mentioned, I'm the comprehensive planning manager. Um this evening, go ahead and flip to the next slide, Tess, if you would. Um this evening, we are going to give you all a brief presentation about 20 minutes or so. We've uh allocated about 20 minutes for some clarifying questions and then uh really hope to engage in discussion for

[9:00] close to an hour. Um the evening's agenda item will actually focus more on the conceptual future land use framework. um uh as opposed to what was described in the in the title of the agenda. We had a little bit of a snafu with our new uh our new one meeting system. So, we're still working through the kinks, but we're going to get better at that as we move forward. And then I also just wanted to mention that Kathleen King unfortunately came down with um with an illness over the last 24 hours or so. So, um she will not be giving her portion of the presentation, but Sarah Horn uh will be will be jumping in for her. Uh next slide. So since our last meeting with you in May, uh the team has really been busy at work responding to your feedback and moving forward with the project. Uh we have updated and documented our shared vision statement which is uh in your memo. Uh we've continued to engage with the community in a variety of different ways on the areas of of focus that were identified earlier in the project uh and

[10:00] have a number of things actually upcoming in the next couple of weeks. And then we are continuing to explore several ideas that were raised during that May meeting. Uh most notably and as we will discuss this evening are potential revisions to the land use map. Next slide. And it's as Brad mentioned, we are about halfway through. It's actually been almost a full year since we kicked off the project last October, which is amazing for all of us. It's uh it's gone very quickly. And so far we have received about 5,000 individual community responses through all those different engagement opportunities. Uh they have included of course in-person workshops, online questionnaires, our interactive theater uh events and many more. So we will continue to engage with the community over the next nine months or so as we move towards the adoption process next summer. uh and hoping that we are making progress towards our goal of this being the most inclusive comprehensive plan update to date. Next slide.

[11:00] So just as a quick reminder, we are in the third step of this process. We're calling this a bolder direction and and really this is the heart of the project where we are considering and evaluating uh the various policy choices and ultimately we'll make decisions on what that recommended direction is. This step will last through the end of year and quite honestly will likely sneak over into early 2026 uh before we move into that documentation and adoption of the plan uh later in the spring and summer of next year. Next slide. So the goal for the evening is really a bit of a work session. We we are bringing you in pretty early into this process. Um and really hope that you feel like you have an opportunity to co-create with us a bit. We will be exploring this conceptual land use framework but also recognize that it can inform potential policy decisions down the road and vice versa there really are inter interconnected especially when those policies affect the way that we use the land within the city or the

[12:01] surrounding areas of the county. Uh I do also want to just confirm with all the members of council and anybody that's listening this evening that this uh what you will be presented with tonight is all very very much work in progress. So, there are no final decisions that have been made. We're not asking for any final approval tonight. And I can say with with I think uh 99.9% confidence that some of the names or the diff of the different designations or the language that we use to describe them will continue to evolve over the next few months. Um but we are very confident in the overall concept and we're excited to share it with you this evening. Next slide. Uh I also wanted to just reinforce and provide a comparison between land use descriptions and zoning because they are very uh easily and often confused. So future land use really is aspirational and describes the vision for an area over a 20-year time horizon within the comprehensive plan. It it may or may not be the same as what

[13:01] is on the ground today uh as it is forward-looking and it informs our future zoning and development decisions. Whereas on the other hand, zoning is a legal property right and establishes specific dimensional and use related standards that must be followed. It really definitively regulates the allowed uses, the building form and the intensity of development on an individual property. Next slide. So as a final thought, I also wanted to share this diagram again to draw attention to what we see as really the three levels of planning that we use here in Boulder. The comprehensive plan uh you know flies at that highest level and really should provide broad guidance on the vision and the values of the community. Our sub community and area plans take that one step further and can provide additional detail on the appropriate character of uses, the building scale, and other factors for a particular geography or location within

[14:00] the city. And then finally, zoning and our Boulder revised code really regulate what uses and dimensional requirements then are applied to a specific property. Um what I can say is that the land use map in the comprehensive plan currently has tended to combine really the first two levels and even in some cases has bordered on the third level in terms of its level of detail. So we hope that the framework that we're going to present tonight will help reestablish a more appropriate level of detail for the comprehensive plan and the uh really this interaction and relationship between these three tools. And with that I'm going to pass it to Tess Sha for the next section. Hello members of city council. My name is Tess Sha and today I will be giving you a background of land use in the Boulder Valley, presenting some challenges we face, goals we have, and case study research that has helped inform our new approach.

[15:00] We want to start with a reminder about what the intention of the comprehensive planned land use map is. It is meant to describe a desired future for the community. It guides future resoning decisions. It also guides initial zoning for any land annexed into the city and it is used as a reference for any development projects that go through the site review process. These projects must be consistent with the land use map and with the policies in the comprehensive plan. As part of our work to rethink the current version of the land use map, we looked back at previous iterations, beginning with this map from 1970. This map describes the vision of what Boulder would look like in 1990, and offers a set of 11 designations, many fewer than our land use map today. Another note about this map is that in the 1970s, separating uses across a city was common

[16:02] nationally, particularly for things like separating business and residential uses. Despite this, we do see a mix of high and medium density residential within business uses in the downtown area and along major corridors in this plan. Now, here is the current land use map. Firstly, you can see that the reach of the comprehensive planning area has extended significantly as the city and county continue to work together to manage open spaces and neighborhoods surrounding the city in unincorporated Boulder County. You'll also notice a lot more colors on the map. Over time, the list of simple designations has evolved and we now manage 26 different designations. This map is also much more detailed. There are instances of multiple land uses within a single block. For example, there are eight at Alpine Balsam. And in other places in

[17:01] the city, there are even multiple designations within a single parcel. The land use map looks more and more like a zoning map. And that makes it really complicated. As we work with community members, policy policy makers, and other city staff, particularly our colleagues who work on development review cases, we've identified a number of challenges with the current approach to the land use map and its designations. The map has lost its purpose as describing a vision for the future, leading to confusion about whether the map represents existing conditions or desired future conditions. The fine grained application of different designations within a place creates confusion about the future of the neighborhood and limits desirable outcomes. The land use definitions which are within chapter 10 of the comprehensive plan uh overlap and they are structurally

[18:02] inconsistent with each other. The definitions are also pretty dated. For instance, the density limits on residential land use categories have not been updated since 1977. So, we've identified some goals for the approach to the land use map as we work through potential revisions. First, we want to reset expectations that the map describes the future of the Boulder Valley. Community members, including council, has described a desire to build greater resiliency in the designations that would allow for a range of desirable outcomes as conditions change over time in response to environmental, economic, societal, and other factors. We are striving to create an approach that delivers equitable opportunities for property owners and outcomes for community members. We are also

[19:00] re-examining how the plan can integrate important climate strategies and strengthen relationships between land use and mobility planning. To help inform this work, we've looked at a number of case studies from across the country. I'm going to share a few to help inform your conversation tonight. The first is Ann Arbor, Michigan. This is a pure city we often look to for comparison. And this is a draft of Ann Arbor's land use map as they are currently undergoing a comprehensive plan update. You'll notice they've really stripped back the designations to only seven categories. This approach recognizes that today communities are finding that mixing multiple uses within neighborhoods helps create and maintain community vibrancy and the need for separating individual uses is no longer desired within a community. Along with describing the intent of each district type on the map, the draft

[20:01] definitions for these designations includes descriptions of primary and secondary uses and building types and offers helpful illustrations on how some of the supported building types in that designation are to look. Springfield, Missouri shows a great example of applying a place type approach where each designation can accommodate varying levels of different uses. This is an example we're looking at to better tie our land use expectations to the city's use table. There are a couple more case studies noted in your memo, but the last one we're going to look at together is from Plano, Texas. This plan creates useful classes for its future land use categories such as neighborhoods and networks to help better define the future intended structure of the city. As you can see, these classes mapped across the city of Plano create a clear,

[21:02] easy to understand future direction for the city. And now I will pass it to my colleague Sarah Horn to talk to you all about our new proposed options for land use categories. Sarah, I think you're muted. >> Yes, of course. Okay, here I am. Hi guys. Um, thanks Tess. That was great. Um, hi council members. I'm Sarah Horn, senior city planner, and our team is really excited to work with you tonight to think through this proposed approach for designating and mapping land uses in the Boulder Valley. Just a reminder, this is all draft material and we want to work with you this evening to confirm this concept is headed in the right direction. I'm going to go over the details of this new option and discuss some test cases and then we'll have time for clarifying questions um before council discusses the two key questions in front of you tonight. So, first, why are we doing this? Well,

[22:00] I'll quickly share a story from my colleague Kathleen King, who KJ mentioned is um under the weather tonight. um if she wasn't, she'd be here to share it herself. But when she started with the city, there was a saying on the comp planning team, none of this happened by accident. Don't screw it up. That's burnt into her brain and has since transferred to the rest of our team. We broached the idea of changing how we planned land use across the city very carefully and with great intention. But after almost 50 years of planning land use with mostly single-use designations and managing the land use plan on a really fine- grain scale, as Tess touched on, there are a few significant considerations that inform this path to rethink our land use system. The first is that the changing climate calls for a land use plan that can adapt and offer a path to resilience. The second thing that we're really building into the land use strategy is a recognition that the population is changing. Community members over the age of 60 will continue to outnumber people under 18 for the next 20 years. Additionally, we know

[23:02] that land use and policy choices of the past have impacted who could live and thrive in Boulder. So, working to make land use choices that offer a more equitable future is an important component of our approach. And finally, local industries and the traditional workplace, as we've all seen, have changed dramatically in the last five years. Our current land use structure doesn't support the live work lifestyle that will continue to be common across the community. So a lot of change has already happened and we felt the challenges of working within the confines of our current land use structure to respond to that change. What we're looking at tonight is a concept that could help us meet the future with resilience. Okay, here we go. From the case studies that Tess reviewed and shared with you earlier and informed by the input we've collected from the community so far, we've put together a framework we think will offer a good approach to planning Boulders's land use moving forward. First, we're scaling back the parcel by parcel approach to defining land use and creating designations that can apply at

[24:01] a neighborhood scale. Second, we're working towards unique definitions that attempt to remove a lot of the ambiguity between the current designations and allow for a different mix of uses. These designations would also offer a more adaptable environment for zoning choices if conditions change and give a wire wider variety of redevelopment options for property owners and the link between land use and zoning would be more effective. We're considering a more aspirational description in the land use designations to avoid unnecessary confusion and conflicts with the zoning code. So here's the draft structure. the designations um the for land use designations it has four classes. The first is neighborhoods, the second is hubs, then networks and institutions. And within each of these classes there are unique designations that can be applied at a neighborhood scale to help guide redevelopment within the city moving forward. So now I'll walk you through each. First we're going to look at neighborhoods.

[25:03] Neighborhood 1 is a designation that offers a couple of different housing types such as single family units, ADUs, multiplex units, and cottage courts. And it includes some small-cale commercial opportunities. This is the neighborhood designation that would also apply to our manufactured housing communities. Land with a neighborhood 2 designation that you see in the middle of the slide is probably still a primarily residential neighborhood, but would allow for more multi-unit housing and more shared spaces. Neighborhood three on the right side would likely apply mostly to established rural neighborhoods in unincorporated Boulder County. You'll notice the names of these designations are agnostic of adjectives that describe density or housing type, which is intentional. Within these neighborhood designations, there are some policy implications, and it would be helpful for us to hear a council's thoughts on these during your discussion later. In both neighborhood 1 and two, there are allowances for a wider variety of housing types in more neighborhoods than is currently allowed

[26:01] by our land use designations and map. They also describe allowing for small-cale commercial opportunities. The draft definitions offer paths to help address housing challenges, create more walkable neighborhoods, and address our community's interest in a more inclusive economy. I'll now move to the second class, hubs. The current comp plan includes a diagram describing different kinds of centers which you see in the map on the slide. The hub concept advances that idea and actually creates land use designations that would solidify how these places can evolve moving forward. There are three hub types. Local hubs are smaller in scale and are intended to provide local neighborhood uses. The Ly's Market area is an example of the scale and offerings of what a local hub could look like. A community hub is a larger in scale and might include a broader mix of commercial and some residential uses. It would have a larger reach than the local hubs related to who might want to access these spots

[27:00] regularly. And finally on the right side of the screen, a regional hub. Um this would really be a regional destination drawing from communities beyond Boulder. So today those might be places like downtown, the university, and the 29th Street Mall area. There's also a hub type we're considering that comes out of conversations about the evolution of East Boulder. This is an innovation and production hub. These are meant to be neighborhoods with a mix of light industrial office and residential uses and be those live work neighborhoods that we talked about wanting to see happen during the East Boulder sub community plan process. And then our next class is networks. What are networks you ask? Well, we start with parks and greenways. This designation is somewhat self-explanatory, but would apply to our park system and greenways network to identify places for active and passive recreation. The open space designation would collapse previous open space designations into a single category identifying land for open space purposes

[28:00] which are defined in the city charter. And finally, the rural lands network is made up of a lot of land in unincorporated Boulder County that's outside the open space network, but is important to maintain as land for agriculture and other uses like public utilities. Okay, we're at the final class, which is institutions. Civic institutions define areas for government or cultural facilities and healthcare campuses. A new university designation would identify land that will be used for university university purposes into the future. This would include student and faculty housing along with the academic campus and research facilities. We found that a number of university towns have created a designation specifically for state university land and we think this makes sense for Boulder as well. The final category which you see on the right side of the screen is industrial. This would be applied to land that the community wants to preserve for light industrial manufacturing and service uses into the future. Okay, that's all the

[29:00] designations. There are 13 total, which is half of the current 26. So, just take a moment to think about that. And now, while you're thinking about that, we'll move on to testing. As our team worked through this concept, we did a couple tests of areas around the city to see if applying these classes and designations actually works. I'm going to share these with you now and we'd love to hear your reactions or feedback during the conversation later. The first test is East Boulder. Many of you have ridden alongside our team as we worked on this area of town for the past six years. Um, but for those unfamiliar, this is a recently planned sub community. As you can see on this slide, it's located east of Foothills and north of Arapjo. through the east sub east Boulder sub community planning process. We worked really hard with the community to define how this area should evolve into the future. So, we thought it'd be a good te um it'd be good to test um our new concept framework here to make sure that under the new designations, we would still be able to deliver the vision and

[30:01] realize um all of that work and time that the community put into thinking about the future of the area. So under the draft structure, the land around 55th and Arapjo, previously a mixeduse TOD designation, would be redefined as a community hub. The orangey red you see in the middle of the diagram on the screen, allowing for that important mix of residential and commercial that supports transit oriented development. The brown areas on the diagram, areas previously designated mixeduse industrial are now designate would be designated as innovation and production hubs, recognizing light industrial uses and allowing for residential. Other areas of the sub community where community members wanted to preserve space for industrial uses. The areas you see in gray are designated industrial and the hospital and future eastern city campus have a civic destination, the blue on the diagram. This test illustrates that the new framework does offer a vision for the future that can still be consistent with the sub community plan.

[31:01] The next test example is more about creating designations that meet community expectations for certain areas of town. This diagram shows the intersection of Quint and Broadway where Ly's Market's located. Right now, um, this area is designated low density residential, meaning that if this activity center were to redevelop, the developer would have to jump through some hoops to replace it with something similar to this important neighborhood asset. Under the proposed land use framework, this area would be redefined as a local hub, offering a better match for community expectations in the future. And then our final test case is an example of a recent ongoing development project. What you see on this slide is the land use map for the Alpine Balsam area at Broadway and Balsam. There are currently 10 land use designations in this area. For those of you who have followed along in this process, and for those who haven't, aligning the land use map and zoning created a lot of hurdles

[32:00] that had to be overcome to deliver this project. Under the proposed structure, this area would qualify as a community hub, the reddish orange on the slide, surrounded by neighborhood two in orange and neighborhood one in yellow, offering a more efficient, faster, and direct path through the site review process. And there you have it, our proposal for revisions to the city's future land use designations. And um before I go into next steps, I just want to give a huge shout out to the comp planning team and all of our department colleagues and subject matter experts who've been working really hard over the last few months to develop this. Um we're really um excited about it and really excited to get your reactions to it. And before we do that, I'll quickly share what our next steps are. We'll be hosting a hands-on workshop on September 9th at Casey Middle School where community members will have the opportunity to explore different options using these proposed land use concepts. The statistically valid survey will be

[33:00] distributed on September 15th and we'll launch an online open participation companion survey on September 22nd. We have a board's road show scheduled for the month of September. We'll be going to eight boards to share information on the comp plan process and get their feedback on some of these initial concepts. In November, we'll show we'll share with you the results of the surveys, board feedback, and engagement outcomes in an IP memo. And then we'll be back in front of you on December 11th for a joint meeting with planning board to share staff recommendations on major land use policy changes to consider for the update. And now I'll read tonight's questions for discussion. Does city council support the preliminary concept for revisions to the comprehensive plan future land use designations? and what community feedback do you need to inform future decisions about substantial changes to policy and future land use? And with that, I'll turn it, I think, over to you, Council Member Shushard. >> Thank you, Sarah and team. Um, wonderful

[34:02] presentations. Um, so looking at my my uh moderator clock, we have until about 6:41 for the rest of this. I heard a proposal to leave 20 minutes for questions. Maybe we could shoot for maybe 10 to 15 given where we are now. So, why don't we start with questions from council members and then we can go to comments and for the comments um address both of these uh together if that works for folks. Okay. And then if I can just look at my right screen here. I think I set Tara first and then I'm gonna have to figure out my navigation here. But Ter, is that right? Tara, are you first? >> Sure, I can be first. >> Please go ahead. >> Okay. So my question is about the hubs. So you said that the local hub was Ly's and then I saw community hubs. Can you give you gave an example of Alpine Balsam as the community hub? Can you explain why that's a community hub? Is it just the shopping center is bigger or

[35:05] >> I don't know >> what makes something a community hub versus a local hub? Yeah, thanks for thanks for the question, Tara. Um, I'll pop in here for just a for a second and Tess, when you have a minute, you can um take the PowerPoint down and we drop the questions into the chat. Thank you. Um, so first of all, I would say this is first pass, right? And so, you know, our initial um thinking around Alpine Balsom really as a um pretty high level of activity compared, you know, compared to Ly's Market, the scale of Ly's Market is is quite a bit smaller than um than the commercial area at Alpine Balsam. Also thinking about the future um civic facilities that will be there, the density of housing that surrounds that area, that was that was what led us to believe that um you know, the application of a community hub might be most appropriate. We did have some conversation with planning board on Tuesday and and this similar question

[36:00] came up um and you know one of the things that they provided us some advice or um for us to consider was really the scale of the um of the commercial experience or that what would be offered there. So something like Table Mesa that has a much larger grocery facility might be more appropriate as a commercial commercial hub and Alpine Boston would be something at that local scale. Community hub or a commercial hub? >> Uh, community hub. Sorry. >> Okay, that makes sense. That's my only question. >> Thank you, Tara. I think we have Nicole, Matt, and then Mark. >> Thank you. Um, thanks for the presentation. Um, I just had a few questions. One is um, thinking about the hubs and specifically the um, local hubs. Is that something that we would envision having in every neighborhood or is it just sort of in the places that exist now? What's the what's sort of the vision for that? Like are we looking at taco trucks on every corner kind of thing? Is it what what's the what are we

[37:00] looking for there? >> Thank you, Council Member Spear. Um I think both existing and then also potentially future places identified by community um through our community work on September 9th and ongoing. um will potentially identify new local hubs that they would like to see. >> Okay. And what I mean because within you know some neighborhoods, right, there's not really a whole lot of services within say a mile or so. And so is that is it something where in the future a neighborhood could look could have a local hub even if it's not identified, you know, in the next um in the next few weeks. >> Yes. And I think it's, you know, getting at this 15-minute neighborhood concept as we'll hear from our community assembly um and ongoing, but yes, it could be identified at some point in the future um and go through a land use map change. >> Okay. Um and then another it's it seems like this will um decrease the time for permitting and the obstacles that people

[38:02] need to kind of walk through. Is that correct? And so it should take some time and potentially money off of the cost of developing. Is that a fair statement? >> I think I think it's a fair statement that it would potentially um remove some of the additional steps of of a process. I you know, I can't speak necessarily to the cost of it, but just in terms of time savings, the you know, one of the goals is to create these more broad designations that can can allow for a multiple different outcomes to occur within them. um as as we kind of reflected and and certainly there are many other examples I think we could point to where the the specificity and the granularity of the map today really limits um you know what what can happen on a specific property and so you're you're basically stuck with you know one land use and one uh one zone district associated with that and and there's a process to change that of course um but it but it does involve time uh time and

[39:00] effort and so what we're hoping to do through this is to allow for a number of different things to happen under a single land use category. So that at least that land use review is something that would already be captured within the policies and the map of the comp plan and then go through that um you know any resonings that may be necessary as part of a site review process. >> Well, thank you. Um and then last question uh what what are the the unique roles of the statistically valid survey and the um I forget the the term the online companion survey? how will how will they be used? >> Yeah, great great question. Um, so a couple different things. Uh, you know, we've up to date we have not had a statistically valid survey for this comprehensive plan process. So that is something we do want to introduce to um receive some more scientifically valid input um through that process. At least that's our hope. Um we also want to make sure that we expand the opportunities for um people that may not live in the

[40:02] city of Boulder to also participate in this process. So that's also why we've created this online companion version which will essentially be the same questions but it would be available to uh visitors or commuters, people that work here but may not live here to receive the invitation for the statistically valid survey. So you know we we fully recognize that they are two different two different uh methodologies and and certainly the results we receive from both um one will be more quantitative and scientific the other will be more qualitative uh and anecdotal and so we will you know make sure to recognize that and use them appropriately and of course share all that information with you as well. >> Yep. Okay cool. Thank you. >> Okay Matt then Mark and Lauren. >> Thanks Ryan. Uh I just real quick I want to follow up on one of Nicole's questions because uh one thing I'm curious about is do you you sort of mentioned well the question was really about um you know will this reduce obviously planning you know some of the plan discretionary planning and

[41:00] permitting time perhaps um and I'm specifically curious about like um land use changes because I I'm kind of see that's something we see a fair amount kind of given we're at the sort of exhausted state of this comp plan and so I'm wondering do you envision there being just less of those because of the nature of the flexibility um in general. So I'm just wondering if that specific piece is that going to kind of be really largely alleviate eliminated um going forward. >> Yes, I think overall that that is a goal of ours through this process is to make make the the future land use map um you know reflective of that 20-year vision and and hopefully that um you know can withstand that um our our five and 10 year major update um you know sequence. Um we we of course recognize that conditions change and and things happen and so we may need to revisit that and and update the land uses as we go forward and through a separate process. But the goal is to um you know for the land use map to really live for that five and 10 year time horizon. Um the

[42:02] other thing I'll just quickly mention is is that you know today in order to change the land use map you either have to enter through uh you know through a reasonzoning and a site review process or you have to wait for one of the midterm or major updates and you kind of have to be in the no uh you know in order to submit your request. It goes gets evaluated by staff and goes into the comp plan process. You know, we really um we really would hope to amend some of the procedures related to land use map changes as well going forward so that they are um they're more open at least or at least there's more of an opportunity to potentially review and change those um without without so much um being on the table, you know, the high stakes of a five and 10 year update of submitting those. So, that's another thing that we're we're looking at and considering. >> Perfect. Um and Ryan, you want comments later? Is that correct? Yeah, just questions now, please. >> Yeah. So, my other question is and and I'm gonna pardon because you're facilitating um follow up on on Ryan's

[43:01] inquiry in hotline, you know, following HB 241313 on the transit oriented communities now that that's kind of state law. And I'm wondering why was their decision to not have a sort of transit focused district that really kind of goes along our art arterials and how to sort of paint that picture in consistency with state law. So, I'm just sort of curious why we didn't do that and then but more importantly, how do we then capture that intent um in our comprehensive planning knowing that that state law sort of remains sort of uh uh uh prominent? Yeah, it's a it's a great question and one of the you know one of the unique uh elements of the hub concept is that it can also apply to corridors and so I think there is an opportunity for us as we move through the process and actually begin to paint the map so to speak um we can consider and again this may involve some naming changes and other things so that's clear but understand you know the nodes that

[44:01] are important from a local and community um you know and regional perspective as far as activity centers but also how those extend along some of our transit corridors as well. >> Appreciate it. That's all for me. >> Okay, Mark. Then Lauren and Aaron, >> I only have uh two quick questions. Um, first refresh my recollection because I I may have been losing my mind on this. Did did the the staff memo uh make reference to valuing urban count canopy for neighborhoods or or is that a have I lost the thread of the document? >> I don't know if we specifically mention that, but certainly that is something we do value and and certainly would incorporate into the description of each of these designations so that you know it's it's reflective that that's an expectation that we have going forward. >> Okay. Okay. Then my corlary question is uh why are we not doing the same thing with respect to neighborhoods capacity

[45:02] for wildfire resilience? I think that's going to be as as much of an issue as anything else going forward. >> Well, one thing I can I can say that we are working on currently is doing some additional more detailed land use analysis of of um of our current designations, but also starting to tinker around with these designations. And one of the policy uh really policy threshold choices or or something that we're testing out is um you know if we were to limit or restrict uh future development within some of those wooi areas what does that mean in terms of our capacity where does where um where are the lower risk areas of the city where we could relocate those types of uses that kinds of things. So we'll have more information to to share on that as far as the outcomes of that testing here in the next couple of months. >> Thank you. Yeah, and I'll just add that I do think um Council Member Wallik in the um neighborhood types there was a bit of description about the urban tree

[46:00] canopy and um also just with wildfire um there's a lot of policies and regulations that like cover that and so not all of it will end up on the land use map. There'll be considerations but there'll be other spots where some of that lives. I'm I'm gratified to know that I I have not lost my mind and that there was some reference in the document to um Urban Canopy. Uh my only other question is can you describe in in sort of layman's terms um how is neighborhood one different from today's single family zones? I I'm I'm just not getting a clear picture of that. >> Tess, do you want to take that one? >> Sure. Thank you, Council Member Wallik. So neighborhood one would expand from the kind of very low and low density designations to being to allowing a lot more flexibility within how many units would be allowed. So all the plexes would potentially be allowed. That's a

[47:00] policy aspect we're exploring. Um planning board also proposed not limiting it by units but by kind of building bulk um to be consistent with a neighborhood one which is you know classically single family but allow we're working to allow a little bit more of that missing middle housing into that neighborhood one designation. >> Okay. I I did not get that um in the description and it would be very useful to be a little clearer so that I know what we are doing with neighborhood one um because it becomes as you describe it it's a bit more problematic to me and I'd like to fully understand what it is we're contemplating. >> Thanks Mark. Do you have any more questions? >> Nope. I'm just a request for information. >> Okay. Uh Lauren and Aaron, >> thank you. Um and thank you for bringing this update. I'm really excited about

[48:01] it. Um my questions I think are mostly I appreciate the streamlining and kind of how far can we go? So um you talked a little bit about this being around use instead of intensity. And because of that, I guess I'm wondering why are we doing things like separating residential into into neighborhood one and neighborhood too because those seem predominantly about intensity to me and not about use. >> Yeah, thanks council member. Um I think we are you know we recognize that there are different characteristics even within a similar use um pattern. So if we think about residential, you know, we we can look at areas that have a characteristic of something that is smaller, relatively smaller in scale. Um uh you know, up to maybe four units per

[49:01] per building, something like that. Maybe some small uh commercial activity that happens on a corner or something like that. But then reflecting upon the character of that area versus something that tends to be a um you know a town home complex or four and five story residential buildings with mixed use on the ground floor that that begins to feel a bit different in terms of um just the overall characteristics the the feeling that you would have as a community member going through that space etc. So part of the part of the effort, you know, is to um is to define or at least designate where uh where some higher intensity areas would be appropriate, especially near those local and community hubs. We want to make sure that we are allowing for and giving the the vision and the guidance for those to be a bit more active and a bit more intense to support those kinds of areas. So that's that's partly why we've included those two different um neighborhood designations.

[50:00] Okay, I appreciate that. I I want to point out a quick thing just because you touched on it being like four unit kind of houses and I will say that one of the sample images you have in there is of um the building next to me which is the same as my building which is an 8unit thing. So, and I noticed that in the last comprehensive plan update that at least in the initial stages, the images actually didn't match the character of what was described. Um, in small scale. Okay. I'm also curious about um kind of these local hub um community hub. We have three different options of that. And you talk in neighborhood one about some level of commercial being allowed, but then we also have separated out a local

[51:01] hub. And to me, I've always kind of thought of that local hub as being a lot of cities do this, like Portland, where you have like a connector and a connector street, and that corner allows like a bodega, which is a much smaller intervention than like a Ly's Market, which is a whole block. Um, and so do you I guess to me it feels like there's do do you anticipate kind of identifying those connector connector areas um that might be smaller scale than what it looks like local hub is currently talking about or how do you see that fitting in? >> Yeah, that's another great question. We I will admit we are still wrestling with that a little bit. Again, kind of um attempting to be as um broad brush as we can, but also recognizing that there can

[52:00] be some value in identifying particular locations for certain types of things. And so there is some prescriptiveness there associated with that. um you know the way that we've at least envisioned sort of the commercial activity in a neighborhood one or two versus a local hub is is really I think more of what you have described in terms of um a particular intersection or corner where there might be a you know a cafe on one corner and a nail salon on the on the next one and and you know it's really kind of smallcale commercial interventions um also looking at homebased businesses and other kinds of commercial activities within, you know, within those um broadly residential areas. The local hub is is intended to be something that's maybe just a notch above that um where you do begin to think about more of about a block scale of something of of that kind of level of activity. So, we haven't taken the step

[53:00] yet to identify any of those um kind of embedded commercial locations within neighborhood one and two, but that's something we we you know intend to look at a little bit in the next steps. >> Okay. Thank you. That's it for my questions. >> Thanks, Lauren. Erin. >> All right. Well, thanks everybody uh for the presentation, all this work. This is very exciting. I'll come back to that in my comments. Um but just a couple of questions and the first one is so we have the innovation and production hub and how would you compare and contrast that to the industrial uh institution because they both seem to have some industrial aspect to them as as I've understood it so far. So can you explain the the difference there please? >> Thank you Mayor Brackett. So um the in innovation and production hub would allow some level of residential to be part of that and that was coming from that mixeduse industrial category that

[54:01] we had come out of the East Boulder plan versus the industrial institution uh designation would just allow industrial type uses um with no residential. >> That makes total sense. Thank you for that. And then on the industrial institution, one thing I'm I'm just noticing here is that like the civic institution, what that is is is pretty clear. Uh you know, government building or a school, something like that. Um and obviously the university is pretty clear. The industrial institution, it seems like that's just being that that is being used for industrial uses in general rather than kind of an institution as I think about it. And so am I misunderstanding that or how is that sort of falling into the institution category? >> I'll I'll start Mayor Brackett and then KJ if you want. Um I think that we got a similar comment from planning board and I think that we're still working on those designations and if you have thoughts on that like what you just said

[55:02] we'll take that into consideration and we might consider tweaking some of that language. >> Okay thanks for that. And then my last thing is an implementation question because we're just opening things up for land use change requests and I believe that's going to be under the current regime of land use our approach to land use and then at some point we're as we follow through on this we're going to uh propose a switch to this new approach. So on the one hand, how are you going to take the change requests and meld it with this shift to a different structure and then part two of that is as you implement the different structure, some people may squawk at what you have assigned to their parcels. And so how are you going to deal with that kind of transition and problems people might have or complexities there? >> Uh the million-dollar question. Thank you. Thank you for that. Uh so a couple of a couple of things. We the um

[56:01] community change request for land use changes or policy changes is open currently. It's open until I believe October 3rd if I have that date correct. Um and you're you're correct. We um because we don't have you know clear guidance yet as to whether or not we are going to move forward with this um new framework. we wanted to make sure that it was based in in the current existing land use designation framework that that exists within the comprehensive plan. So we will evaluate each of those applications based on that current regime. Um, and if you recall that process, uh, we will come to city council and the planning board with a list of all of the applications that were submitted and a recommendation from staff as to which of those applications should be carried forward for more evaluation. So, as an example, we might receive 50 applications, but we may only actually carry forward and evaluate five

[57:00] of those at that time. Once we have that determination and if we get clear direction from you and planning board that this new framework is something to continue and is something to develop and and include then the the uh applications that we receive that are carried forward for that future evaluation or additional evaluation. we would reach out to those uh applicants and work with them to better determine you know really what their vision is and we would propose what the new scheme would be and work with them to make sure that they are comfortable with that before we bring that forward. Um on your other question of kind of the broader question of changing the land use map citywide essentially and applying new designations to properties. Um we fully expect that there will be people that will want to review that and provide provide comments as part of that. And so we are anticipating a full month of the review of the draft map and the draft plan in March. Uh and then of course

[58:00] there is the public hearing process as part of the adoption process. So we we anticipate we will have about a two to threemonth period between the release of that initial review draft uh and then ultimately moving forward into the adoption process to hopefully resolve um you know any of those any of those comments. >> Got it. And and just followup question on that like what are you imagining for publication because essentially every parcel owner in the city is going to have an updated land use designation and a lot of people may not be paying careful attention. >> Yes. So there is a requirement in the code today that we provide mailed notification to property owners if there is a land use change proposed for their property. So we will be working with our with our teams to determine um essentially a mailing citywide to identify and and notify everybody that there is a potential change to the designation that applies to their property. >> That's great. Well, I hope the phone lines will be fully staffed after that comes out because I imagine you'll hear

[59:00] from a few people. Thanks so much. That's all I got. >> Thanks, Aaron. Um, okay. We're we're a little over where we should be. I saw Taiisha's hand was up. I don't see it now. I see Tara's hand is up. She spoke. Um, I will have a couple things. Taisha, did you have anything? No. Okay. Tara, did you have something else? >> You know what? I do, but you can just forget it. It's not I'll It's not an emergency. It's fine. co on. >> Okay. Okay. Thank you. Um I had just I'll call myself I have a I think two questions. First question, um I talked to a couple members of the planning board who described a very rich discussion uh a couple days ago on this and I'm um I don't know that I've seen any kind of a debrief from that and I you know maybe there's just it's been not enough time but is there anything um the team can say about just kind of big picture thoughts on agree where planning board had agreement with the direction

[60:01] or any you know consternation or I don't know any other highlights from that that are worth us knowing? Yeah, thank you for the question, council member. Um, and and we apologize that there, you know, there wasn't enough time for us to turn around a meeting record or debrief of that, but I'm I'm happy to talk through it a bit and and certainly Sarah and Tess and Brad chime in if I miss anything. Um, I would say, you know, broadly speaking, there was a general support for the idea. Certainly this the approach to simplifying the the you know the land use framework and and reducing the number of designations there was a lot of agreement around that and and I think um uh support for for that approach. uh you know there was some I wouldn't say disagreement but differences of opinion between um some members that were really enthusiastic about um moving away from the prescriptiveness of the of the way our land use map works today and the designations we have and some other

[61:01] members that were a bit um you know nervous or wanted us to consider the potential impacts of of um using broader categories that it may open the door to you know different outcomes that may not be in alignment with um uh with community expectations in in some locations. And I would say in particular uh that concern was raised around recent uh area plans and subcommunity plans. So thinking specifically about Alpine Balsam and East Boulder and how the time and effort that was invested into those processes from the community that we don't lose that um you know lose that information and lose that definition that um that was defined and and created through those processes. So, I'd say broadly speaking, you know, there was um support to continue down the road of this, but also some considerations for us to think about. Um and then a few comments on some of the specific terminology and and things like that.

[62:00] You know, similar question around industrial institution that Mayor Brockett brought up that was confusing to some and things like that. Um Brad or Sarah or Tess, anything you would add to that? >> Thank you, Tisha. I have one more question. I see your hands up. Do you want to call on this or shall I go? Okay. Thanks. Um my only other thought is on the your question is on the um just thinking about the changing geography of our parking lots potentially and um with new uh state and respectively local um liberation of what we can do with parking. Do has that played in much to how the the new categories will work? Um I guess largely with respect to thinking about what are currently commercial areas that would perspectively now be new candidates for housing. How can you talk about that?

[63:00] >> Yeah, I'm happy to think about that. You know, philosophically, we I would say we haven't um we haven't incorporated the um you know, sort of the the repurposing of parking areas. um as much into our thinking related to the to the designations. You know, we were very careful in the descriptions that we developed for each of the designations not to include um you know, any expectations or recommendations around parking, you know, so there's there's no there's no language in the in the descriptions that would reference the amount of parking that would be necessary for those areas, that kind of thing. Um, you know, again, I think the land use as part of the comprehensive plan really is to establish that broad vision of the future character of an area. The specific redevelopment opportunities really present themselves, not only through the policy direction that we'll include in the comprehensive plan about, you know, expectations we have and the things that the city values and supports. Um but also really as you

[64:02] get into that sight specific uh you know those sight specific discussions where you can weigh the context of a a parcel by parcel analysis and and have the conversation around how much parking is is needed or is necessary but also what opportunities there are to repurpose some of those areas for other uses. >> And I I'd just like to add on to that that we've moved away from any designations that are strictly a commercial. you know, all of our hubs allow a mixed use. So, basically throughout the city, there's that like hub allows that increase of residential, >> right? >> Okay. Thanks, Tess. Yeah, that actually answered it quite well. Okay. Um, clock is still moving. I see a new hand up. Lauren, is it a colloqui on this one? Because we got Taiisha next for her for questions, but did you have a colloqui on this one? Okay, Taiisha. >> A awesome. Thank you. Um just a question around um the going back to the maps and

[65:02] the ability to kind of um do sub mapaps. Is there will there be opportunities at in the future in in in the future stage of this process where we can do kind of like sub mapaps because I do see the possibility of you know culture versus arts venues right um just from accountability perspective. So, I was just curious if there are if when we get to the policy and accountability components of this if there will be opportunities to revisit some of these larger designations. >> Well, yeah, I would say thank you for the question. I would say that um currently the the the designations as they exist today are are very much up for discussion and if there are you know if there's interest in having staff consider additional designations or refining the the definitions and the descriptions to be more explicit about arts or other venues and things like that to be added to. This would be a

[66:00] great time to to present that information to us. Um, and also I'd say broadly speaking, we still we still very much intend to continue with uh area plans and sub community plans as as future implementation projects after the comprehensive plan. So there there certainly will continue to be opportunities to look at uh smaller areas of the city, more sight specific areas to um envision what what those should be into the future. That would get to a little bit uh tighter level of detail than what would be included in the overall citywide land use map. >> Okay, thank you. I'll reserve the rest of my time for comments. >> Okay, very brief briefly to Tara with a a very brief uh response, please. Very briefly, I am, and I don't know if this is the time to talk about it, just curious going back to what Mark was saying about the um neighborhood one. Are you saying that when this happens that forplexes are going to be allowed in all parts of the neighborhood or they

[67:03] can be allowed or are you changing single family zoning? Can you just explain more what you're doing with that? Yeah, thank you for the question, Council Member Winer. Um, so the answer is no. The the comprehensive plan does not change the zoning. So it would just establish a vision for uh potential future changes to the code that would allow duplex, triplex, quadplex, you know, cottage courts, things like that in uh in areas of the city. And it would be through those future processes where it would be determined if that applies neighborhoodwide, citywide, or only at specific locations, etc. So, the um the comprehensive plan just establishes the policy to allow those types of things to occur, but then future work would would determine exactly when and where they should be located. >> Is that good, Tara? Okay. Thank you. So, I think that takes

[68:01] us to the um opportunity to provide comments. And can we can somebody show the um the two questions we have or put them in the chat? We have two questions for council. >> They are in the chat. >> Oh, they're in the chat. Okay. So, I'll I'll state them uh just so everybody knows. So, first one is does city council support the preliminary concept um for revisions to the comprehensive plan future land use designations? Second question is, what community feedback does city council need to inform future decisions about substantial changes to policy and future land use? We have um scheduled until 7:31 for this module. So that's just under 30 minutes. If people go to two two and a half minutes or less, that would probably get it keep us on track. And uh who would like to raise their hand first? Uh I think I think it's on. Okay, Mark, then Matt. >> Uh, yeah, I um

[69:02] I think the preliminary concept for me requires a little more explanation. I want to understand better what the uh rules of engagement are going to be with respect to commercial uh activities within the residential neighborhoods. Is it going to be as of right anywhere? Is it going to be on specific corners? Is it going to be in in certain areas? Okay. I I think uh people need to have a a better expectation of what's going to be coming in their area. Some areas are are good for bodeas and some are not. And um I don't have a strong sense of how that shakes out here. Um and with respect to to question two, uh community feedback, the more the better. I mean, if if if you need to to do another um statistically valid poll somewhere down the line, I would urge you to do it. Um more data is better on something this consequential.

[70:01] >> Thanks, Mark. Uh Matt, and then Lauren and Aaron, >> appreciate that, Ryan. Um yeah, uh I mean, I like I like where this is going, so I'm going to answer number one. I say this is this is quite a change. Um I will just to give my daughter a shout out recognize that uh going to the 13 designations is Taylor Swift's favorite number. So that's really good for the city. Um but but you know more broadly speaking you know I just like where this is going. The flexibility is awesome. Um and you know in terms of community feedback I think the next logical one kind of has to do with if we're going into this flexible state where we're going from a cumbersome and largely maybe contradictory land use map. I think that logically means that we need to think about massive structural or complete rewrites of Title 9 and the actual building codes that feed into the very zoning and land use we have. It would be weird to have very consistent and flexible land use but then cumbersome, clunky and perhaps um also you know uh contradictory zoning and therefore code that goes with it in

[71:01] title 9. So I I could think of no better opportunity than to think about rewriting large sections of it or entirely than following the comp plan process and then really have a clean slate for the next 20 years. So I think those things may have some logical connection to them uh given where we're headed. But I like where this is headed. This is exactly the kind of thing I thought we would get to when we embarked on this process. So big credit to South. >> Thank you. Is it Sorry. Is it Lauren? Are you next? Is that right? Lauren then Aaron? >> I think so. Thanks. Um, yeah, I'll echo a lot of what Matt said. I'm really excited about this. I, um, think that this sort of gets us more in line with what typical planning policies would be around a larger scale, you know, with the maps getting more specific as um, and more fine grain as we move through use and then zoning. Well, neighborhood plans, all of that. Um, I do have a couple of things as I read

[72:03] through this. I still see a lot of language that I think um might limit future flexibility at words like mostly predominantly um things like that that I have seen cause us problems in the past. And so I would really encourage this to focus on use specifically. Is the use housing with yards or I mean I think that maybe there's different ways that we think about I think planning board got into that a little bit. you know, without talking as much about density, how do we provide a little bit of predictability and a little more specifics beyond just housing, um, but without but while preserving flexibility. Um, I think in neighborhood one, I see a

[73:00] little bit of a continuing struggle to define the commercial. Um, it talks about certain kinds of commercial activities being encouraged, but then says that the locations are going to be very limited. And I think that that um sends kind of a mixed signal and would be great to clarify. Maybe that's um either describing those locations around where commercial might be allowed and removing the local hub category or mapping the local hub category and having that actually talk about a smaller scale finer grained um commercial use like the bodega or the coffee shop. Um and then in the single family or sorry in the farm in the rural lands category um I think that it is important to talk about housing. It doesn't really talk about housing in it and I think that

[74:00] that is a predominant use in a lot of our rural lands. So calling out single family ADU and farmworker housing specifically would be something that I would encourage. Thank you. Okay, I think it's Aaron, then Taiisha, and Ter. >> Yeah. Well, just again a huge thank you. I'm really excited about this. Um Brad, I know we talked about the possibility of doing something like this maybe a year ago, and so it's great to see this coming to fruition. I think it's a really positive step forward um in simplification and just uh modernizing our our approach to things. So, very much in favor of it. Um, I want to echo Lauren's comments about residential one and the you uh watching out for words like mostly or predominantly that that have tied us up in knots in some other circumstances. And I thought Lauren's comment about the residential and the rural areas was a good one too like use for farmworker housing for example. Um, and then I I'll just come back to that industrial

[75:01] institution label. The label doesn't quite make sense to me as a category. So, I think the what you're trying to accomplish there is good. I'm just not sure that the the categorization is maybe the final place. But, um, other than that, I'm I think we're on a very positive track. It'll be very good for us for the longer term future. Um, there are going to be a lot of detail implementation issues, but I'm have confidence in your ability to resolve those. That's what I got. Thank you. >> Okay. Uh, Taiisha, then Tara, then Nicole. >> Awesome. Thank you. I echo my colleagues um comments regarding the um updated land use designations um the simplicity um and and yeah, I'm a big fan. Um except for as I mentioned the need to disagregate. So when it comes to accountability and just again making sure that we're moving in the

[76:00] right direction there. Um but um I did just Is this the time where we're supposed to talk about priority areas or no? >> Yeah. Well, the two Yeah, there's the two questions. So, feel free to address. >> I know, but those questions kind of hammer in. So, okay, good. So, um I really enjoy I mean, I appreciated all the priority areas that were identified. The only things that I found were missing. One, it was great to have a little bit of conversation around the climate action plan. Um, a lot of that was around um, decarbonization and um, again the scientific community and everyone else has been pretty clear on biodiversity and I didn't see anything around that. So I'd love to see something around that. Also didn't see anything around water after we just got our water supply reports and I would imagine we're more on the severe side. um not having a more emphasis or understanding around that water component and and how we get on the offense around that um would be really helpful in all these neighborhoods

[77:00] because they don't generate their own water in that 15 minutes. Um and then for the uh agriculture, it was wonderful seeing that component in there. Again, I can't unsee food as a utility, so I wasn't clear on um just that that lift for that. Um, and in addition, I didn't see anything around waste and waste management. So, um, again, houses are great, but they produce waste. Um, also in our report, um, and in our community, we're still struggling with compost and composting. Um, and that was supposed to happen almost 30 years ago. So, um, just really would love to see a little bit more around the waste component. I know it's not as sexy as some of the other components, but would love to see it nonetheless. And then um the equity framework and analysis component. Um wonderful to see that component there. Um would love to see a little bit more around the financial and decision-making aspects of the of equity and not just access and um minimum representation but

[78:02] meaningful participation throughout. I also appreciated the tracking and the tracking of data and I just noticed there wasn't any of that any comment of that or uh any components around that for the other section. So again, Chris, I know that um that might be coming further down down the pike. So I look forward to that. Um and just in general, the financial and fiscal conversations, I would love to have a little bit more of a alignment between what we're envisioning here and what's being discussed at the long-term financial strategy group um around just the fis fiscal components of it. Um, and as far as community partners, I would love to see moving forward, um, continuing to engage our nonprofit, our robust nonprofit community, our business communities. Um, I feel like we got a lot of of community, um, at different intersection, and that's fantastic. Um, but I would love to see kind of the level of robustness that we had when we were trying to make decisions about the restaurant, sorry, around minimum wage. I just thought that that level of of engagement by participant group was

[79:00] really powerful. So I would love to see something some of the successes from that um implemented again. But in general just really excited about the direction. Um oh and then natural disasters not sure how that comes in but disaster response something around we need to get really good at that needs to be in here somewhere. Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you Tisha Terra. And Nicole, >> I find the I my new favorite word on city council is flexibility. And so I find this very flexible and very visionary and I really and also very brave. Um so I really like it. I will say that change is hard and so in regards to what the other coun some of the other council members have said we'll we'll need more detail unless we just want a general freakout by the community if you know what I mean. Um so that's what I would like to see. So I guess I agree with everybody basically

[80:02] that's it. Okay, Nicole. >> Um, yeah, I'm really excited by where this is going and uh, um, feel similarly to a lot of my colleagues that this is definitely moving in the right direction. Um, and you know, I recognize this is still really early in the process and you brought it to us intentionally at an early stage. So, thank you for doing that so we could give this sort of general feedback as you go go forward and flesh things out a little bit more. Um but again for me generally this is moving in the right direction. Um I also the flexibility for me was um a key part of all of this. Um I think that that enabling us to be more adaptable as we move forward into a more chaotic future is a really a strength for the city and fits in with our resilience goals. Um I'm going to be really curious to see how some of the 15-minute neighborhood conversations merge in with some of the concepts and things that are coming out here. Um, you

[81:00] know, when when I think about the the type of city that we need to have 50 years from now, it's one where neighborhoods really are a little bit more self-contained from uh the just resilience and disaster management perspective, right? As we get more floods, more fires, more droughts, more um all power outages, right? All the things that make it really hard. Um, I I I'm just really curious to see how some of that comes forward so that we can think about neighborhoods as um almost being uh both community hubs as well as resilience hubs, places that can kind of exist um on their own if they need to for a little bit of time. Um and I was really excited about just some of the thinking around um opening up more spaces to um home businesses and how we can how we can do that a little bit more. I love seeing that in there as well. I think it goes well with the idea of um prioritizing a more inclusive economy. Um, and then as far as the the second question, um, for me, one of the

[82:00] things I would like to see in the community feedback flesh out a little bit more moving forward is the this demographic overlay and and how our changing demographics is um, playing into the the LAN use um, that we're moving forward with and uh, thinking about um, things like uh, the type of housing that people are going to need as we have an older population. uh thinking about accessibility within that. Um how how are we setting up some of these land use designations to enable more accessible transportation and movement throughout movement freedom throughout the city to use a term I learned from Ryan. Um and and just how are we enabling more people to live together in in these spaces so they can um care for each other. uh on and the one other thing that I'll say about the engagement um with the the two versions of the survey, the statistically valid survey and the online companion survey um I think it's just going to be so crucial to be upfront with people who are filling out that uh I mean really both,

[83:02] but especially the companion survey, how is it going to be used, right? How is that information going to be used? Because if if we're um coming away from that survey with uh talking points like 90% of respondents said one thing, it's really easy to take that and generalize it and say, "Wow, 90% of the city thinks that we should do this thing when really it was only the people who, you know, responded to what's the convenience sample basically." Um, so, so I think just being really clear with people so they understand if we're going to wait the statistically valid survey more in decision-m than we are with the online companion survey, I think it's super important that we're upfront with people about that um, as they are taking time to fill out that uh, the online companion survey. So, just a little more clarity for people on how things will be used in our decision-making process for us as well. I think that that'll be really important for us um just to know. But I this is is wonderful is I love to

[84:00] see this movement towards this uh simplicity, flexibility um and just to see all this coming together. I continue to be incredibly impressed by how quickly and thoughtfully you are all moving for this work. So thank you. >> Thank you, Nicole. Erin, I see your hand is up. Do you intend that? No. Okay. I think has everybody gone except for me? Anybody else waiting? Okay, then I'll go um I'll go last. Okay. Um I I was quite supportive of the direction of this overall before the presentation and now I'm even I'm even more um enthusiastic about it. I just just understanding it more and seeing some of the maps and the visualizations and seeing how this is um compared well as an evolution will become simpler and be more human and and natural environment centered creating more adaptability and flexibility. Um so I'm overall very supportive. Um I I did send a hotline that was a bit policyheavy. So

[85:00] um I know tonight this is really about the land use map. So I'll just make a few comments on the this map part of it. Um, so one is that the I think a lot of the the the map that we see and what we're organizing around reflects an underlying public transit system. Um, and I, you know, we know that greater density will help with transit to work better and um, there's a there's a connection with those things. So, so it'll help it to be more successful. So, I guess I'm just interested to see more of an explicit um connection here between the the land the land use of the the housing, the hubs with the transit system because the two things seem so important to one another. Um, and I would say on the on the second question to council on where to seek feedback, I

[86:00] would say this. I would say let's let's find um let's find ways to ask the the community what what would you like to see with the public transit system? What are your what are your minimum levels of of expectations with respect to you know would you like to have 15 minute transit all day long within a five or so minute walk from your house and getting getting and you know would you be able to like take the bus to Aldora more easily and elsewhere and so on. Um, but just like really getting into this question of of how important is public transit working, how it could if we were to invest in it to our community because that is integral to how we're building these these maps, I think. So, um, that's that's that is that point. Excuse me. Um, also I uh in in the hotline I sent I discussed uh microobility and pointed out that we've got this this revolution of battery electric uh micro type vehicles both uh golf cart size

[87:00] neighborhood electric vehicles which where they're allowed to operate around the country in you know communities that where they're safe. They people love them because they're super efficient. They're, you know, cheap to buy. um but they don't work unless it's um you they're made safe to do so in on the roads. And then secondly, we've got this explosion of ebikes and this whole kind of range of tiny two wheel vehicles, three-wheel vehicles. And um I'm thinking back to the preamble, like the preamble slide about the trends that we're looking towards. And I I think this is one of those trends that as we imagine the future of Boulder, we ought to be really thinking about like how do we use this electrification uh technology to help us to get around in a way that's a lot more efficient, that's a lot um more affordable and um and what does that mean for the future of land use? So again, I think that's more on like maybe the preamble of all this, but it it could be a big um mega I guess like a mega trend of how what could what could affect what we can do.

[88:01] um on the hubs the the hubs framework you you actually addressed some of the the thinking I had provided in the hotline um with respect to I'm sort of imagining that from a from a you know providing well-being to the community standpoint uh seems to me we could be thinking about some minimum number or share of residents being able to walk to you know have a fiveminute walk to a coffee shop or a a ger or um a park or you know a bus. Um so I'm sort of thinking along those lines and but then I I looked at the map it seemed like the number of the hubs that that were shown felt kind of poultry and I don't know if that's meant to be we define the hubs now and then that's it for a while but um I would be interested to like really um be creative and imaginative about how that we can have hubs like we can have a lot of hubs. Um,

[89:00] so I'd like to maybe yeah, put pro on that a little more. Um, and then on Oh, okay. Just two more and I'll and I'll finish on the subject of adaptation and resilience and that this is a big part of the plan. I I I wonder if um as we're now looking at the map and and thinking about the map in terms of building from what we currently have, would this also be a good time to think about the contingency planning for if in the unfortunate event significant parties of parts of Boulder were affected by natural disaster and we and we really had to start fresh. um would we would we want to construct things any differently? Would there be any kind of key principles that we might want to think about now as we're as we're looking at this map that's constrained by, you know, how things currently work? So, that's I would I think I asked that as a question, but I would offer that as something we ought to do. Um, and then I agree with Lauren and Aaron on the comments about removing

[90:01] predominantly or mostly where it's either ambiguous or will become problematic when it ought not to be in the future. Um, and also Lauren's point about being really deliberate about the images that we end up producing because those will become um really p potentially powerful frames of reference for people. Um, oh, and then finally, I just on Nicole, I wanted to agree with her suggestion about um, seeking feedback from a wide set of demographics, specifically older folks and younger folks who will becoming older as we look at our aging trends and thinking about yeah, just there that perspective. Okay. Um, I think that takes that's the end of what I have. I don't see any more hands. So I think um Chris I believe that takes us to the end unless Brad is there anything else you want do you have what you need from us or anything else? >> Yeah I think u absolutely this is f a fantastic uh discussion and just appreciative of the depth of thought and

[91:02] uh the direction on support for this basic concept. Uh we will we will be back. We'll see you many times before but thank you for the conversation. We appreciate it. All right, thanks Brad and team. Well done. Chris, can I um invite you to uh bring us to the next place? >> Yeah, happy to transition us to our second item of the night and appreciate the conversation again and uh thanks to the comp planning team. Uh so for this next item uh we are excited to bring to you a whole bunch of really cool uh background analysis uh uh on healthy buildings uh roadmap that we are working on. So uh Jonathan is going to tee us up here uh tonight for this item. So uh our director of climate initiatives Jonathan take it away. >> Yeah, thanks so much Chris. I see my team all popped up on the screen all at once. So, that's a good sign. Uh, mayor, members of council, nice to see you all.

[92:01] Jonathan Cohen with climate initiatives. Really just a quick intro from me on the healthy building stronger community roadmap. Um, you all had, I think, quite a bit of background in your memo, but I I want to just say for those that are listening tonight, I would summarize the roadmap and tonight's discussion as really an alignment of our current and what I would say next generation building strategies that are really centered around reducing emissions, improving building health and resilience. Um, really focusing in on stabilizing energy costs, and ensuring equity and affordability are a real central outcome to our policies. You're going to hear this repeated often tonight. Uh just like your previous conversation on the comprehensive plan. The roadmap is really to guide our strategies over the next decade and really beyond. And I'm super excited about the work the team has done to create this long-term vision for our buildings. Um and I would say it's important to note that we've been

[93:00] working towards this type of an approach for at least a decade in parts and pieces. And again, really excited that we're kind of bringing it together tonight in an outline or a roadmap for the future. I also want to acknowledge some of the concerns that we've heard uh about the timing of specific recommendations uh coming from our consultant team and staff. And I want to stress that the road map is it's not about rushing regulatory changes. Um and I hope that came through in the staff materials and the hotline information that was sent out earlier this week. We want to provide enough detail to give a sense of potential future direction, but no determination's been made on the timing of specific items that may come back to council and recognizing our constrained resources. It really makes prioritization and sequencing especially important. So, just to wrap up my comments tonight's really about sharing where we are, um checking in with council, listening to your guidance, and understanding your priorities so we can really focus our efforts most

[94:00] effectively. So, with that, I want to turn it over to Caroline Elam, who's going to take you through the presentation. I'm really eager to hear council's thoughts tonight, and I'll jump back with you when we get to questions. Thanks. >> Good evening. Check in. Does everybody see the presentation on the Excellent? Yep. >> It was good to me. >> Great. Thanks everybody. Um and thank you council for the opportunity to speak with you. I'm Caroline, senior manager here in our department of climate initiatives um this evening for our presentation. I'm joined by um representatives from our consultant team, Ben Brandon um with AROP and Josie Platt who's from our joint trestle strategy group um institute for the built environment team. Um so really appreciative of the opportunity to talk to you about our roadmap project. As Jonathan mentioned, um we've got lots of

[95:00] eras of um work to decarbonize our buildings. We're really excited to to write the next chapter and and launch on our our next world tour. Um so, sorry we had to do a shout out for the um Taylor Swift reference earlier. Um I'll try and throw a few more in. Um but no promises on that. again um just as a little bit of reflection. You know, this is the we wanted to take a deliberate stop and really reflect on what we've learned um from our years of work in this space. Understand and celebrate the successes we've had um and then really vision forward um based on, you know, what we've learned, what we've learned from others, what we're seeing in the market, how our technolog is transforming, and and so we're excited to to lay out this pathway for our coming decade. Well, I'm here covering the presentation tonight. Um, you know, it would be wrong of me to um take any credit for it. Um, it's really our amazing project team that that did all the work and they're the reason we're here today. And Laurel

[96:01] and Crystal are here to join us for the the discussion. Uh, these questions were in your packet and I'll come back to them so I won't read them now. Just a reminder, we had three questions we wanted to check in with council on around this project to get your feedback as as we seek to finalize our our draft roadmap. So, we structured the the presentation tonight um to to start kind of grounding you in the background of the the roadmap project, what we're seeking to accomplish, um what we have in place today in terms of programs and policies. Then walk through at a high level the technical analysis we undertook, what we learned from the community from our engagement work and then have a detailed discussion around um some of the proposed regulations that came out of that work with the analysis and the engagement as well as some of the supporting programming um and and where we see that heading and then dive into our conversation. And again, everything here is is really grounded

[97:00] around our community's adaptive goal of of driving towards carbon neutrality um by 2035. And so that's the timeline of our road map. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. I do want to say um you know, as we have matured our conversation around our buildings, um it is really important to understand that we're we're no longer talking about just emissions. Um, we really need to ground our work in our equity goals and our resilience goals. And and with that in mind, you know, I just really want to spend a moment. This is a tough conversation to have because we know um to hit our goals. We're not on the pace to do so. The only way we're going to get there, we we can't get there through voluntary programs. The only way we can get there is um by applying regulation in combination with um supportive systems. And it's a tough time to have those conversations. And we understand that. At the same time, you know, it's also important to understand that a lot of the discussion we have is is kind of grounded in the biases that come from our our lived experiences,

[98:01] right? So, um I like many um grew up here in the front range. I enjoyed, you know, there were a few uncomfortable days in the summer and you could always cool your house open in your window. I didn't have air conditioning until, you know, a decade or so ago. Um but the reality is the climate that our lived experience is based on and and this beautiful picture on the left um sits within is no longer Boulders's climate. Um we've already experienced um a more than doubling of days over 95 degrees. Um we as we talked to you in um last December, we've seen a tenfold increase in fire risk days. The reality is our current climate temperatures is really in the range of Boulder of PBLO's historical trends, right? So, think of us as, you know, PBLO designed their buildings and their architecture and their infrastructure for a climate that we're now experiencing. And we're actually on a trajectory that by the end of the decade or shortly thereafter, we

[99:00] could look more like Albuquerque in terms of our number of days and extreme temperature um days. And I want you to take a look at the buildings and just notice um some differences, right? Our buildings were not built for the climate we're headed for. Um and there's consequences that come with that. Like many of our our vulnerable folks do not have access to air conditioning. Our buildings aren't resilient um to uh extreme weather. And to meet the challenges of rising temperatures and weather extremes, we're going to experience very high um costs of energy if we don't make change. Right? The buildings on the right um have more reflective roofing. Um we certainly you can't see it on the photos, but they have different um space conditioning as well. So, our buildings um you know, why do we tackle our buildings? Uh we've talked about this in the past, but looking at the chart on the lower right, our buildings are nearly twothirds of our community emissions with commercial and industrial buildings being nearly half of our community emissions. Um but as I mentioned, as we look at this, we're looking beyond just greenhouse gas emissions. What we've really learned um

[100:02] and and seen even more evidence of in you know recent years is just this understanding and I should say this is all about natural gas use. You'll hear a lot about natural gas in this presentation. Well, our understanding has really matured that our use and our dependency of on natural gas in our buildings for space. water conditioning, um cooking, uh other uh appliances, whether that be clothes drying or um decorative fireplaces are contributing to both indoor and outdoor air pollutants and are a leading cause now of respiratory illness particularly in children um but also presents a risk to older adults. There's been analysis that shows, you know, that gas appliance use in buildings is contributing nearly $2 billion um a year in annual costs to Colorado um for health care and mortality impacts. Um we know that our buildings aren't built, many of our buildings aren't able to withstand some

[101:00] of the extreme weather events we have. We saw more than 400 um of our mobile homes damaged during the Marshall fire. We also saw damage to to fixed foundation structures and as I mentioned um we're dependent largely on natural gas is a commodity. Um so unlike um electricity which is regulated um by the public utilities commission and the rates are set explicitly by the commission. Uh natural gas is broken up into two components and we have to pay for the commodity fuel. We saw during winter storm Yuri and then again during the invasion of the um by Russia of the Ukraine substantial market stresses on natural gas that caused the doubling and tripling of many of our community members heating bills overnight. Um that that kind of um immediate stress and and impact has a really material impact on on the economy and on those um community members ability to to just survive um during some of these extreme temperatures. And the cost of maintaining our gas system is growing, right? So we we may

[102:01] think of natural gas as the historical affordable um energy source and we were told it was our clean fuel and reliable fuel. The reality is we look to the future, things are changing and they're changing very rapidly. So from our road map approach, this is really a phased approach. We started um with the technical analysis looking at our building stock and policy, then doing a policy and financial analysis on it. Then we dove into community engagement based on some of the recommended strategies that came out of that analysis. We're here tonight to talk to you and get your feedback on this work. That'll check our community engagement boss box. We'll synthesize this into the road map. And then as Jonathan mentioned like this is to to develop the prioritized set of strategies that will be in the road map. This is really envisioned as an iterative process. Um we will then take the strategies we identify as the priorities in the road map and run them back through a similar process. So do do deeper analysis, do more engagement to with the community to really design how

[103:00] we would implement such actions. So you'll be hearing from us again around those strategies. Again, we hired um two uh great teams to support us. A group um who'll talk about the technical analysis and then as I said trust strategy group and IB um who supported our community engagement. Uh we did run this project through the um uh equity in the racial equity instrument before we launched it. that we continue to test in. Um we did set when we launched the project in the analysis a series of equity guard rails. Um you know one way to think about this is I I learned an important lesson in our past when we focused just on emissions. Um what we ended up doing with our building codes by setting the most stringent requirements for the largest homes was make those most affluent in our community the most resilient. Right? They've got the best homes, the most efficient homes. They're they're electric. They've got solar. um and we can't make those um same mistakes in the future. We need to make sure we're moving all of our buildings stock forward. We need to emphasize the buildings that are most vulnerable and

[104:00] then we need to put the supportive programs in place to um to meet those needs. Uh I won't spend too much time on this, but this will be what's basically in the road map. It's a 10-year timeline. will outline the policies, programs, uh the the costs we see of transitioning our buildings as well as the engagement that we commit to um as we further advance any policies that are represented there. Uh I won't spend much time on this. I touched on this in the um conversation, but again, we we are starting from scratch. So part of the grounding was to to look at what we're already doing today, what we've learned from that. So this slide shows the three key regulatory approaches we have in place around decarbonizing our buildings, our energy conservation codes um which make sure that you know when someone is voluntarily um taking an action around a building whether it's building new, adding an addition or renovating um they're getting the best outcomes possible in terms of um climate mitigation and resilience. We have our building performance ordinance which regulates our commercial buildings. Um

[105:02] this requires benchmarking and a series of prescriptive cost-effective um energy efficiency improvements and then smartregs um which covers our rental housing. And so this sets minimum performance standards for rental housing units. We do offer supportive programs. So we have a suite of residential programs that we implement um ourselves as well as in partnership with Boulder County Energy Outreach Colorado and Excel Energy um with an emphasis and growing emphasis on on equity supported programs such as our mobile home healthy and resilient mobile homes program. Similarly on the commercial side again in partnership with those same partners we offer support for our businesses again emphasis on on our small businesses with some enhanced programs around equity um roughly between our residential and commercial voluntary programs about a third of our climate tax tax dollars get reinvested in the community and then we're leveraging substantial funding from Excel and other partners. So with that, I am going to transition

[106:01] over to to Ben Brandon to to walk us through the technical analysis. Ben, and you can just tell me when to switch the slides. >> Thanks, Carolyn. Uh, and hello, council members. Um, so I'm representing the technical consulting team here, and we're going to talk through a few of the key uh findings of our analysis. So starting with a building stock analysis which is really to understand the breakdown of all of the buildings in the city today uh combined with a financial analysis of what it takes to implement some of these uh energy conservation measures or retrofit packages in order to achieve the decarbonization goals um of the city. Um we also did a review of program and policy from around the country to provide some suggestions and recommendations um to the city and the broader team into how to uh encourage these um uh the residents to adopt these voluntarily if possible um and with with regulation otherwise. Uh so the next slide first um just simple breakdown of how the building how the city is broken down uh between

[107:00] residential and commercial by area uh and and greenhouse gas emissions. Uh it's tempting to look at a city like Boulder in most cities um and you see way more residential buildings than you do commercial um and want to focus on those those explicitly. Um and while by no means am I suggesting to ignore that um it's it's it's interesting to look at the fact that there are roughly uh threequarters of the city is residential um but roughly threearters of the emissions uh from buildings comes from from commercial buildings. Uh in the next slide um further how these are broken down into their current uh HVAC usage. Uh commercial buildings are very predominantly um heated and cooled with conventional gas systems with only 15% using electric heating and the vast majority of that 15% right now is electric resistance heating um as in not heat pumps. And while electric resistance heating is 100% efficient,

[108:00] which sounds great, uh heat pumps are 300% efficient or so in terms of using energy. Similar with water heating and nearly all of that is electric resistance. On the residential side, uh about a third have all electric heating. Again, the vast majority right now is electric resistance. Um and on the cooling side, about half of Boulder's buildings last lack central air conditioning. Um the other half do have um potentially evaporative coolers which is energy efficient but but has a water demand or um inefficient window window units. Um regarding mobile homes uh there's no cooling in about 26% of those. Um and sort of pulling that all together about 25% of housing in Boulder is at risk to extreme heat right now. And that's not even accounting for um Carolyn's point a little while ago about how we are moving into a much much hotter climate. Um so this this image on the right um is is one visualization of projections in terms of how our um heat

[109:01] waves or days over 95 degrees are projected to increase uh going forward which which makes those um those houses and buildings without cooling even more susceptible. So our next step was looking at okay we know we know where the city's at we know uh what needs to be some options what needs to be done um how do we actually achieve that at a city level uh so on the very small text on the left we're looking at a plot of uh ECMS or energy conservation measures basically retrofits to make buildings more efficient and how do we how can we package these together and apply them to buildings throughout the city uh we ran several iterations uh kind of grouping these first starting with replacing gas heating units um with heat pump ones, then replacing uh the same with domestic hot water um and on and on to to have various other improvements to buildings. Um what we found is that um it is of course very achievable of a goal from a technical standpoint. We know how to do it. We know the technologies um to do

[110:01] so. Um and there are are ways to make this more or less cost-effective. Um what we found with the the bare minimum electrification um pathway here um just to throw out a scary big number uh would cost about $4.5 billion dollars absolutely max if you were to go out today and just magically implement all of these changes. Um just to caveat that a little bit. um that does not account for intelligent ways of of of promoting these changes such as waiting until uh a system needs to be replaced anyway and mandating that it be replaced with a new equipment um new high efficiency equipment. So I think with that I'm going to pass over to Josie to talk about our engagement efforts. >> Thanks Ben and good evening members of council. Mayor, thank you for having us. I'm Josie Plout and I'm the co-director at the Institute for the Built Environment. I'm here to represent the Trestle and IBE consulting team who did the community engagement. I'll be

[111:00] sharing a highle summary of what we did uh what we learned and the recommendations that we heard from the community as it relates to the overall policy direction for the road map. So uh we conducted comprehensive outreach using a variety of outreach methods including interviews, focus groups, presentations, a community questionnaire and a variety of online media. Overall we are very pleased with the level of engagement from the community and the quality of information that we gathered. We saw uh that there is receptivity to electrification and to some new regulations. Heat pump technology while it's not new uh is new to many in this market and the city will need to work to address the prevailing concerns myths and myths misinformation that are circulating within the community. And as you can see here there are a variety of um ideas that are out there that will

[112:02] need to be addressed in the communications of any future policy changes as the road map roadmap develops. So uh we have developed a comprehensive set of recommendations that it's much more detailed in the report that you all can read in your spare time. Um but to let you know that we um you know we took everything that we heard from all the community engagement and we matched that with the road map and and the um the plans that Arab developed. And uh to highlight just a few of those key recommendations, we um we recommend that the city support any new regulations by uh helping to reduce complexity of compliance through program design. So we heard a lot of fatigue around compliance and and systems and navigating all of those. So ways to

[113:00] simplify and streamline will be incredibly important. also offering technical support and navigation assistance. These are fairly complex and nuanced decisions and conversations. And so it's going to be important that any new programs uh include those technical support and navigation programs to um to help the community adapt. Also ensuring that there's some flexibility. Obviously, buildings are built at all sorts of different times in all sorts of different ways and so uh there need to be options for uh people to change and adapt um the requirements to meet their specific needs. In addition, we want to provide asurances that we're careful to avoid negative economic impacts for our low-income community members and small businesses. And then an final consideration here is to manage the unintended consequences of additional

[114:00] regulation. Um so for example, we want to be conscious about adding cost and complexity that could result in building owners actually just avoiding doing upgrades altogether because uh the cost of doing so is too high. You can find additional information about all of this uh again in the report. So, um, so just to kind of wrap things up here, um, while climate and emissions reductions are important to some members of your community, the the messaging here for this program should be as much about comfort, including health and safety, as well as affordability and cost stabilization, rather than um, focusing exclusively on climate and decarbonization. And then as the program develops, it'll be important to focus on early winds homes that already have electric and switching uh those to alternatives, especially at end of life replacement as

[115:00] Ben was mentioning. And then we suggest using behavior science that employs techniques like pure influence, being conscientious of payback periods for businesses, and providing supports that matter most to everyone, including rebates and technical assistance. Great. Thanks, Josie. And I'll take it back up. And just a reminder to to council, um, we did share via hotline the the full technical report from AUP and the executive summary um from that Josie referenced. Um, so happy to answer questions about that as well. So to wrap us up and and kind of bring it all together, um here's the the first set of recommendations um that we you know received as a result of uh the A-OP analysis as well as um some of staff's recommendations on on whether we advance those into the road map and and do further development. So starting at a high level um there's a number that were related to adoption of building performance standards and again building

[116:00] performance standards are are typically um setting a target at a future date certain where a certain either energy use per square foot or emissions per square foot target um needs to be met. Uh the benefit of uh building performance centers or BPS approaches is you set a target but allow flexibility for how it's be met. And so we would move away from our current prescriptive requirements where we tell building owners, you know, you will do this lighting upgrade and you will do this study um to allow them to design the path to their future. Um as I think I mentioned in um both the memo and the hotline for our over 50,000 square foot buildings. They're already regulated by the state. Um we would have the opportunity to consolidate regulation and and have them only um have to report to the the uh city. um they could meet the state requirements in that mean way. So we're thinking about reducing regulatory complexity. Um staff did recommend a phased approach where we start with the largest ones that are already regulated by the state and

[117:01] already have targets set for them and then phase in requirements for smaller buildings and then inherent in this is um again reducing regulatory complexity. So buildings that um for example if we adopt a building performance standard for multif family we wouldn't also regulate them under smart rags um if they happen to be a rental property. So so doing some clean up there. Um as we go forward we'd have the opportunity either to adopt the state targets as is or develop more stringent ones uh based on um community goals. uh Aver did recommend applying a building performance standard to residential and as I think you saw staff don't recommend proceeding with that at this time just given I think to Ben's point the um the low emissions associated with this sector combined with the the high regulatory cost that would come with trying to regulate 20,000 individual buildings. The other set of recommendations are an end-of- life equipment replacement. And

[118:00] so this would be the most cost-effective time to intervene. Uh so instead of uh somebody being able to go and replace a gas appliance, um they be required to do electric. We need to put a lot of thought into how to phase such a thing in when the appropriate times would have be to have the target. Um how we want to ensure we're not um creating a space where people are just working outside of a permit process because we want better outcomes. So there need to be a lot of development around this one. I mentioned the um air pollution standard. Um we do have regulatory authority to adopt such although it would be complex and effectively the the NOX appliance standards are are duplicative of the electric um requirements that we have. So we would only move forward with this if for example we lost um a federal preeemption challenge to our current building codes um or any new ordinance we might adopt that requires all electric. We do think we need to do some update to smart rags um initial you know relative load left

[119:00] in terms of updating our um checklist which currently incentivizes gas appliance use and adding in um requirements or opportunities around um electric efficient electric solutions. Uh the checklist would only apply to new rentals. So we aren't proposing initially that we would go back and and regulate all of our currently licensed properties, but we would do more analysis to understand how, for example, if we move forward with end of life equipment, what additional needs we really have in particular in the the rental um licensing space, we are concerned about the cooling access and I think that's something we definitely want to further explore. And the final policy is a time of sale requirement, which require some kind of audit or upgrade at a time of sale. And we do think this is an interesting one to further explore. Um, and it could potentially be explored with similar requirements, for example, wildfire hardening. Um, and so, uh, we're not recommending, uh, moving it forward as the first, but continuing to monitor what some others are doing in this space

[120:01] and understand the mechanics of how we might implement, um, such a program. Can we agree with some supports and guardrails as Josie mentioned? Making sure that we're doing everything to understand the the displacement um risk to to tenants or rising cost risks to tenants and thinking about supportive programming around that. We are preempted from doing much in terms of um limited rents, but we can do things for voluntary strategies. Um, we also agree with recommendations to prioritize the limited city investment towards those most in need and rely on others like Excel um and other programs to support communitywide adoption of programs and coupling solar um with electrification particularly for low-income households to provide that bill stability. Uh recommendations around workforce development. We agree we need a a bigger and more trained workforce if we're going to implement the changes that are necessary. we need good outcomes. Um and so there's two recommendations. One around growing

[121:00] workforce and the other is making sure that um uh those jobs are available um you know they're good paying job opportunities, pathways to to business ownership are available to everybody and by providing services. While we don't think this is the role the city should take on, um we do see a lot of opportunity um through our regional partners such as workforce Boulder County um our Dr. COG and others to to really emphasize um the opportunities around uh job training. Uh these weren't actions identified by AI but one staff wanted to identify. Um so one is continuing to advocate for financing solutions. As Ben mentioned, this is a very big price tag to make these transitions. Um addressing the the barriers in terms of upfront cost is is critical. Um, we certainly support the one-stop shop and are looking to our um, Western City campus. Um, and looking forward to when we do have that navigational support there. And then, as I mentioned, monitoring cooling for all. I'll wrap

[122:01] this up with um, just a summary of our board feedback. We did talk with our um, environmental advisory board several times throughout this process to get their feedback. We also met with our housing advisory board. Um, you know, generally I would sum this up as um, you know, I think we all collectively have concern about uh, regulation, overregulating and and and I'll say doing it to the point where we're driving our problem just out of our community um, to a worse uh, outcome for us and and for uh the our goals. Um, so really thinking about how we couple, you know, carrots and sticks together. Um, building on pure learning. Um, considering and really trying to simplify as much as possible. Um, we did certainly hear though, you know, we have a significant portion of our our population here in Boulder um that don't control uh their housing stock and and can't live their values um because they choose to live in in in rental housing.

[123:00] And so I think we need to be very conscious about that as well. So, with that, I will bring us back um to the council questions and um happy to answer questions and apologies. I know I ran a few minutes over, but thank you for bearing with us as we do transitions and looking forward to our discussion. >> Thank you Carolyn team for a very rich um and great discussion. Um so, I propose we do clarifying questions first and then address the three questions to council in one go. um after that uh unless there are any objections to that approach. Okay. Who would like to raise their hand for a question? I think I have Mark and then Nicole. >> Really just a couple of questions. Um, do we have any kind of estimate of what it would cost um, uh, for say a 2,000 foot or 2500T home to

[124:03] transition from gas to electric? And when we talk about um, either promoting or compelling that kind of transition, um, what kind of cost are we imposing upon people? Yes, we do. And Ben, I mean, you can jump in here. Um, but first, you know, technologywise, uh, you know, if we're talking about a home that has a gas furnace, a gas water heater, a gas stove, um, which is probably the most common configuration. We don't see a lot of gas dryers, although there's some. Um, I think there's there's a uh potential that there would have to be an electrical upgrade um for that home and we typically see those uh on the order of around $5,000 if you have to do a service panel upgrade. On the appliance side, the incremental costs um

[125:00] are are are there. Um you know, assume, you know, you're you're spending between 10 and $20,000 to replace a uh a furnace air well close to $20,000 if you have a furnace and air conditioner. A little bit more if you're putting in a heat pump. Um similarly, you know, about 1,500 on a gas water heater, about 2500 on a heat pump water heater. uh stoves are are pretty on par other other than the electrical work um depending on the features you're seeking. Uh right now the incentives you know for example through Excel you can actually save money um on the water heater replacement um you can save money if you're for example replacing a gas furnace and a um air conditioner unit with a heat pump. uh with those incentives, it'll actually cost you less to put the electric alternatives in other than the electric panel upgrade that I talked about. Anything you would add, Ben? >> Um,

[126:00] go ahead. >> I I can add just very briefly that um you basically described my house. And so I can say a few years ago it was $15,000 or so without an electrical upgrade. That was also a kind of top-of-the-line heat pump because I'm a mechanical engineer and an energy nerd. Um, I'll also add that we did some assessments specifically to that point. Um, I can't quote the numbers right now, but we ran a few uh case studies of a single family home and apartment uh doing those as illustrative examples and are um planning on on publishing them in the road map to help help readers. >> And that does seem to be a little bit of a stout expenditure. Um, but this is this >> Well, yeah. Yeah, and just noting that that expenditure occurs if you have to replace um your gas equipment as well. Much of our market is driven by labor costs at this this juncture, not equipment costs. Um so so I think that's um I anybody who's had to replace a water heater or furnace recently probably knows what I'm speaking of as well.

[127:02] >> Okay. >> Um you know, because my concern is that we we can't even require property owners to pull out their junipers. How are we going to get them all to do a remodel of their house, pull out these systems and install new systems? And there will be a cost and may it may be more, maybe a little less, but how do we get that done? >> Yeah. And I also just want to be I mean, not every home is going to require a panel upgrade, and it it's really going to depend on the vintage of the home and and the service. We've seen we've seen full retrofits on 150 amp panel as well. So it's it's just really um a little bit it varies a little bit. >> Okay. Um my only other question is um I did not see a lot of conversation about um uh building materials that can assist in u ether reducing GHDs or being more

[128:01] environmentally friendly. I if I'm not mistaken, Lauren, you might know better than I. I think part of the Alpine Balsson project is being built with my favorite cross laminated timber. Um, and that may be the first of its kind in Boulder. So, we're we're kind of doing it there. And I'm I'm just wondering why there's not more conversation about the materials that we have today or anticipate in the future that can address some of this problem. >> Yeah. And we do have a separate project looking at the embodied carbon of building materials. So we didn't try and seed it here in this road map around just the electrification and efficiency side but definitely agree with you that that's um important work and and we continue to advance that and I don't know when our team will be ready to come back and talk about that but um definitely agree with you >> and that's the that's the end of my questions. Thank you. >> Okay Nicole and then Aaron and Terara. >> Thank you and thanks so much for the

[129:01] presentation. Um I have some kind of more more general big picture questions about this. Um so I attended a presentation of the uh Excel advisory um group a few weeks ago, right? And one of the things that um Excel was talking about was the significant increase in demand that they're anticipating especially as cities do start changing to um but to require more electrification um of of all kinds of things. And I I guess that thinking about this from a a vulnerability perspective, right? What does it mean as we start moving more things to um electrification for an infrastructure that we don't control um that is out to make a profit um on on people and community? I mean, how how do we think about this, right? What assurances are we sort of getting as we're moving in this direction that will benefit um our energy utility that

[130:01] that they can handle this that they will provide renewable sources of energy and not um alternatives that that may be you know continue to be harmful because ultimately right where the energy is coming from or where the electricity is coming from determines how how clean it is and and how how we're getting to our goal. So I guess it's just around like what's the where does that come in, right? What what kinds of assurances do we have about reliability that as we're, you know, in 50 years in a different place and things are electrified, how do we know the system's going to be reliable? We're not going to be having public safety power shutdowns all the time and, you know, people will be able to um to make use of all the electricity. Yeah, I mean those are amazing questions and and definitely ones we heard um extensively as we talked to community, you know, the concerns about is the grid ready? How's the grid going to be ready? What's electricity going to cost? And and is the system reliable? And and I want to

[131:01] um you know, I'm the first to admit and apologies to those who live around the Table Mesa area today. I understand you had a lengthy power outage. Um uh you know it's it's a work in progress and um I have spent every day this week at the public utilities commission hearing on Excel's distribution system plan with which lays out a lot of what we're talking about which is the investments that are needed to um get Excel off their heels in terms of writing the distribution system for our future. And you know, it's a really robust discussion and and I'm optimistic that we're we're heading the right direction in terms of investments to prepare the grid, to prepare um and and ensure it's reliable and to to really start to think about different um models and that will help us mitigate the cost of doing that. Um and so like I said, it's it's imperfect at this point and and there's a lot of attention being paid to it. um certainly and I think a little bit of what you're

[132:01] seeing is is kind of the combination. So, as we talk about decarbonizing our buildings, um they're contributing to to some of what you see, but so is electric vehicle adoption, you know, and I think those two things together mean that attention has to be paid at the state level to very much address the issues you you were talking um to. So, I do think it's about planning. um you know, we have a whole team on on the city side who participates in the those public utilities commission processes to to make sure we're advocating for that and um you know, it's it like I said, it's not going to be fixed tomorrow, but I'm optimistic we're we're on the correct trajectory there >> and and Excel's very committed to doing that. Obviously, um you know, the more infrastructure, the more electrification, the more sales, um you know, it benefits them as well. And so I think we're we're all committed to that trajectory and just trying to put in place the right tools so they can get us there. >> Yeah. And then I guess sort of a follow-up question, right? They were um saying that to to meet the anticipated need, we were going to need something

[133:01] like 9 million more solar panels in the next 10 years or so, right? Which seems like a lot um especially in the current federal climate. I what is the um how do we know that this that our energy is going to be coming from clean sources, right? Given that we don't control it and just have influence. So >> yeah, I mean I I obviously can't speak for them. I can certainly speak for um what I you know what I see, what I hear. I mean I don't think a utility like Excel changes course um due to one administration. um they they they didn't make the decision um to to move towards renewables um solely focused on the environmental attributes. It's good to for the bottom line and I think it's going to remain good for their bottom line. So um I I do think we're a little bit of a bump in the road right now that we all need to be really concerned about. Um but also I'm not seeing any real course correction from them. They they certainly are going to struggle to get

[134:00] materials. there's going to be, you know, some impact, but um, you know, we're certainly going to be paying close attention to that. I do think it's worth noting, um, in particular today that, you know, even with today's grid mix, um, electric solutions are cleaner than our natural gas solutions, you know, and and that was true years ago when we were only at like 20% renewables and we're closer to 50% now. And and so, um, we can reduce emissions. we can um accomplish our goals moving to electric even if we don't get to the 100% on our current, you know, on our our goal side, but I still believe we're heading there. >> Thank you. >> Okay, Aaron, and then Tara, then Matt. >> Great. Well, thanks for the presentation and all the excellent work that you've been doing on this. And um just to follow up from the end of Nicole's question just quickly, aren't there um renewable requirements in statute for

[135:01] Excel's energy mix that they would be required to comply with? >> Yeah, so there's there's the 80% emissions reduction um requirement that is in statute, which um is what their current um plans um actually overshoot at this point. There's certainly their commitments to us. Um, and then I think, you know, we're anticipating additional state legislation that lays out the pathway bey beyond 2030, moving all electric providers in Colorado closer to to zero emissions by 20 um 35 and 2040. So again, I think Colorado's going to continue to regulate it and I think Excel is going to continue to um be on a trajectory that's better than what the state requires. >> Got it. Well, and Nicole, thank you for those very insightful questions. So, I appreciated those. Um my my one thing I wanted to check in on was um about the end of life replacement um requirement that's being proposed and and I heard you say that that would be need to be approached cautiously which I appreciate

[136:02] your thinking that way but what about is part of your mix of thinking about this about whether there might be some kind of exception process like if you had some older house that didn't have the infrastructure to support you know heat pump and we got a couple emails about this. So is that part of what you're thinking about as you might implement that? >> Yes. You know, I I think right now like for Denver for example has adopted an end of life requirement predominantly on the commercial side and our experience you know on the commercial side is there's lot largely a lot more um proactive capital planning and and replacement. So certainly think of that as an early but there definitely needs to be you know exceptions for emergency for technical infeasibility and some constraints and we would need to work to to develop what that looks like before we propose implementing something. >> Great. Thanks. That's all I have. >> Okay, Tara, then Matt and Tasa.

[137:01] So my first question is is are there any other towns around here that are going from just um incentives to regulating to regulations? Wait, let me take myself off of onto video. >> Yes. So as I mentioned just a second ago, so Denver uh adopted their building performance standards. They apply um to a similar class of buildings we've referenced here. So all commercial and multif family buildings and their regulations have been in in place for a a few years now. Um they've also adopted end of life uh replacement requirements. Uh Fort Collins, Aspen, um potentially Lakewood, and um I want to say there's a couple other communities, Laurel, if you remember off the top of your head. >> State of Colorado. Yeah, the state um that have adopted building performance standards are in the process of adopting building performance standards.

[138:01] >> I guess I'm referring to residential and the um what Aaron was just talking about. >> Yes. Um so there's others talking about it. Nobody has implemented it here yet. Um I think we're all in the the space of knowing it's a pathway we need to go towards eventually but um to Erin's point we need to um understand the technical challenges to it. I think we all know we we face um a lot of issue in unpermitted work going on in the residential space. We don't want to worsen that and we also know that um we need to address the equity um issues around you know older homes that just don't have the ability and and the navigation. I mean, I'm not proposing that this is something that would happen tomorrow. I think we want to, you know, talk about like by 2035, send the right market signal so that we can start to engage in the discussion. That's really what we're talking about. >> So, 10 years from now. >> Yeah. Something more like that. Correct. Giving people enough lead time to plan

[139:00] for, make sure we've got the right um infrastructure in place to support them if we were to move down that path. Um, >> can I just jump in and add one little piece of color to this excellent question? I think it'd be very easy for someone watching this conversation and even for you all council members to assume the road map is just going to be adding more regulation onto our current suite of regulations. Um, and in fact, the road map actually is to take a really good consolidated look and there may be some packaging of existing regulations. some may actually go away. And so it really is to reorient our existing regulations and think about where we need those enhancements moving forward. So I just want to make that clear that especially to people that might be watching to say, "Oh great, we're going to have more and more and more regulation." That's not really what the road map is intended to do. There may be some additional regulation that we would bring back to council for your consideration, but ultimately this is really just looking at a comprehensive

[140:00] view that helps us achieve those goals. So I just wanted to add that piece. Thanks. >> So uh okay. So let's take for instance in my house my we my husband he's a lover of all gas appliances. So we have only gas appliances. Everything is gas. So when my boiler stops working, let's say, and I have to switch to electric and I have to switch all my appliances to electric. How does that work? >> Yeah. I mean, I think we'd have to um to design it, but you know, conceptually, uh what we've seen like what Denver did is they started with water heaters um which is a a more um >> so once you get the water heater, do you have to then change all your appliances at that time? >> No. >> No, we would defin this would only look at like when a piece of equipment dies or or is due for replacement. That that's what we mean. it would trigger other appliances to have to re be

[141:01] replaced at the same time. >> So, >> so can you have >> like in year 10 the water heater might go out. You know, your boiler may have another 20 years on it. Um when it and you know maybe the regulation would require it to be replaced. um you know if if it would to were to apply to gas stoves which is uncertain you know when your stove needed to be replaced like so everything would be on a different timeline. >> Oh you don't have to do it at the same time. >> No that that that's not something we would anticipate proposing. >> Okay. So there are state targets and you want to be more stringent than the state targets. Is that what you're saying? >> Um I would say it this way. Um I think we have the option of either adopting the states as is or being more stringent. We can't be less stringent and accomplish um the regulatory um streamlining because the state would supersede us. >> So you're asking >> to get our targets, we would need more

[142:00] stringent targets than the states because their goals are less aggressive than ours. >> Right. But when it comes to pollution in general, what Lewisville does and what we do. So I guess the question is is how much do we push? This is a real question knowing let's say that Lewisville never I don't know anything about Lewisville's what they're going to do but they never change. So, what is the benefit pollution wise for us to be, let's say, the only city around here that does this? Besides the fact that you say, and I'm not saying you're wrong, that it's not even good for you to have gas appliances in your home. >> Yeah. And just for clarification, are are you still talking about the residential side or the commercial side or both? >> The residential. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the conversations we would want to have before we ever brought something um

[143:00] back to council is um where are we at relative to our peers? Um is this going to have the outcome we want? So again, it's more of a I think to Jonathan's point at this point, none of these are preddecided that they would ultimately become adopted, but rather these are the priority actions we would further develop with the community um and seek to understand. So just just to to really ground that, um we certainly know that there's barriers to the end of life replacement. Um, we also know that if we don't get off of gas appliances and we don't help um, particularly our most at risk community members get off of gas appliances, then, you know, we're going to have all our commercial buildings coming off of the gas system because of the state's regulations and our, you know, most vulnerable residents are going to be left with the bill for maintaining the gas system and that's a bad outcome as well. So, we're just trying to think of different ways to stimulate an outcome

[144:00] when it's most cost effective. That's that's all we're intending with that. >> Why would the most vulnerable have to be most responsible? Can you explain what you mean? >> Yes. If you have a giant gas system right now that serves gas to a large number of customers and as certain customers come off that gas system, there's fewer sales to spread the cost of maintaining that system. >> I see. Okay. And the last thing I have to ask, and this is a second, I promise you, Ryan, is so during, you know, everybody's PTSD experience of the Marshall fires, and I we had put on our gas fireplace before the electricity shut off, and it stayed on the whole time, and it warmed our house. So why would I I'm assuming other community members want to know this as well. Why would I want to why would I right now I have diversification let's say right? So if I don't have if the power shuts off at least my house is

[145:00] warm if I remember to put my gas fireplace on before the power went out. Why would I want to change that? >> Yeah it's it's a it's get a wood pellet stove. It's it's far safer for you. But um um there there's a few things. Um so there's there's reasons that most gas appliances already today don't work when the power's out. Um like you cannot they will not operate. And there's there's two key reasons for that. First, you don't want people attempting to light an appliance that's not intended to be manually lit. You can you can get cause flashback, get severe burns, and and potentially kill somebody. The second issue, um, and hopefully you're in a older, somewhat leaky home, um, is when you're using your gas appliance with when none of your other mechanical systems are working, um, you're actually getting, um, toxic gases

[146:00] into your living space. Because when you you do gas combustion, you're producing carbon monoxide and and other pollutants. And so if if you don't have other systems drawing air in and out of your home, you're building that up in your space. Um, and so those are the two reasons it's it's not the best idea. Um, and of course, as you noted, your gas appliance only worked because you happen to have it on when the power went out. Um, and then I want to know what kind of gas fireplace you have because the one in my home barely beats the air infiltration from the dog door. Okay. Anything else, Tara? Can we move on to Matt? Okay. Matt and then Taiisha. >> Thanks Ryan. Uh so good questions. Um I I just want to piggy back on the grid reliance issue and I'm just sort of wondering about this roadmap. It also concerns me relatedly to like transit oriented communities. We're going to build all this housing like we need guarantees that the transit's going to be there otherwise we're building

[147:00] housing that's going to then just be car centric. And so I think similarly here how do we scale this roadmap with grid reliance is really kind of what I is what I'm kind of asking because I worry that if we go this whole way and like today for no real apparent reason we had del I had to field like half a dozen questions from parents at at kid pickup uh of why the power was out all over Tablem said I didn't have the answer and then we you know a few weeks ago when it wasn't that hot uh the power went out and we get an email of hey turn up your thermostat because the high demand so the reliance uh and robustness of the grid is a issue and so I just want to make sure we don't have all this investment when the reliance to make it worthwhile won't may not be there. And so how do we scale this? That's really a question, but can we scale this program with reliance in Excel's measurements so when they hit a threshold, we can sort of work in lock step to make sure we're we're staying in line and not way over in front of our skis, metaphorically speaking. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'll take this um in two parts. So first, you know, just just for

[148:02] for clarity, we should have a reliable grid system, right? That's that's what an urban community um should expect. So there's and it it matters whether you have gas appliances or electric appliances for the the conversation um Council Member Weiner and I just had which is you know gas appliances require electricity to work just as electric appliances do. Um and so you know this is our our work with Excel as our partner um at the public utilities commission to understand and and drive investment in the distribution system to improve its reliability. We've, you know, we've seen our our utility propose a substantial increase in investment and that's in response to um a Senate bill um that was co-sponsored by um Senator Fenberg um in 2024 and the Denver Senator as well in recognition that we don't have adequate investment in the system at this point. It needs to be fixed um and we need to focus in on that. The second part of your question

[149:00] has to do with um as we increase load through electrification is the grid ready to support it um and and that's really again working with Excel and understanding you know the timing of when we may roll out things where we want to target programs first making sure that the um systems are there to support them and so that's you know where we would design from a city perspective how we roll it out um how we're communicating where those loads are going to come on um and making sure that the infrastructure investments have been made to support it. Um so that would be you know some of strategic planning Matt. Anything else from you? Okay to Taiisha and then Lauren. >> Awesome. Thank you. Um uh I primarily have comment uh comments but I only had one question and that was really around um something that was said about electrification and um Nicole you

[150:03] touched on this a little bit around um how do we ensure that the electric is or that the energy that we're producing is clean and one of the responses was electrification and I just again wanted to emphasize that um natural gas right now is one of the primary fuels you used for electrification. So what are we doing to differentiate um between electrification using natural gas and electrical electrification using renewables? >> Yes. So, you know, right now our our grid mix, as you as you know is um you know, still got coal, natural gas, renewables, and um you know, most hours of the day have emissions associated with them. as we look to what Excel has put forward and and has um you know contracts that they're putting in place and

[151:01] construction that's starting sometime in in the next you know two to three years there's going to be days of the year hours of the day that are emissions free and then that gets better. You know how do we assure that happens? We're still going to have natural gas plants that back up renewables, but they're going to operate, you know, few few hours a year rather than the majority of the time. But all of this is around, you know, further policy action of the state to make sure that Excel continues to be held accountable for delivering on their their programs and plans. Um, you know, I think, uh, the work we do with the commission has been, um, you know, really groundbreaking in terms of increasing transparency. We're we're testing tools right now so that we can actually see hourly emissions from our utility and put empower community members to make decisions around when they use energy, you know. So, I do think there's there's a lot of of progress. Um, it's certainly a risk. Um

[152:02] but as I said, you know, today, even today with our grid mix today, we can reduce emissions and accomplish the other goals of air quality and um stabilization if we're ever electrifying. >> Okay. And then um just a general question. You know, we had that wonderful water supply conversation and and again I mentioned it at the our last agenda item and it applies here as well. And I'm just curious if the anticipate if the uh integrated water plan that Joe mentioned at the the water supply session would be the complement to this energy more energy specific because again water is also a part of a building. So, I'm just having some concerns around the siloing of water and energy, but just curious if the expectation is that the integrated water plan would would have some compliments to um the building aspect as it relates to um you know, water use um and those

[153:01] kinds of things. And then uh yeah. >> Yeah. And the answer there is is yes. Um we work very closely um to to integrate both water efficiency with energy efficiency within buildings and um some of the programs I mentioned are are co-unded by our utilities department to to educate around water conservation and a lot of the the things we incentivize are also water conservation measures. So um >> but why are they siloed conversations though Carolyn I guess is where I'm going with that. And do we see a future where when we're talking about buildings we can talk about both water and energy at the same time? Yeah. Um I >> the same conversation. >> I I I think it's really I agree with you. I mean I think it's a great opportunity to to really to really think about that. Um you know where we intersect things is always a learning opportunity for us. But yeah, I mean we certainly work collaboratively like how do we build a b a plan that integrates that. Jonathan, you may have some thoughts. I think I saw you come off

[154:00] mute. >> Yeah, I did. Um council member Adams, I appreciate the question. One of the distinctions that I think I would draw is and this is not necessarily a plug for municipal mun municipalization in any way but I think there is something to be said around ownership models. Obviously we control not only infrastructure but um supply and so I think our water discussions are in a different place than when we talk about energy. Um, and that's part of the reason that we talk about how we continue to try to influence um, actions at the state level, whether it's rate design or program funding or regional grid planning. And so I think trying to contrast those or or connect those in some way is a little bit difficult, but I so appreciate what you're saying that we need to and we need to find ways to bring those two things together more meaningfully. uh but that challenge still exists in terms of the regulated utility model, Excel being our provider, owner of the infrastructure, the seller of the commodity and uh our water

[155:00] utility functioning a little bit differently. So just wanted to name that. >> Well, point of clarification, Jonathan, it was my understanding that energy is still technically a public utility, right? I mean it is still technically regulated by the public and Excel Energy has the contract and owns the infrastructure but it's technically you know the public utility commission which is the state you know which is us the public. I I just wanna because I feel like there's this expectation or this misunderstanding around both water and energy as if these public you know these private entities are the primary player when in actuality these are public goods that these private you know entities have contracts around or you know whether it be Excel or Denver Water or Northern Water or or or what have you. But that's more of a comment that we can get back to later. And it also relates to some of the literacy conversation, climate literacy conversations that I've been having and the need for us to be on the same page around who owns what and and who has

[156:03] authorities and responsibilities around what, but I really understand and appreciate the complexity around the power dynamics that currently exist between those two entities and and still the desire to have a more comprehensive conversation. So really appreciate the the response and the intentionality. Thank you, >> Natasha Lauren. >> Thank you. Um, I've heard a lot of concerns from my colleagues and from community around kind of this reliability piece. Um, and I guess one of the things I was curious about is, um, to me it seems like going electric in some ways might open up opportunities for, um, you know, more electrification. I think about our rec center that's can be powered by our bus buses and smaller

[157:00] scale versions of that. I know in the power outage I had friends who used their cars to power their refrigerator and things like that. Um is that something that we could contemplate in this plan too? Kind of how we make or incentivize or encourage um making our community more resilient by having sort of smallcale backup program. >> Yes, that's a really great suggestion. Um and I love it. Um because you're right right having if you're all electric I mean you have the ability to to back up all electric with batteries with even generators in in emergency when the gas system goes there's there's no backup or replacement and and if folks remember during the Marshall fire um the the gas system depressurized and and people who weren't within the fire zone lost gas supply um in addition to to the homes that burned right and there's nothing that can can make up for

[158:00] that. So um that we're deploying electric space heating in that in that instance. But if you're starting at all electric, um we have better solutions for for backup. Thank you. I just you mentioned that the cities should be you know in an urban area we should be able to expect resilience and I just feel like in our changing climate and with you know Boulder being uni uniquely situated with these high risks of fire flood and wind it's a little I would like to say that I could expect that but I also think that the reality of our changing climate is that we should build in backup systems. Yes. >> Could I add to that, Caroline? I I really appreciate the the question. Um, and it it makes me think about there have been a lot of of questions and comments about the reliability of the electric system um but not kind of parallel ones about the reliability of the gas system and there are definitely issues there. Um, we've seen some risk

[159:00] um recently in the rest of the country in the northeast around various you know polar vortex types events. um and gas does not provide or the gas infrastructure system does not provide the opportunity for for those backups. Electricity and our electrical system is inherently um more flexible in terms of energy movement around places. Um and and in addition to what Excel can and should do, um electrification provides the opportunity for individual homeowners or building owners to have uh local PV and battery systems um to kind of, you know, if they so choose, take it into their own hands. uh to provide a backup system for for all. You could do that right now for for the summer, but unless you're electrified, it won't work in the winter. >> Thanks, man. Lauren, anything else from you? >> That's it. >> Okay. Um just a quick time check. We are scheduled to land this discussion at 00. Um I have I think I'm the last person with a question. I'll ask mine and then we'll um move into to comments. Uh probably a couple minutes

[160:01] worth um budgeted for each. So, um, my question, it's apologies if it's kind of a big one, Caroline, and, um, anyway, but I'm just gonna give it a shot. Um, so kind of picking up on Nicole's question about providing some assurance that the the grid would be ready. I I guess I would sort of offer a different premise, which is I'm not so worried about the grid. I'm worried about the business model of our energy provider being incentivized to deliver to us what we need. And I think it's pretty common for an electrification advocate to say, you know, this technology is fundamentally cheaper and more reliable than what we currently have. But we've heard Excel say that it's fundamentally more expensive because the distribution grid is more complicated and also they don't see a business reason to part with gas. So, I'm finding a um a disconnect in these narratives, and you welcome to

[161:01] to, you know, question my premise, but if if there's something to it, I'm just wondering what does that say is are the policy and and regulatory changes that will that will create the incentives we need to deliver the outcomes that we're looking for. And I I know it's a pretty huge question, so I'm sorry if it's I should have sent a hotline on it, but I just thought I'd try it after hearing this. No, I mean it's uh you know I think it's an ongoing question and and you hit on a lot of really great points. So you know thinking about policy actions um I mentioned uh the Senate bill from 24 and I I can't ever remember Senate bill numbers so I apologize but it's you around modernizing our um electric distribution system. Um one of the one of the powerful things it did um was create the the financial incentive to our utility to invest in the distribution system. um it it allows them to collect money upfront um or as they're making investments. So, reduces

[162:00] their financial risk to making investments. And we saw the first product of that with an a plan that really seeks to address some of the reliability concerns we've had for quite some time. Whether that be, you know, creating redundancy in our our substations that we don't currently have here in Boulder, rebuilding our our ones that are well past their rated life. Um, you know, so I think that is a tool, right? Our our regulators saw one of the barriers was the financial motivation. Um, you know, so making sure that those barriers are removed and and then we continue to advocate for the policies that um adopt these goals of the state. Right? we're not alone in in adopting decarbonization goals. The state has a low carbon code that's statewide now. Um, you know, I think those are the things that send the right signals um to our utility. You're correct. They're still motivated to maintain their their gas system. Um, and I think that's a a barrier we'll face. Um, but I think just

[163:01] being cognizant of that we we have conversations about what costs more and what doesn't cost more. I think we need to be cautious when our utility tells us that gas is cheap and it's going to remain cheap. Um, we should understand that there's financial motivations behind that narrative that maybe are inconsistent with what we're actually seeing in the data. >> Thank you. Great. Okay, let's um let's move on then to uh feedback from council. And I believe we have three questions. Um if somebody could provide it in the chat that would be helpful. Meantime, I'll read them. So uh first one is what questions or feedback does council have on the analysis equity considerations and engagement approach? Second question is what feedback does council have on the proposed policy recommendations? And the third question is does council support moving forward with looking at modifications to the building performance ordinance and smart rigs in 2026? As I said I think we could we could probably budget a couple couple minutesish um per per council member.

[164:02] Okay. If I could offer a clarification, uh, council member Shushard, on on the third one, um, this is specifically related to our proposal to address our over 50,000 foot buildings. So, in 2026, we would seek to just address the largest buildings. So, I just want to offer that clarification. So, the ones that are currently regulated by the state would be the one we would seek to accelerate. So, that's that that's what I meant by the last question. >> Great. Thank you for that, Carolyn. Okay, Mark. Then Taiisha and Lauren. >> Um I I support the basic um instincts of staff and what they're doing and the direction in which they want to go, but I think our conversation to date has kind of ignored the elephant in the room. We were quoted a um a number an expense for full electrification of $4.5 billion which is the equivalent of the of the

[165:02] entire budget of the city of Boulder over seven and a half years. Okay, that's that is not a feasible for us to contemplate um expending in in this manner. I I I don't know how you would think that we could do that and where those funds are going to come from. Um to give you another number, that's the equivalent of about $45,000 for every man, woman, and child who lives in Boulder. Um so I would like to get where you want to go, >> but I don't think we can get to that place um in the manner in which you suggest. I also do have a real problem with the end of life um regulations because some people are simply not going to be able to afford it and uh I don't know if that would be considered an equity matter um but it certainly seems to me it it it's impacting people who have less means. If

[166:01] you have a gas stove in a $4 million house, it's really not that big a deal uh to take it out and put in a panel and go electric. It just is not. But if you've been living for 30 years in a house that you bought for $80,000 now is worth a lot more money, but you don't have the kind of income for that, that's a challenge. That's that's a major problem. But unless you tell me that the $4.5 billion is not real, I'm looking at that and saying, how are we going to get from point A to point B uh with a number that that is simply beyond measure? um for for this community uh to afford. >> Yeah. And apologies if I could just offer a clarification. Um just just the $4.5 billion that um Ben referenced would be that the capital cost associated with the replacement. Um we certainly wouldn't propose that

[167:01] that's um borne by the the city directly in any way. And um I think uh in our technical report I think we seek to um also clarify that that's not wholly different um from you know what would be typical investments. So as we talked about end of life right we're we're trying that doesn't account for what people would otherwise have had to spend um when equipment reached end of life. So just wanted to offer that clarification when you look at that 4 and a.5 billion number because I I think we might have make created some confusion that we're not advocating like that's incentives or that's the cost of municipal u buildings electrifying. Um it's it's the entirety of the um >> bestest that you provide us with a breakdown of what those costs look like so that we know which are going to be incentives from the state or from the

[168:00] feds which are going to be costs imposed upon uh homeowners uh which are costs that we can bear at the level of the of the city. Um, that number, as I said, is is not sustainable. But if there are subcomponents of it that are, I'd like to know what they are and be able to look at this a little more holistically rather than just take that number and go, um, you know, we can't do that. I'd like to know more about what we can do. >> Mark, do you mind if I call you real quick on that? could because just to Carolyn just just to check in if I understood that correctly that's a number that would be paid over decades to replace equipment that dies and you would have to replace that equipment anyway. So it it it's a it's a um it's an amount that will have to be spent over decades kind of anyway. Um and it it's a question of where it gets spent whether it's on electric or gas or other infrastructure. I I did not understand

[169:00] that number to be limited to uh end of life transfers. If it is, I'd like to know that. I'm simply saying we were given a number. I'd like to get a breakdown and maybe I can agree with you, Aaron. >> So maybe what we might ask is a clarification as a followup. >> Yeah, I think we we get that feedback for for sure and we can come back with some clarification on the numbers. Yeah, appreciate that. >> And I will be very happy. Thank you. >> All right. Thanks, folks. Mark, are you anything else from you? >> No, I'm good. Okay, in our 16 minutes left, we've got Lauren, Nicole, Matt, and Tara. >> Thank you. It's M, not Taiisha. >> I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Taiisha. Excuse me. My apologies. Taiisha and then Lauren, Nicole, and Matt and Terra. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Um so um you know generally generally um supportive um of what has been presented um have some

[170:00] some concerns around just getting more information around the baseline of where community is on on these transitions like what percentage what areas. Um I also just had um you know under the equity considerations in addition to really grateful about the streamlining um still had some concerns around just the the who decides aspect. So I'm still feeling like our equity definitions are like half of what equity is which is um more than representation and um access to programs um but actually the ability to make decisions. So um just would love to to see some more there there as it relates to that aspect of the work as well as accountability systems and what does that look like I forgot what the other thing I was going to say so I'll just say it another time. Oh, well, I'll just continue to say I would love to see a better a more stronger alignment with

[171:01] the water conversations and um also was just really grateful um about the community solar component, the workforce development components. Um there's just a lot that um I'm really excited about seeing more of around the policy components and then just in general I appreciated some of the fiscal notes components but I look forward to continued um use of the fiscal notes um particularly as we're considering tradeoffs and prioritization. Thank you so much. >> Thank you Tesa Lauren then Nicole and Matt. >> Thank you. Um thank you for including us at this stage. I think um some of this confusion is maybe because of some of the structure in the packet I think led to a little bit of confusion both in terms of timeline and lack of specifics but I think that's partially related to um bringing us in on the earlier side of this project. Um so I appreciate that.

[172:01] Um and in a reading the packet I initially had a lot of concerns um because it seemed quite aggressive but kind of understanding that these are phased and um that you are continuing to have conversations and understand where there are opportunities and constraints um in making these changes I think is really helpful. Um and I really encourage you to continue that so that any new policies def are definitely um taking those kinds of things into consideration. I appreciated the focus on the larger scale commercial spaces and for residential um looking at mostly equipment replacement and keeping in mind that sort of when financially feasible aspect of it um you know related to panel upgrades and existing

[173:00] systems. I just think we do need to be careful about all of that. Um I would love to see kind of and maybe these are related or maybe these are separate but um how we support the transition for split or shared ownership where either residential or commercial buildings um aren't completely outright owned by one entity. I think that that can make a lot of this transition um significantly more complicated in terms of who is responsible for costs and various other things and who has the power to make these decisions. Um and then also on the resiliency side just how can we support and incentivize that as well. Thank you. >> Thanks Lauren Nicole then Matt and Terra. Thank you. I also um just appreciate you bringing this to us for some feedback and just for us to get some clarity on on what you're headed toward as well. Um

[174:01] and I appreciate just the uh the scale the time scale at which you're thinking about these changes too. Um so for kind of my my response to the third question is yes. um with some um some conditions and it's really around thinking whether there are any changes that we would need to make to our um state uh policy or legislative policy um advocacy in order to accommodate this um because I really do think we we we need to be thinking about um the changes that might be needed to protect our community um and not just residents but businesses too ensure that as we're becoming being completely dependent on electricity. We're getting clean, renegable, sustainable energy um that can withstand increasingly extreme um climate uh pressures as well as remain affordable to people in community, which is a tall order, right? in in this world that we're living, this partnership that we

[175:01] have with our utility provider to ensure that people um the businesses and and residents won't be um harmed by a a system that's not quite ready for it yet. Um and and I just continue to remain concerned. I don't understand how um how our utility provider gets to the level of production that they're going to need. Um especially with data centers and some of these other things coming into the mix. um with the clean energy that we're looking for. And so I I guess this seems like an opportunity to try to um nudge some um focus on on outcomes. And I'm just I don't mean to co-opt this um this this project with those um outcomes driven uh conversations, but it does feel like an opportune moment to be thinking about them. Um and then you know I think one of the other uh one of the other things that I would be curious just to explore a little bit more is whether there is um a point in thinking

[176:01] about reducing greenhouse gas emissions where the sort of embodied carbon um question starts to influence the the tipping point at which it becomes beneficial to make this change right if if there is a case and I I don't understand the the um HVAC systems or anything about how they work, but if there's a case where we really are having or somebody's having to tear down, you know, half a building in order to make this change, does that sort of negate any benefit that we're going to get? And I don't know the answer to that, but I think it would be a really um something helpful for us to know and for the community to know as we're moving forward. Is there a a point where um we're really would do uh do more of what we're trying not to do if we were to make this change. So um that's that's my only other comment, but I I really appreciate you all thinking about this and and how we start to get to where we need to be. Thank you.

[177:03] >> Thanks, Nicole. Um Matt, then Tara, then Aaron, >> I'm gonna just say yes. Great questions have been uh posed and comments. I don't need to add to it. I just say kind of a large ditto with where that's going. So, uh reliability is my biggest concern with where we're how we're going to achieve all this. But um great job and thanks again staff for bringing us into this at this moment. Um and thinking about uh it so intently uh which I think is so hard when there's so many tendrils and nexies uh applying to this work. So I appreciate that. >> Okay, Tara then Aaron. First, thanks to you, Ryan, for keeping us on track. Amazing. Um, the way you're doing this, I just want to say obviously from the way I talk, you know that I'm reticent. I don't have to say that. So, Carolyn, when it comes to you being optimistic, I'm your opposite pessimistic person. Um, so I worry that we'll do something that Excel isn't ready for, then we'll

[178:01] have done it, then they can't handle it. You know, these are the kind of things that I don't want to see. I know the question is is how much do you push them or you know so that they do more electric and less natural gas versus what if we do this too soon. That's number one. So I'm worried about that. I also think the state targets are good. I don't know why we need to be more stringent. I'm just throwing that out there. There's something to be said for working together as a state since our state has a good vision for this. So, you know, whether we should even be more stringent, I say you'd have to talk me into that because I don't see why. Um, I know that's not that popular. I'm sure I'm not going to get any letters from constituents saying, "Good job on your speech." Um, I am worried about government overreach always. And so, we've gotten a few letters where let me keep my, you know, gas stove. And I know we had uh some people love their new

[179:00] convection whatever stove, but people in general like to keep their stoves. And so I worry that we are just being too bossy. And you know, I'm just going to leave that out there. I know that um I'm sure that the other stoves are great, but a lot of people just don't want change. So it has to be like a a pretty big reason. I promise you that I'm not going to put my fireplace on if there's another outage because I do want to live a long life. And I don't think there's anything else that I have to say because I didn't even need to say it. I'm sure you already knew what I was going to say, right? All of you. And that's it. Good. >> Okay, Erin. >> Excellent. Well, I just want to thank everybody for the phenomenal work. Uh really appreciate that. And Caroline, thank you for putting out that additional information a couple of days ago. I thought that was incredibly helpful. Really helped me understand what we were contemplating and why we are getting the recommendations we're getting. So, thank you for that. So, I

[180:02] do think that we're on the right track. Um, I do support the next steps in 2026. Um, just as you're moving forward, I think looking for ways to um make things simpler rather than more complicated is ideal. And I know you're thinking about that already, Jonathan. You mentioned that as well, too. uh like the idea of take um taking smart regs and integrating it into the new requirements and not having two sets of requirements. Um also considering just the adapting the the state level requirements rather than doing something additional and complicated. I'm not saying that is the answer but it seems like it would be simpler. So definitely worth uh considering. And then just going back to the the area of my questioning um about the uh end of life that that is an area where I do think we should tread cautiously and carefully that we want to make sure we address the equity concerns that we address the technical feasibility. Um and so um I know you all will be thinking about that carefully as you go down next steps. But that's that's just the one that stuck out to me

[181:00] as the one we probably need to be the most cautious about to not have unintended uh consequences for people on fixed income or people with lower incomes and things like that and also technical feasibility. So again, huge thanks uh to the team and I'm looking forward to seeing this move forward over the years. >> Okay. Is there anybody else besides me? No, I don't see anyone. Okay. Um, well, I also don't like being bossy. Um, but I also don't like that we're headed for a climate that is six degrees hotter and is going to look like Albuquerquey's and that we have not managed this problem over decades and we have work to do and we have to do it in a way that's going to be uh workable for our community. And I I'm I'm so I'm a yes on your on the third question. um on moving forward. I I appreciate the the framework that you've brought forward and all the thought and care that's gone into it and and that

[182:00] it's coming to us early. Um on the first question about engagement, I had a I had a couple thoughts. One was there was a um a point about um deemphasizing some um engagement with smaller homes, smaller units. I think that was partly because of the um it's just it's you know it's just a larger number of smaller entities and um it made me think about the subject of engaging more with homeowner associations which I think I would like to add to this the question of engagement. So both both to address that matter but also more generally that we have you know over half of homes for sale today in literally today in Boulder I did a Zillow search today I think it was 53% of them are in HOAs um the majority of incentives and programs we have for um homes are targeted to individual homeowners

[183:00] um and residents but but the majority really are administered by by a either a board or or a um some kind of a management company. And so I just think there's such an incredible opportunity to think about um one going to this relatively small smallalish number of of administrators essentially and helping number one to ensure that the majority I think the majority of residents who live in HOAs know their by right authority to do a lot of these these um these upgrades to their homes including energy upgrades incling um uh making um occupancy and ADUs reforms to doing vegetable gardens. So just like making sure that people who live in Boulder can go to one place and see this is actually you know this is the case. um also to consider targeting administrators of HOAs as platforms for engagement with those those community

[184:01] members as a way to um just uh have some scale and then thirdly to look at HOAs as a way as as a place to help to coordinate specs or collaboration with with shared projects could be energy project solar rooftop and so on and some of these things I've just mentioned are ideas that council members and planning board members have just said to me in the last 48 hours because everybody seems to be excited that I talked to about this HOA thing. So, I would love to see HOAs more included in the engagement approach. Um, the second uh thing on engagement as a as a suggestion would be, you know, back to the the $4 billion uh data point that created so much discussion. Yeah. I mean, clear clearly ex um providing a picture to the public about what we're talking about and what's what's what's the opportunities are for us. um and how we do that is so important and I would like to see you know in in a future iteration of this discussion um some presentation

[185:02] of the of the innovations and the changes that we're excited about are going to happen as as the market evolves for example as we've seen happen with electric vehicles I mean they've you know come down in cost to more or less parody with vehicles which are already you know quite expensive that's that's another story um but the technology adoption curve leads to reduced costs and you people who work in this field will tell you that. And also there's a number of specific innovations. For example, I just became aware of um I don't know if it's it's available in Colorado, but you can get, you know, right now if you want to do a home battery in your in your garage, a power wall, you need to get an electrician and do do a bunch of work, but but we could theoretically have um our utility provider install a um a switch that allows you just to plug things in so that you can go to Costco or whatever, buy a battery um for your home and plug it in, no electrician required. that that technology exists easily and it's just one of the things that you know we could be excited about. So I I'm just

[186:00] proposing that in in future discussions about what we're talking about that we provide some you know optimistic view of the technology future and maybe we can't predict the future but but say like look these are things that we expect to happen in principle um okay and then finally on policy your which I think was the second question um I just have two suggestions one is to sorry on this on this policy um one is to get really focused on what are the business models that we need for our energy system to deliver for us and that certainly is ex around Excel but it's other business models and um I think we'll be in the right place when we look at the the the costs that um that our residents are experiencing with electrification um and it's and it's actually reducing their costs and increasing reliability um in practice. Uh and then my the final thing on um this topic is just

[187:00] um as we think about bu buildings and communities, the the title of this whole thing, I I really hope we can lift up the subject of our the previous discussion tonight, which was, you know, around letting people live in more space efficient homes in walkable places near transit and incentivizing that because the the the we're talking through this this discussion today about how are we going to incentivize um a more you know more state-of-the-art modern homes and communities I would argue that that fundamental to that and is that um we are also talking about the the subject of living in a in a walkable more space efficient place and that we should be incorporating the incentives that we're discussing um to to promote that too and make sure that people understand that that kind of living um is is a climate forward um approach approach as well. And of course, the things are interdependent, so not to suggest that it's one or the other. Um, okay. Thanks. Sorry, I think I took the longest one

[188:00] there. And I and the one who took us 00. So, I think that's it for me. I don't see any more hands from council. Can I go back to the climate team, Jonathan and crew, do you have anything else from us? You have what you needed. What can we do else? >> Yeah, I'll I'll jump in and give a just a 20 second uh wrap up from my perspective. First, I just really want to appreciate the staff team that's uh done incredible work to get this before you tonight. Um, I think you probably recognize that it was a little messy and it was expected to be because we came at this from a very high level long-term plan, but also gave very specific actions and examples. And so, I use that term uh created a little bit of altitude sickness kind of going from high level to deep in the weeds. Um, so thanks for sticking with us, but I really want to acknowledge the team that has gotten us here. Um, it has been an extraordinary amount of work and it's a great foundation and tonight was what we were looking for from council. We wanted your feedback. This was an early check-in

[189:02] with you. These things are going to come back. We hear you loud and clear about the concerns and issues that you raised tonight. Gives us a lot of direction moving forward. So, thanks. >> Okay. Thank you, Jonathan. Chris, any any other business uh from your side? >> That brings us to the end for tonight. >> Okay, then at 9:04 p.m. I will gavvel close. >> Thanks everyone for the great discussion.