April 9, 2026 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[5:07] A count no there's no council action today and Oh. There we go. Sorry. Good evening. This is council member Adams. There is no council action tonight and the purpose of the study session is information sharing and for the council to provide staff input on the facilities investment strategy and the recreation center scenarios. This item is scheduled for 2 hours. We will start with a 30-minute staff presentation. Um it is a bit lengthy due to the complexity of the topic as you can imagine, but we really want to make sure that we have an informed discussion. Our request is um and really the the the purpose or and the my request as your facilitator Mike fellow council members um is to to receive feedback on the questions um and if you can actually hold your

[6:00] questions until the the the presentation is complete, that would be wonderful. And then we will open for clarifying questions uh and and before we dive into more meaningful feedback. And excuse me, when we're done with those questions, we will watch the time and manage feedback um to ensure that we can get through everything and ensure that each council member has time to respond. Given that um we will provide uh responses to the questions shared by staff in advance and paste it into the chat for your ease. Um so, let's see. Um there more than half through here. Feel like should I go right in or do I pause now or do I do the council questions first or do I pause now and open it for our first presentation, which will be on the facilities investment strategy? First we're doing um Boulder Arts Blueprint. I'm just going by this little thing here. Sorry. Oh, sorry. Our bad then. Our bad. No, no, it's mine. All right, council member. It's

[7:01] mine. Um my bad. Actually, I love that we're starting with the arts in mind so we can get our creative juices flowing for the conversation that we're going to have on facilities investments where our creativity uh will be absolutely critical. So, I will turn it over to our incredible uh arts and culture staff. Or Noria. Thank you so much. I I love how you wove that creativity in there, council member. Uh council uh as you heard, our first item today is indeed an update on the Boulder Arts Blueprint. Uh truly exciting document I think that sets a shared vision for arts and culture citywide in alignment with our existing citywide strategic documents. What's really uh exceptional uh to me about this document is how much community engagement and voices went into this document to help shape how we feel about arts and culture generally. I hope you'll see that reflected in the blueprint on how much our community have appreciate and rely on the arts as

[8:01] connector, as soul nourisher, as healer, as innovator, as thought provoker and as you have seen in our new approach to arts and culture as economic driver. So, I'm thankful to all in our community including the Arts Commission who took part in shaping this, but selfishly I will call out our amazing staff who worked hard to um bring this amazing body of work to you today, which I am excited to know that my own mom who has been uh artist both personally and professionally is watching. What up, mommy? Uh so, with that I will turn it over to Lauren Click who will get us rolling. Hi, good evening all. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Lauren Click. I manage the Office of Arts and Culture within the City of Boulder Office of Cultural and Economic Development. Boulder's creative sector is a defining strength of our community and a key driver of economic vitality. The city is ranked among the top 10 most

[9:02] arts vibrant medium-sized communities in the US over and over again with creative employment three times higher than the national average. Boulder County has the nation's third highest concentrated concentration of artists per capita and some of whom are on this call with us today. In 2022, the nonprofit arts and culture sector generated $115 million in economic activity locally. With the arrival of Sundance Film Festival that opportunity is only growing. The future of Boulder's creative sector is your future, too. By the end of this talk tonight about our new cultural plan, the Boulder Arts Blueprint you'll know where Boulder's creative community is headed for the next decade and how you can share about it and participate in it and support it. Since we began this project in 2024, I will do a very quick overview of the project and the process and we will end

[10:01] with goals and questions for your insights. But first, I thank you from us two. Thank you so much to our consultants, to the Arts Commission, our advisory committee, um staff, city leadership, and all of our community members. Your questions for Council tonight. These are questions um we ask that you keep in mind as I talk through things. So, does Council have any questions regarding the Vision for the Arts big ideas, the seven goal framework? Does Council support the implementation approach? And are there any specific strategies or initiatives Council would like us to prioritize? So, what is the Boulder Arts Blueprint? This is a roadmap for the city and the community for the next 10 years. This connects a Vision for the Arts citywide to practical tools including policy,

[11:01] funding approaches, programs, and partnerships. And through this presentation, I'll walk you through the process and the vision and each of these seven goals and the strategies that are going to help us get to those goals. The Arts Blueprint is very intentionally aligned with the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan update. The update sets policy and the blueprint is strategy. Together with those plans, reflect a shared understanding that arts and culture are not stand-alone amenities, but are absolutely essential civic infrastructure. As you know, the CER framework sets the city's generational goals. You'll see these goals in the Arts Blueprint reworked into their connections with the arts. So, how the arts can support the city's long-term goals and how those goals support our creative community. For example, the CER goals are now integrated into the grant program, creating alignment directly from the work of our arts grantees all the way to the community's broader established

[12:00] goals. We also have an extensive set of guiding documents that have been integrated. As Naria mentioned, this plan builds on a lot of listening and learning. We looked at what's happening in Boulder and across the country, learning from other creative cities and national best practices. And it is all grounded in local real data like from our artist census, venue study, and reports from our grantees and other local research. We estimate that we reached nearly 2,000 community members with our engagement. Nearly 1,200 people completed the community questionnaire. We held conversations, one-on-one interviews. We met people where they were like at bike to work day and at rec centers and Boulder Arts Week. For example, this focus group at Yoga Pearl with contemplative artists. The Boulder Arts Commission approved the Arts Blueprint on March 25th with some recommended adjustments to the organization of the full document.

[13:05] Our Vision for the Arts. Creative expression is at the core of Boulder. This is based on the foundations, the community conversations, the research um that's how this vision was developed. The vision summarizes our community's possibility and potential for arts, culture, and creative endeavors. The big ideas are some themes that are woven through this work. Our seven goals. The blueprint is formatted into seven goals. I'm going to walk through each of these goals one at a time and the actions listed with each goal are just some of the examples of the ways that we already work towards these goals and some potential new ways that we can work towards them over the next 10 years. Part of our job in this office is to figure out what we can afford, what we have capacity for, and what will be the most effective. Also, I do want to note in the context of your full meeting discussion this evening that a lot of

[14:00] this work is funded through the Arts, Culture, and Heritage Tax, the 1% for Art policy. Some is done in partnership with our colleagues, our excellent colleagues in other departments of the city, and our partners now citywide. We also intend to open an arts fund that's similar to the Play Foundation to help with independent fundraising and are also now involved in redevelopment projects where there's more potential for independent funding. Goal number one, accessibility and inclusion. This goal is about making arts and culture accessible to everyone in Boulder. This means that we will continue programs in neighborhoods, access to our $2 million grant program, continue to translate the grant program. We've already added a bedrock category in 2026 to encourage collaboration, accessibility, sustainability. And we'll partner with our OCED colleagues on creative use of commercial

[15:00] spaces in new development. Goal two, entrepreneurship and workforce. This goal is about supporting Boulder's artists, creative workforce, and entrepreneurs. We want to make sure that creative careers are sustainable where artists and makers can earn a living wage and build successful businesses. So, we will continue professional development grants, continue research, continue the business of the Arts program with Boulder County Arts Alliance. This year, we will brought collaborations with our new colleagues in the Small Business Development Center and support creative micro preneurs. And with a Community Foundation to support some back of house services. Goal three, reputation and identity. This goal is about celebrating arts and culture as part of our reputation and our identity. We will work to keep that alive through marketing campaigns like Boulder Arts

[16:01] Week and broadening our partners and starting a poet laureate program. Public art and public space. This goal focuses on expanding public art and creative expression across Boulder's public spaces. This means continuing our 1% for Art policy and partnership on citywide projects and events. For new programs, potential new programs that could include partnering with developers to expand the 1% for Art program and encouraging creative meanwhile uses like murals or temporary installations during construction. Three more. Goal number five, nonprofits and institutions. This goal focuses on strengthening Boulder's nonprofits and cultural institutions. We will continue our impact by funding and promoting their work, continuing research, and gathering our leaders. We look forward to being more involved in encouraging cultural

[17:01] and creative work through economic development projects and adaptive reuse projects. Goal number six, experimentation and innovation. This goal is about encouraging experimentation and innovation in Boulder's creative community. We will continue to support artists who are pushing boundaries through our experiments in public art series and low barrier grants and sponsorships. We will continue to make the grant program more accessible. For example, this year, we have expanded first come, first serve grants from 10% new grantees last year up to 80% new grantees for the program this year. Finally, scenes and affinities. This goal is about recognizing and nurturing Boulder's creative scenes, the organic communities that form around shared interests. We will continue to support organizations of all sizes and encourage gathering and work to help

[18:00] those spaces and networks thrive by supporting the nighttime economy, reviewing policies, exploring temporary project-based space rental, and more. Finally, before I open it back up to you for discussion, a few quick slides to help us translate this Vision for the Arts and all of this work into how we hope Boulder will be in 10 years. If you are an artist, we'll work for you to have more opportunities, stronger networks, and a recognized voice at the heart of our ecosystem. If you're a business, we will work so you have more opportunities, more excuse me, more connections, more foot traffic, a livelier community, and more arts and culture as a tool for talent attraction. If you're a nonprofit administrator, we'll work for you to have more stable resources, stronger partnerships, and more visibility.

[19:00] And finally, for all of us, more creativity around town, more affordable events, and a welcoming, inclusive, economically thriving creative city. I will put the questions back up here for Council. Thank you all. And I will put up very briefly our image credits as a good steward of images. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um that was a wonderful presentation and just a Herculean effort to um ensure that level of depth of community feedback and engagement. Um I look forward to our Council uh member feedback on the questions that you have provided and put in the chat box that I don't see yet, but I I to soon. They are coming soon. Thank you.

[20:01] Sorry, okay, let me just go back to the other one. Am I not looking in the right place? Hold on one second, please. Okay. There they are. Thank you. Thank you. Um does council have questions or feedback regarding the arts blue vision for the arts, big ideas and the seven-goal framework? Are we taking them all? Oh, right. That's my turn. Okay. Yeah, we'll we'll start with questions. Questions around the blueprint arts, the big ideas, and the seven-goal framework. I see Tina. All right. Uh thank you so much for the presentation. Uh we've been waiting for this for a while. Um I had just one really high-level

[21:00] question. There's a lot of new ideas and um a lot of new activities as well that are suggested in this uh blueprint. And I'm wondering if we anticipate more um a need for more staff or if um and if the artists themselves will continue to get the same amount of money, arts arts groups and other direct art investment, or will we anticipate more staffing? Mhm. Sure, thank you for the question. Um one of the things that I think we need to take into account as we work on all of these priorities over the next 10 years are funding resources, staff capacity, um the opportunities that arise with partnerships outside of our office, which is a big movement for this blueprint in particular. Um as far as funding goes for our artists, we did increase Well, the grant program moved to $2 million this year.

[22:01] Um and all of the grant categories increased. We did sort of an an inflation increase because the amount for each grant hadn't increased since 2020 or before. Um so I think if you're an artist applying to the grant program, then you would be receiving more funding, and nonprofits, too. You'll be receiving more funding through the grant program. Um do you want to say anything else, Mark, about staffing? Yeah, I'm in staffing. Good evening, council. Mark Wolfe, assistant city manager. Uh I think Lauren covered it well in her presentation that um you know, we hope that this is not only aspirational as a document, but a way to leverage existing city funds out in community in different and new ways, um including trying to attract uh private investment in different areas. That certainly is investment we hope goes to artists and local organizations. Um our individual staffing levels is something we always look at. I I think we feel

[23:00] like we're in in pretty good shape now and and also recognize that uh the demand on staff across the board, both arts and culture staff and in general, is always uh high, but um you know, we feel good about our current work plan and and excited about some of the near-term opportunities and our collaboration across our new office of cultural and economic development. Okay. And then my other question is, again, high-level. I love the idea of art everywhere, but I am concerned about vibrancy of hubs. Are we balancing those two ideas um both from a funding perspective and just being realistic about the size of our city? Sure. And just to to clarify, do you mean um in terms of um the the community hubs and others that we're calling out in our comp plan uh draft? Yes, and also similarly the institutions or the I mean, I think

[24:00] there was some good language about investing in higher impact efforts, but then to trying to balance all of this, and it's really more just to set expectations with the community. Like what will the level of art be throughout the community versus concentrated in some other areas? That makes sense. Lauren, do you want to pick up on the institutions piece? Yeah, that's a um a really excellent point. Um Sadly, we cannot have art everywhere, though I do I would see it as like a 50-year vision, right? I think. Um and we have this year the two things that makes me think of um this year we have expanded this bedrock category of supporting giving additional funding to organizations that are acting as bedrocks and working on collaboration. Those are nonprofits, but they're institutions that are doing a lot of work in the community around collaboration with smaller entities, accessibility, sustainability. Um and

[25:00] funding those entities to help fund the rest of the creative economy, right? And those like smaller organizations. Um the other piece is that we do um through public art and through our creative neighborhoods program fund projects specifically in neighborhoods, and we very specifically try to do one in each subcommunity every year, every 2 years to make sure that we're like sharing where things are happening. Um And we used actually we used the racial equity plan last year when we were not able to get into the racial equity tool, excuse me. When we were not able to get into different neighborhoods, we took that program back through the racial equity tool, and then the next round of applications, now they're going to be in all of the neighborhoods that we did not have applications from before. So I think we have a couple ways that we're trying to work towards making art accessible as close as possible to your home. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you.

[26:03] All right. Next up, we have Rob. Thank you, Tasha. Let me lower my hand. Um Lauren, thank you so much. Um following the blueprint, I was inspired to do the self-guided tour, and I learned the names of so many pieces of art that I didn't know around Boulder, like uh one of my favorites, the 55 Degree. I never knew what that was called. Um but anyway, my question to you, um the micropreneurs, as you call them, the artists, and you and I had had a brief conversation about this one time. I'm curious how the back-of-the-house services would work and who would provide those services for them. That's a great question. Thank you. So we have two programs this year that we're already in discussions with. One would be to support a creative business cohort with our new colleagues at the Small Business Development Center now that we're integrated in this Office of

[27:00] Cultural and Economic Development. So that would be helping individual creative artists or creatives, artists, form their own businesses. There's a lot of work that the Small Business Development Center does that really directly overlaps with artists as businesses. So there's that work. Um separately, uh we call it back-of-house services, but think of HR, marketing, your taxes, um your bookkeeping, right? There's a lot of this work that we found that um in our research, a lot of organizations were saying, "We need help with this." And we think there's an opportunity for us to get together all of these nonprofits and get them started on um helping find some resources for that. So we've actually been in discussion with the Community Foundation to roll out a grant over the summer, a collaborative grant. Um and that grant will fund like sort of a

[28:02] let's say that you have a marketing company in Boulder, you could like work with some nonprofits, not just arts and culture nonprofits, nonprofits that are connected to the Community Foundation, right? Health nonprofits, housing, that um you could start marketing for all of these entities together. All of those nonprofits pay an amount every month, and then they get marketing services. They get bookkeeping services, right? So how do we um plug into our broader nonprofit community to help everybody um get the the support that they need so they can do what they're good at. They're artistic directors, right? They want to create. They want to make things. They want to um showcase and dance. So let's try to help them do that primarily. Thank you. Mhm. All I wanted to Any other questions, Rob? services now. Thank you. All right. Thank you kindly. Nicole. Thanks so much for the presentation, Lauren. Um my question it it um is just around at the funding for some of this

[29:01] work. So since 2A is tied to sales tax revenues, um and that money is a big driver of implementation for a lot of the goals that are laid out here, um can you speak a little bit to how the goals might adjust in years when our sales tax revenues are down or they're not keeping up with inflation? Yes, thank you. And I'm um I appreciate that question very, very much now that we are our arts community is tied to a a tax in some ways. So um as uh most of our funding, outgoing funding, is going to the grant program. So it's a $2 million grant program, and in different ways we're able to adjust that, and we would because we have so much research from the community, we'd be able to reflect where we think we should move in and move out, right? And we would probably still go back out and ask people like, where do you think we should sort of pull in and tighten? Where could we

[30:01] expand in upcoming future years if that's the case? Um but it's also the idea behind um the arts and culture fund to be able to seek independent funding to support our grant programs with the arts and like all of the other um programs that we manage um to try to have some external funding um that is not necessarily dependent upon uh tax, and you know, we'll see how successful we are, but we'll try my best to. Thank you. All right. Thank you, and up next is Matt. Thank you. Um appreciate the work that's gone into this. I know it's a long time coming. It certainly is the timing's well. Follows the 2A ballot measure where people are clamoring for what that investment brings. You know, a word that came up then and and I think is is mentioned twice in the in the blueprint, and I want to circle to it ask couple questions. The word

[31:00] transformative. Um so I think that's really what people are like aiming for and climbing for is that transformative shift and investment. And so my question comes around um how does how does this blueprint cuz I didn't really see it, but I see permitting it improvements mentioned. How do we deal with the adaptability to be able to pivot rapidly to a transformative project? If we don't have the resources to plan long term, but there's an opportunity for one to come quickly through a public private partnership, how are we set up to more rapidly grab that opportunity and and make sure that we can make that reality. Um and so I'm just sort of curious how in the blueprint we're going to maintain that the adaptability to be ready to grab those transformative projects and and see them come to reality. That's a great question. Thank you. Um do you have something in mind by the way? Are you like seeding something that we can Well, I mean there's stuff floating around the community, but there's no secret like you know,

[32:00] obviously the creative campus that BMOCA is is actively working on like like there's opportunities like that. There's a few other floating around where they're looking at viability, but at the end of the day like if it's not us driving the whole thing, how are we structured to be able to rapidly see those opportunities and pounce on them, and more importantly maybe have resources standing by to then be able to pivot into those cuz the worst thing we could do I guess would be to see a project and not be able to pounce on it cuz we don't have skin in the game. Um and then it you know, floats on by. So that's what I'm sort of curious about is how are we planning to have the resources stocked up, but the ability to pivot to those. I might jump in on that Lauren. I I think it's a a good question Council member. There's been some good examples recently of I I think the city really leaning into those opportunities. You mentioned the the NOBO example with BMOCA's campus. Um there's some city support behind that. Um certainly we had to be creative and and pivot from a a zoning

[33:00] and land use standpoint. Um uh on that particular project. We've been active partners in a uh proposal on on Pearl Street in the Boulder Junction area, um and also exploring opportunities on the East Book end which arts and culture will most certainly be an an anchor there as well. I I think in each of those those are taking a a lot of uh time. They're different complexity of projects for sure. Um and there's always a time horizon associated with those. Um but I I I think what's um really um an opportunity with uh emphasizing uh culture as a part of uh our our economic development efforts is really being able to be more nimble and move faster in these areas and have tools in place that can help even incentivize some of the things we want to see from an arts and culture standpoint uh across all parts of the city. So I I think there's some really good examples that we can point to. And we're always looking at how how can we make these go go faster? How can we be more proactive as a city? How can we get

[34:00] them in different areas? So I I think we recognize the opportunity. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Ryan. Thank you, Lauren, for this great presentation. Um I have a question about the um the way that Sundance and the blueprint work together, and I guess it's really two questions. So one is um what are the ways in which we hope Sundance will strengthen the work of this blueprint, um and then on the other side of it are there any um concerns or risks that Sundance brings to it um which we should be thoughtful about. For For example, are I'm just thinking what example would be maybe local artists finding that they're now competing for more resources or something along those lines. Yeah, great question. I'm surprised it took us this long to get to the Sundance

[35:00] question. So um I think Sundance is Sundance Film Festival and Sundance Institute are an incredible catalyst for all of this work. Um and it's going to bring increased visibility for all of our community including our artists. New younger audiences. Boulder is an aging community, so it's going to bring back some of our audiences, bring in new audiences, bring in international audiences. And um actually have a few things that are already in the works that are that are um exciting in ways that I can see it positively growing like the all all boats raising, and then I do have some thoughts about challenges. Um But so far we have seen already investments in venues, renovation of venues. Um Those are going to be available for year-round use, and venues and affordability of venues and use of venues has been a conversation that we

[36:00] heard all the way through the blueprint, right? Having Sundance Institute in town uh year-round, that is an entire new workforce of creatives coming into town, right? Um improved connect heavy connectivity with CU. Already CU is talking about how to make it easier to man get around on their campus. They're making it easier to reserve spaces. That's a that's like a something new that I think came out of those discussions, right? The Film Commission hosting their Schmoozers. If you get to go with them, they're super fun. Create Boulder's been hosting talks to connect the local arts community with Sundance very specifically about programming. Um we're working um talking to Visit Boulder about a storytelling campaign specifically about the arts community, so when people are in town, they see what is here, and they can come back to visit our arts and culture community. And then finally we've been discussing how to work on uh commercial vacancies while Sundance Film Festival is happening, right? To to

[37:00] have artists our local creative community showcased very front and center in that time, right? Um and all that being said the risks and some of the concerns really a lot of the research that we saw it was actually before Sundance Film Festival coming to Boulder was announced. So a lot of the risks and the concerns were things that were go were in progress either way. So artists facing uh financial strain, facing um having hard time with venues and infrastructure, finding spaces to create, finding spaces to rehearse and dance. Um and then just the the financial strain of being an an artist in Boulder. Um that's just to say the blueprint was already pointing in this direction of how we help support and build infrastructure, how we build funding pathways and resources and opportunities and support local artists. And I think

[38:00] Sundance Film Festival gives us this catalyst opportunity to like use these uh this like people coming into town this international audience, right? This huge opportunity of people that are artists and creatives themselves to come and show off what we have here. Is that Awesome. Thank you so much. Sure. Um I had a question about um Terry, you got anything on this round before I just want to make sure. Thank you, Beth. Okay. Um so I I love it. I love the general direction. These are more like little tweaks and things. Um curious why um goal number six around experiential innovation couldn't be like a cross-cutting theme. I feel I'm I'm I'm it's I'm I don't want to go into comments yet, but it's giving lots of goals. And so I was just curious if you know, if there's could potentially be some interweaving. So I was just curious why you all decided to make that a

[39:01] separate goal and not and not try and embed it into one of the existing goals. That's a great question, and it's um it has been a very interesting discussion. I think um or I know that things that came out of research and discussion with the community is that there's a very particular interest in experimentation and innovation and calling that out as something particular to Boulder and something we need to focus on. And that's why it's its own individual goal. Experiments in public art, but also making it easier for uh artists like emerging artists to have access to funding. Um Right. So that's already right. The it's certainly these are all like It's giving cross cutting theme. But I did that in comments then. But that was just a general question that I had. The other is around where is the baseline data? Oh, sure.

[40:00] I see data points around but like where I I just going and this can also bleed into comments but I just had a hard time finding where I love the KPI section but then there wasn't like a baseline section that let me know where we are over the last few years and particularly when I talked to the arts community members from different segments. Some a theme that came up was just being able to have those quantified numbers more and just you know to be able to quantify that. So, and and it also will help with the prioritization as well. Oh, sure. So, we rolled this out in multiple phases and so the first phase in the discovery part has a lot of data in it. It has a lot of the comparative data, our peer cities. But I I'm just saying like I don't need all of that data but I do need data that's specific to the KPIs that you're recommending to determine what the stretch would be.

[41:01] So, that's that's what I was asking. I don't I'm not suggesting it doesn't exist. I was saying it's not in this document that is stating goals and recommend making recommendations. And this is the place that I would need to know where I don't need to know all of those things but I just was curious if I missed it in this document. And that'll be a comment that I have later. Thank you. >> That's fine. Yeah. >> And um when you were talking about the recommendation for um the buildings having oh, sorry. This is a crosswalk with the facilities conversation. But I'm noticing some potential tension between supporting nonprofits but then also asking nonprofits for those of for those that are maybe leasing a building from the city to pay more of the costs. So, I'm seeing a tension between the two plans there.

[42:00] Maybe somebody from facilities can come from the facilities conversation can come on to just nuance that little section there. Basically, the facility one of the recommendations of the facility plan was to have the lease buildings owners sorry, the buildings that the city owns that are leased for those lessees to cover more of the maintenance costs and operational costs. So, on the one hand they're going to see an increase here but on the other hand there is this additional support for back of the house. So, I was just wondering are the two shops talking to each other in in that in that conversation? I'm I'm happy to take that one Councilmember Aid. It's a it's a fair observation. There in many of our plans are some kind of competing goals and values. Um I I think there is value in providing more affordable space for our our cultural institutions and at the same time you know we've had many tenants that have enjoyed a dollar lease

[43:02] essentially kind of free free space and so there there's probably something in the middle. I I think our recent work with the Dairy Center is a good example of that of being able to provide affordable space and a path for ownership and sustainability for both the city and for our nonprofit organizations. And so it's in in that spirit that that we hope to work with all of our nonprofits that are in city spaces going forward. Awesome. Thank you so much. Those are all my questions. We will go ahead and move on to the next. Thank you so much Lauren for those responses as well. Um the next question is does Council support the implementation approach to advance the arts blueprint priorities aligning with the broader city goals? Oh, I like that. Okay, we got some thumbs up. Any Okay, we got another one. All right,

[44:01] you know this is a direction thing too. Like do you feel good about this direction? Do you feel good about this approach? I will say all right, I'm coming back. Anybody have anything? Okay. I will say going back to the baseline data and the prioritization. I feel like there's just too much and so I I am supportive of the approach but I am concerned about how much of it is and this goes back to Tina's comment around capacity and if additional staffing and just the realities of we just had three wildfires in not not that long of a succession. So, I think where I'm feeling like it's not necessarily missing the moment is just how the polycrisis that we are facing right now and and that prioritization is more than just our councilmates saying what we want to see but it really should be responsive of the data and what the data is saying. And that's where I was going back to those KPIs. It's really hard for me. There's very long lists and I love all of those approaches but I do have concerns around the staff capac

[45:02] current cap staff capacity to do it and then even just in light of the polycrisis that I mentioned before. I also just feel like the arts community might need to be doing a lot of work around climate grief and just grief in general. You know what I mean? Like just going back to what Councilmember Benjamin said around just the adapt the ability to adapt to the moment. You know, I think of the Marshall fire and how the community rallied so powerfully and the arts community were central to that. And so if we have our tentacles in too many places. I've been watching a lot of octopus films. Then you know, I just have some general concerns around that. So, I would say like more like this. Like I am supportive but I would love to just see and I don't know like you know, in this if this is the iteration that's final. It's all that it was printed out. But again, I just have concerns around as somebody who has done facilitation since facilitated planning since 1995 that you

[46:01] know, for me when I see a plan I'm thinking that there's goals, there's measures, there's metrics, there's reporting frequency, there's right? And I'm not seeing that in this plan and that's the part that that makes it hard to to put it you know, to really advocate for funds going where they need to go because we don't have that data as strongly as we do in our climate action plan or the housing or transportation. And so that's where I feel like there's a real opportunity so that we are we're we're held accountable to what these things said. And when there's too many I feel like it'll be very easy to be like oh well and that's why we have a 2A in the first place. So, anyhow. That's all I have to say on that. But if there are Council priorities that's all I have to say on that. If there are Council priorities is there any need to respond to that or thoughts on that? I want to Lauren, any responses to that? I saw you you know, visually giving responses but I want to hold space for you and the team or Mark.

[47:00] Quickly. Yeah, I think the the only thing I'll add to that is um we have kind of an appendix if you will of guiding staff's work that we left out of the kind of the body of the plan. Monitoring our progress, reporting on our progress is really important to us and we'll we'll take your comments to heart. >> thank you. I mean if it's not in the plan that the public receives then how do we hold it? You can't hold yourself accountable. That's not how that works. So, we need to make sure that we're very transparent about that. Ryan, I see your hand darling. Bring it in. Thank you. Lauren, I just wanted to pick up on your articulate analysis about Sundance and the list of opportunities is impressive and exciting. And so just you know, wanted to maybe follow the logical extension of the you know, the potential concerns and risk side which is our local artists are counting on us to look out for them and

[48:00] make sure that um you know, they're they're the economy works for them and the the process is you know, isn't isn't disruptive in ways that are you know, overly burdensome and in ways that we're not expecting. So, just you know, maybe to state the obvious but would hope to that we just would give some attention to you know, ongoing look at that and response and coming back to Council if you think it's necessary but just yeah, having that on that. That's it. Thank you. I see Mayor Brockett. Thanks Tasha. So, I just wanted to I don't I just want to give a big thank you to Lauren and the team. This is truly extraordinary work that you've put together here and I love this this phenomenal arts blueprint and it gives us a great road map for the years to come. Very fitting that it's during Boulder Arts Week. Perfect. And loved your clicks pics. Thanks for sharing

[49:00] those with us. And in terms of prioritization I I think the city staff I'll leave it to you all to figure out what the most impactful things are to begin with. I have every confidence in your ability to do that work. So, I'm not going to try to give guidance on the priorities but just to say that you all are doing truly extraordinary work as befits a city like Boulder with such a thriving creative scene. So, really appreciate everything you do. Any other um priorities or strategies or initiatives before I close it out. All right, bringing it home. Time to caboose. Oh, no, Nicole, bring it in. Yeah, sorry. I was uh I was waiting for that last question. Um I Yeah, I I just want to say thank you. No, no. It's totally fine. Yeah, I think I think I just lost track of which one we were on. Uh but I I I really don't have anything that I would like you to kind of change. I don't really think it's on us to be

[50:00] telling telling you what um what specific priorities and things should be in here. Um what I love about this plan is really how um it's building flexibility um and adaptability, which is something that I think we just need across all levels right now. Um but we've got clear goals. We're partnering them with some flexible and realistic implementation plans. Um we are taking into account piloting, learning, scaling. Um all of that feels like the right approach in this kind of tumultuous time where there's a lot of change on the horizon. We don't quite know what it looks like yet. Um so just kudos, I think. I think this is is bringing in all the frameworks that I think um are important here in the city, our equity framework, our um SER um goals as um sustainability, equity, resilience alignment, um and really bringing in community voice, too, into all these goals. So I just kudos. It's wonderful work. I don't want to mess this up by trying to be prescriptive. Um just

[51:01] go forward. Thank you. All right. Any other hands from my colleagues? All right, then I will close this out in caboosing. So as I mentioned, all in all, I'm just a huge fan as an artist and educator and all of the things. Um it's just been beautiful to to watch and um to participate where where appropriate. Um I will say I love the I would I concur with uh my council member uh Schuhard on um prioritizing artists and so that they can afford to live here. And I'm sorry. I I I don't agree with my colleagues that do whatever you you know, I you all are great and yeah, you are, but I'm not here to just co-sign. We don't co-sign the budget. When that comes up, we don't co-sign the transportation. We interact. We give thought and guidance because that's our responsibility uh as far as oversight is concerned. So again, but I also honor that everybody has different expertise and strategic planning happens to be one of mine. And

[52:01] so I love the arts and as I mentioned before because I we get plans like this that have lots of beautiful things, but aren't really rooted and grounded in the successes that we've had in the past. It doesn't talk about any of the challenges that you were able to overcome to be able to and you have. And so like that's where I want I want our arts piece to be at our plans to be as rigorous and and meaningful and measurable as all of the other plans that we have. And so that's where I think that the opportunity lies. But still, I go back to and when I talk about prioritization, the ability and I've seen it again and again in the data and in anecdotes, etc., that we that artists cannot afford to live here, that the trickle-down theory of um giving monies into institutions and nonprofits are not trickling down to the artists in the ways that it needs them for them to make a living wage. And that is just the reality of the situation. And so and I'm not suggesting that the institutions and the nonprofits are They're you know, they have overhead and they

[53:01] have operational costs. And so really, I think when I think about prioritization, I would rather us partner with organizations like you mentioned, Boulder County um foundation, but there is also Social Venture Partners. And I was waiting to hear their name. These are a group of nonprofits that are accountants and lawyers and all of the things that artists need. I mean, if anything, we could be funding them and then taking off cuz that was another comment from the Q&A Q&A crowd uh supporters, which was there's too much money going to admin. Well, when we're trying to facilitate a ton of programs and do all of this work, then that's where our admin money goes. So that's where I would think I would like to prioritize that. And then the other thing that I didn't see, and again, my apologies if it's another document somewhere else, but defending our artists and their intellectual property. Right now, there is an all-out assault on their intellectual property. And so I would like to make sure that we are prioritizing that um and and again, funding the the legal pieces that are

[54:01] that cost a lot of money and just doing what we can in our contracting um outside. Um and similarly with the entrepreneurial, I would love to see more partnership with our uh business chamber and with the development and housing communities because y'all do a great job on our public spaces, but it is those private spaces. And I will never forget when um Edwin over at um Z妈妈 at our Remember Tina? At our um micro business meeting um where he said, "Yeah." He was talking to um the art woman, Anna, in our gallery. And he was like, "I would hang your stuff in my thing." And so when I went into his thing to eat my lunch, I saw other people's art there for sale. These are low-hanging fruit. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. And so these are the kinds of opportunities going back to how do we support artists and how do we support our nonprofit communities in ways cuz they're all struggling right now. And that's the other piece going back to the data. Like there's nothing in there about the fact that art our federal arts

[55:01] funding has been stripped, that our our nonprofits are struggling right now. And so that goes back to that prioritization, and that's really driving my concern. It is not can you do amazing things. I have no doubt about that. It is are you going to stretch yourself so thin that you and your team can't get the work that thing you need to get done done. Um and that is really what my biggest concern. But but at in the at the aggregate, I am just so excited. Um and this work is so critical for this very, very chaotic moment. Oh, and then I end with venues. I like to see more climate benefits in this. Like how are we benefiting the climate in what we're doing here? And you mentioned venues, and I was at the Mims capstone for that CU Climate Week couple of you were there, Mayor, I saw you, and Brian. Um but they had a whole project they were working with the Boulder Theater and the Fox Theater were reduced their mission goals and the waste and reduce waste. And I just thought again, that's

[56:00] another bigger piece that I would love to see that interplay across the climate initiatives, energy, and our utilities, and um and what y'all are doing. All right, that's all I have. And boom, it wasn't even the whole hour. All right. Well, thank you so much as as my colleagues and and myself just really honored to to be able to um be on y'all's team. And as I said, um again, I think the prioritization will also come when it's when it's budget time. And so having that data there um to support and and to honor the work and impacts that this has um will be critical. So thank you so much. Thank you all so much for my staff and my colleagues. Thank you. A tremendous job. Tremendous job. Oh, and thank you for all the community members, the two over 2,000 community members who helped to inform it. Right? I mean, that's and that's why we owe you. And we're that's why we're going to

[57:00] be accountable to you to make sure that this comes to fruition. So thank you. All right, moving on to the next topic. Spoiler alert, it's going to be amazing. Um and it's going to be on facilities investment strategy. Thank you, council member. I'm excited that you think it's going to be amazing. Here we go. Uh our second item is as you mentioned uh is around our facilities investment strategy. And um Michelle, I apologize cuz I'm about to do a little intro and I didn't run it by you, so who knows what I'm going to say. All right. Uh I I just want to say it's all start with us, right? I know this topic uh not only has a lot of interest from community, but it is uh on many on the minds of many, many communities as well. I was just uh earlier this morning at the Local Government Hispanic Networks Conference in Westminster, and there was a panel talking about budgets, and all we were hearing about is this common thread of cities being understaffed and underfunding and having so many unmet

[58:01] needs. And I uh just felt like I was having an internal staff meeting as we're thinking about that. We are no exception to that nationwide program sort of crisis. And I want to lift up the really hard and dedicated work our professional staff has put in over the past years to truly understand the depth of need uh that we have and look towards pathways forward, right? You'll hear a lot more tonight as we think about You'll hear a lot more about that tonight as we think it's important to understand how we got here, what considerations we're looking at now as we look um sort of more future-facing. We know that we did not get here overnight. And I what what I've really appreciated about our recent journey is the critical steps we have taken to get to this place to have a more holistic conversation. And it's really amazing when I consider that our facilities and fleet department sort of came into being in 2020 as a full department. Uh we had our first facilities plan in 2021 where our entire buildings portfolio came into

[59:01] together as one. And we now have a better handle on how to move forward with two key objectives on that plan. Sort of maintaining what we already have, and I know many of you have been um talking about that with us, talking to community about that. But the other thing that we're also um making sure that we consider is something that we consider for most every other thing, and perhaps had not been on the horizon uh in the past when we were talking about facilities, which is total cost of ownership that includes ongoing operations and maintenance into the future. That is all of our buildings will continue to have that as we move forward, and that is what we're grappling with as we think about perhaps how that wasn't always accounted for in the past. We've also heard a lot of misconceptions around this topic across community. We too believe that recreation in South Boulder is important as it is across the entire city. We don't want you or community to feel like we may to make we need to make one choice that potentially

[60:01] impacts one department against another choice that could impact a different department. It has been our practice to speak about our entire building portfolio as something we need to address strategically for one main reason. They are all important to our entire community and our organization. Whether it's a public safety building, our rec centers, our fire stations, or even the municipal building which host our council meetings, they serve us all in different ways and we need them to be healthy places for all who work or visit here to feel welcome. We hope that this important work helps us create a legacy for the future, but we have no illusions that we will resolve our issues overnight because it took decades to find ourselves in the place that we are. Your guidance will help us though think about both immediate next steps as well as those that will be need to be taken into the future and will also help shape the upcoming discussion on potential ballot issues or initiatives that could get us closer to addressing some of the issues that we're facing today.

[61:00] Finally, I'll say out loud that I understand how passionate our community is about these issues and perhaps about individual beloved community spaces. Sometimes that passion can sound like criticism of staff's professionalism or expertise. I hope as we continue to have these very hard discussions that we remember that our entire staff are dedicated to serve their community and are working tremendously hard to address critical issues that are long overdue and are just presenting us all with some difficult choices. With that, Michelle, I will send it over to you. Thank you, Nuria, and good evening, Council. It is a pleasure to be here. I am Michelle Crane. I serve as your deputy director in facilities and fleet and I'm excited to share with you information and and really take your questions and and have a good conversation. So, let me get a presentation up here. There we go.

[62:10] Okay. Can everyone see that? I actually can't see other participants though. Yeah, we're just seeing the Oh, now I'm seeing it. Yep. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to go ahead. Sorry, I can't see other people, so if someone raises their hand, maybe they can let us know. I think we're just going to run through it first, Michelle, and then we'll take the slides down. Yes. Okay, great. So, our facilities investment strategy. Um So, I'm going to start with our our study session agenda for this evening. We want to go through and explain a little bit of the process and talk about connecting these conversations with other important funding conversations we're having this year. Share a little bit of the story of how we got here,

[63:01] describe some current conditions in our citywide buildings, and getting into a little bit more of both our urgent minimum investment needs and then some of our longer-term investment needs. And then we'll focus on our recreation centers and then lastly bring it back to our building citywide and identify a path forward. So first, connecting these conversations with other important funding ones that are being had this year. In March, you discussed the long-term financial strategy and some ballot measures. Tonight, we'll talk about our city facilities and some needed funding for them with a specific focus on our recreation centers. Purpose of this meeting is to inform you on the state of our facilities and get some high-level feedback from you to help inform how we develop scenarios to bring back for future conversations. In May, you'll receive a financial forecast and discuss what you'd like pulled and we'll bring back scenarios

[64:01] for capital projects that include funding options that could be generated through different ballot measures. In June, those results will be brought back to inform final tax ballot ordinances. So, buildings throughout time have shaped the character of our communities. We spend most of our lives inside buildings. Our municipal buildings are a direct reflection of our city's values. They are also incredibly expensive to build and they should last a very long time when we build them, which comes at an even higher cost of over their lifetime, that total cost of ownership that Nuria just spoke of. We have to consider the lasting impacts of what we build, so this demands that we balance our financial prudence with our altruistic goals. And we practice good governance, it is building quality buildings with a plan to care for them as we hand them off to our next generation. So, I'd like to take you on a quick

[65:00] little journey. We started here in a small city hall on 14th Street that everybody worked out of. By the 1950s, we were expanding and built our current municipal building. This photo on the upper left is the original west facade before we added the police in 1962. We also started expanding our fire stations and some 50 buildings were added to our portfolio by the turn of the millennium. By 2020, we have more than 75 buildings, nearly 2 million square feet of space representing more than half a billion in current replacement value. The average age of our buildings is about 50 years old with more than half of them built prior to the 1970s. And at this point in 2020, the colors that you see represented, they represent all kinds of different types of buildings from fire stations to rec centers, utilities plants, office buildings, maintenance shops. At this point, they're all being managed

[66:00] separately and funded differently by each department that they serve. This created a rather uneven approach to investment in buildings and up to this point. It was also a challenge for the council at the time who were being asked or being presented with very expensive building investment needs coming through individual part department plans. They really had no way of balancing these big funding requests against each other. We also had in 2016 some new chemicals that were setting aggressive targets for facilities and around this time we had done a number of engagements conducted with staff in the community that were starting to point out kind of some of the unwelcoming nature of some of our buildings and some poor workplace environments. And lastly, around this time we had done some asset reviews which was kind of a first as well and it was acknowledged and identified a large backlog of deferred maintenance. So, that started showing up around that time on our city's unfunded list.

[67:00] All these factors were coming together at this time and they were really creating a boiling point for our city buildings. This led to the very needed development of our first facilities plan. It addressed this need to look holistically across our entire building portfolio and through one lens of good building asset management. This plan remains today our North Star and it's a guiding document for our facilities. The three pillars reflect our values and closely align with our sustainability, equity, and resilience framework. The plan also incorporates the Boulder Valley Comp Plan and other department plans as they relate to our city buildings. And two key initiatives, again, Nuria spoke of, define our actions that we should take moving forward with buildings. So, maintain well, it is the foundational goal which is in essence a gift to our future selves. And consolidation which at its very heart was about and is about reuniting services and staff that

[68:01] had become scattered across the city since those very early days. And it does result in efficiency and some effectiveness. There was also recognition that a more centralized approach to building management would be more effective, so hence the facilities and fleet department was created in 2020. This is a shift that takes time though. Facilities that serve different departments are now starting to come under this plan under this one roof. And as one city, we work with each department to build and maintain buildings that serve the needs of our community. We are collaborating as partners together to solve these big challenges in our city buildings. But we've also inherited a building portfolio that is generally not in very good shape as our 2021 facilities plan predicted this trajectory. Shown in this graph, what you see in general is the condition of our entire

[69:02] building portfolio. In 2021, it was in poor condition or starting to be in poor condition in that orange color and by 2030 is predicted to be critical in crossing into that condition. We are still on that path. Our current annual funding for existing buildings is just not adequate to change the course. And change is made even harder as emergencies in our buildings are increasing. Our buildings are still declining faster than our reinvestment in them. We're taking a pretty good bite out of this problem with consolidation to the new Western City campus. We'll consolidate staff from 11 different buildings. We are moving out of more square footage than we are moving into, and we are reuniting all of our city departments under this one roof. We are removing more than $20 million in near-term unfunded liability liability from the buildings we're getting out of.

[70:00] And this enables other city plans and goals that have been stalled for years, like in the civic area, to proceed. By advancing work in the civic area, we should be able to generate some revenue from the sale of buildings, but furthermore, reenergize this area and entice new investment. But we're not out of these buildings yet. Our building portfolio and the current challenges we find ourselves in grew over the last 100 years. We've been working on solutions to the situation we find ourselves in for less than five. And again, in the midst of mostly reacting to emergencies in our buildings first. In the development of our facilities plan, we work with consultants who help communities around the world tackle these challenges because we are not alone. Many of the recommendations and insights from the facilities plan reflect what is working elsewhere. But it's still not an easy problem to solve anywhere. It's multifaceted and complex, and it will not shift overnight. We are working to develop options and help weigh tradeoffs, and in

[71:01] some cases, hard decisions are going to need to be made. This next phase of work, which is a companion to our facilities plan, is a facilities investment strategy. We are at the beginning of this work as a formal strategy to bring forward. What we are bringing tonight are some essential pieces of the strategy to help inform larger budget conversations. This strategy is a building roadmap over a 20-year time horizon. It is, practically speaking, for us a field guide for our department to make good decisions every day when emergencies arise, to try and avoid missed opportunities or making sunk costs that we will not realize long-term returns on. By painting a long-term vision for where we want to head with our city buildings, we can make informed strategic investments in the near term when things break.

[72:03] So, across 75 buildings of all different types, needs, ages, conditions, funding sources, this is a pretty large challenge. Um so, we have taken a crack at this by breaking it down into some manageable categories to tackle in next steps. So, here's the list of categories, and I'm going to go through them quickly now for the sake of time, but we do plan to continue to bring these back as we evolve in different categories. So, 11 of our buildings are being vacated by moving to the Western City campus. Again, each is a unique case, but generally speaking, we are divesting from these buildings since we will be leaving them. We have seven parking structures. There is an investment plan, but also unfolding policy around how they're going to be owned and managed, so we'll continue to develop this as we go. There are four very large utilities buildings, really buildings utility sites. We are working with our utilities department on investment needs in these buildings. There is dedicated funding source for

[73:00] these buildings, so investments would be managed within those funds. 12 new buildings. These are buildings that our facilities plan defined as new, recently built or heavily invested in within the last 15 years, and they should be receiving 2% of their current replacement value to plan for their future infrastructure replacement needs. Currently, only two of those 14 have budgeted that funding, so we really need to take a harder look at how to increase that to avoid being in the same place we are today with these buildings in the future. 13 leased buildings, several of which, but not all, are leased for a dollar per year. We cannot fund invest needed investments in these buildings, and they generally present a liability from a building perspective. They provide a social value, so we understand we need to weigh this as we consider our building our leased building portfolio. There are 18 maintenance shops. These buildings are generally small, but they also require investment, and they could be opportunities to consolidate some in

[74:01] the future, which also might present other kinds of future opportunities. And lastly, we have 15 buildings we are calling our priority buildings. They are, in short, the buildings that keep our team up at night. They are the focus of the efforts right now in our conversation tonight. These are the buildings we have prioritized for investment. They all provide vital services to our community and are crucial in supporting the delivery of services that fulfill goals and objectives across all areas of our sustainability, equity, and resilience framework. They are not insignificant in cost when we think about modernizing them and meeting goals. And they are all in decline. We are chasing emergency repairs across all of them to keep them fully operational. These are just a few data points that are demonstrating this. On the left is our maintenance service request volume. These five buildings over the last 3 years have made up almost half of all of

[75:00] our service requests. And on the right, this is how we've spent our 2025 emergency capital maintenance funding. So, you'll notice the public safety building stands out in both these sets. We also used our key performance indicators that we identified in our facilities plan. We reassessed these priority buildings, and while some limited investments have helped some of the buildings hold steady, others have continued to slip, uh like our recreation centers. Our public safety building remains where it was in 2021 at the bottom of the list as our building in worst condition. We need to make minimum infrastructure investments in the next 6 years over this next CIP period just to keep these buildings operating. This is more than just maintenance. This is to make immediate larger infrastructure repairs and replacements to things like you see in these photos. To repair lots of old pipes that are breaking, which are causing damage to floors and joists, like what you see in the lower left. We need to replace equipment that is failing in

[76:00] many locations. Even if we choose to proceed with a major renovation or replacement project for one of these buildings, it takes at least 5 years before we actually move into that building. Current equipment and systems, in many cases, will not make it that long. And knowing when we plan to build or new or fully renovate a building can help us make good near-term decisions on how to fix our current buildings and limit investments. Across our buildings, there are many basic repairs, like in spaces like these, that need to be made. Our current maintenance dollars are not enough to cover all these repairs. So, across those 15 priority buildings, the cost to cover the next 5 to 6 years to address the kinds of minimum repairs I just showed in the photos at the low end is about $20 million. We also have a high-end potential funding needed identified. The low end is what we know needs to be

[77:02] repaired or replaced. So, specific pieces of equipment that we've identified we know is is due for replacement. That high end is the possibility that when we replace a piece of equipment in an old building, it can cause a chain reaction of a lot of other things needing to be fixed or replaced. And I have lots of examples of where a small repair that we went in to make resulted in the replacement of an entire system. So, that high end is to alert to those potential needs. We try to limit those as much as possible. So, again, to just to show this even more clearly, um we have a minimum 20 million total known repair and replacement need across these 15 buildings. There are three large capital projects already programmed in our current budget. There's fire station two and fire station four building replacements, and the extensive renovation at the East Boulder Community Center. These projects were identified a few years ago because they are buildings in the most critical condition.

[78:00] And if we advance these projects as we intend to, we save $10 million from this number in minimum investment needed as those projects will take care of those capital needs. It is critical that they move forward so we don't exacerbate this situation. So, this really leaves just $10 million to fund in major maintenance in these remaining 12 buildings. So, we would propose funding this using existing CCRS funds. We would propose spreading out projects and funding across the CIP period, so it's roughly $2 million a year. This brings us to our first staff recommendation to prioritize funding in minimum capital infrastructure needs across all these buildings with currently available funds. We will bring back specific projects as part of the 2027 budget development, and it will be shown in the facilities and fleet capital major maintenance CIP. So, now shifting to look at the much

[79:00] larger capital projects at each of these buildings that reflect either significant renovations, additions, or full replacements of these buildings. This is a rough order of magnitude on cost. Across these 15 buildings, this is roughly in the order of $500 million, of which $400 million is unfunded. These projects that modernize buildings generally achieve goals of the facilities plan and citywide goals. This means they have modern, energy efficient infrastructure and systems. But it also meets that they means that they meet modern standards for how different departments deliver services. Accomplishing this will take decades. We will not replace these buildings one at over time easily um all at once. This is what we're working to build a path for and make headway on over the next 20 years through our investment strategy. For this type of investment, I'm just going to spend a couple of slides showing what modernizing means.

[80:00] So first, basic to every building is restrooms and in many of our buildings we have showers and locker rooms. So designing for universal design standards is a new norm and a growing expectation in our city buildings. These spaces in our current city buildings shown on the left are far stretch from those standards of things that we're seeing more towards the right. These are examples of modern public safety buildings from around the country. The rough cost that we've identified envision something like this. Currently, we are protecting evidence with plastics from with plastic sheets from old and potentially failing water pipes above. Our reception area for victims of crime to walk through is less than inviting or comforting. As contrasted with modern spaces for public safety buildings like those you see on the right. In a fleet building, on the left you see is our current crowded conditions at our current fleet building and on the right

[81:01] are examples of recently built fleet services buildings that are laid out and organized to support modern service delivery standards. For public works, on the left are images of our current maintenance workshops and on the right are examples of modernized public works buildings. These are what we envision for our future and are generally what is reflected in those capital costs we are sharing. And now we're going to take a deeper dive much more into the recreation centers and for this, I'm going to turn it over to Ali Rhodes. Good evening, folks. I am Ali Rhodes and serve as director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Boulder. Um I want to start with uh repeating a little bit with Nuria shared earlier at City Council at the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board meetings. And in our facilities, we have been hearing a lot about the importance of our rec centers. We have been listening carefully to every public comment and reading every email. And I want to start by just

[82:00] repeating again what Nuria said that the city values our recreation centers. We aspire to be a healthy and socially thriving community and our public rec centers are critical to being a community where every community member's health and well-being is built on high-quality parks and facilities. Our facilities are important hubs for neighboring, for connecting, for physical and mental well-being, and on our darker days for safe gathering. We have been listening carefully to folks' stories as they share about how important the rec centers are and we agree. We know there are a lot of deep connections to our facilities and we feel the same way. In addition to our feelings, the research is clear. Rec centers contribute to community health and well-being, to economic vitality, to quality of life, and more. And our conversations are not intended to negate these truths. They are intended to couple them with the reality that these important buildings are aging and we must plan for investing in them and we must be responsible stewards of community resources. Our facilities require significant investment to

[83:00] maintain and they require funding every single year to operate and to maintain in service to the community. And so our conversations are also grounded in facts and we're going to start this section with Michelle providing a brief overview of the current state of each center. Thanks, Ali. So starting with our South Boulder Recreation Center and looking at its current state. It was greatly improved last year after we invested 2 million in the facility making many repairs like you see on the right-hand side of the slide. This building is still a priority but no longer at the top of the of our list for the risk of imminent failures like many of the others. And this gives us time to better plan for its future on that road map we're building. And I just want to address the ability to reuse this building which has come up. We have investigated this. We always look first at how we can reuse a building before suggesting it needs replacement. And we have successfully reused many buildings and learned a lot from that.

[84:00] For this building, it would require an addition. It is not large enough to meet current code requirements and maintain adequate program space within the existing walls. The form and the structure of this building make an addition complicated and costly very quickly when compared to building a new more straightforward building form. We can provide more services and amenities that would be possible for comparable cost if we renovate this existing building. All the options we're going to propose for South consider a brand new building. Now as we look at the current state of the East Boulder Community Center, this building has never seen a major renovation and we urgently need to make repairs and equipment replacements. This building comes in second for demanding our attention with calls to fix things that are failing. We have failing air handling units that have caused program spaces to be closed. We need a new roof, pool filters, and windows among many, many other things. This building is now one of our biggest concern and keeping us up regularly at

[85:02] night. The major renovation project that is very much needed was funded in the 2024 budget. Through our community engagement and early design work, we've identified it in need for additional funding to realize a preferred scope of work. While conversations this spring will help inform the feasibility of a final scope, we are advancing with a first phase that will go into construction in 2027 to address immediate infrastructure needs. In this phase, we will fully renovate the East Wing that houses our A12 services so we do not have to disrupt those services again in the second phase of work. Our North Boulder Recreation Center also requires pressing infrastructure repairs including a building enclosure and pool replastering to ensure continued operations. Walls in the pool area have moisture in them which causes concrete blocks to break off on the building outside when it goes through freeze-thaw cycles. Every year, we conduct a structural assessment to ensure no imminent risk

[86:00] and at the moment we're fine but we do know these walls will need to be replaced. We also have many basic equipment replacements like mentioned at the other centers. And I'm going to turn it back to Ali to go through some of our scenarios. Yeah, I'll start by sharing that that we recognize we have three recreation centers and they operate as a system with each serving as an important well community well-being hub while providing an opportunity to serve the whole city. We use the gymnastics center at North as the best example of this. That program serves over a thousand young people a week from all over the city and supporting the overall vibrancy and viability of the facility. And so when the investment at East was approved with the 2024 budget, we launched the indoor recreation needs assessment code named future of recreation. The intent of the future of recreation in the near term was to inform the East investment with a system-wide look and in the long term to allow for planning for North and South just like we're doing now. The project included condition assessments for each building, research

[87:00] on levels of service and benchmarking, and thoughtful community engagement. There were four windows of engagement in all and the process was designed using the racial equity instrument. We had focus groups and representation from some of our historically marginalized communities including the disability community for whom our recreation centers are often their only location for health and well-being. In that engagement, the community identified amenities to be at all or multiple locations and opportunities for individual centers. When the community has asked what amenities were most important across the system, they said lap lanes, gyms, larger cardio and strength spaces, and improved spaces for children most important. As an example, the North Boulder Recreation Center weight room is just 3,000 square feet. We've tried to address growing demand for body weight exercises for strength and movement by decommissioning and repurposing a dance studio but it just isn't enough. The community also identified opportunities at specific locations such as better improving the warm water uh pool at East and spaces for older

[88:01] adults. At South, we hear a lot about expanding and improving fitness spaces and improving its ability to serve as a community gathering space for all ages. And at North, folks really just said this is great. Can you just make it bigger? And for some of those key areas. And so with the next slide, you'll just see a list. Uh we want to be clear, the current system is not providing everything the community would like to see or as much as they would like to see of it. And this is a list of some of the things the community would like to see. From aquatic training space to indoor field space to an indoor track, there are many amenities our current system does not provide. Next slide. And so to advance the conversation, we have developed scenarios for each facility. And I want to first acknowledge there's the no investment scenario which is our current trajectory for the North Boulder Recreation Center and South. In this scenario, service levels continue to decline while we spend significant funding on reactive maintenance. We do not recommend that

[89:01] scenario and we are glad we are having these overdue and important conversations. And so onto the scenarios, we have prepared two for each building. They provide a rough outline of what could happen. However, there is a lot of room for decision-making and design. Both scenarios result in more modern buildings that are more accessible to the community that meet current life safety and energy code. For each facility, scenario A reflects a lower level of investment that just sustains the building and its ability to maintain current service levels. It addresses the modernization that Michelle just described. In this scenario, our buildings are electrified to reduce reliance on non-renewable energy. And I want to We do want to call out the cost to electrify these large buildings, and especially pools, is significant. Like labs, they are energy intensive. In this scenario, we also improve universal access. And in scenario A, we'll call out we do see reductions in levels of service for aquatics at both East and South. We've also outlined a scenario B for

[90:00] each building that, in addition to aligning with modern life safety, accessibility, and energy codes, reflects investments addressing unmet needs, setting us up to better serve the community today and into the future. We want to highlight you will see wide ranges of costs for these scenarios. These rough numbers and wide ranges reflect where we are in planning. Square footage, amenities are yet to be determined. So, let's talk about scenario A. And I want to introduce the South scenario with just two important comments. One, I want to reiterate decisions have not been made. Again, today I saw something that said staff want a field house and they've decided on a field house. And folks, that just isn't true. Um There are design decisions to made. There are design decisions to come, and they will involve the community. And so, I'm hoping on the the real conversations before us. And I'll call out that scenario A does include a South Boulder Recreation Center without a pool. And we know our community loves to swim. We see higher levels of participation and demand than most benchmark communities. And anytime

[91:01] we ask the community, and including with this planning effort, we hear a desire for pools. The cost to operate and maintain pools is the most significant cost driver in an indoor recreation facility. The current South Boulder Rec Center is home to the smallest lap pool in our system is six lanes. If we cannot commit to increasing funding for recreation, we have offered a scenario where there is no pool at a future South Boulder Rec Center. Scenario at East reflects the given space needed to meet code, um the level of service for aquatics is reduced as there is only currently funding to renovate one of the bodies of water. We would likely recommend the warm water pool given our aging demographics and the many populations of warm water exercise pool can support, from older adults to swim lessons, for surgery recovery, and more. North Boulder Rec Center in scenario A really builds on what works, making it last for years to come while better serving the community. So, scenario B. In these scenarios, we capture the opportunity to meet future needs while

[92:01] we're making these significant investments. We set ourselves up to serve the community for decades to come. South Boulder Recreation Center is a vibrant, modern community hub that includes a pool and a gymnasium. East Boulder Community Center would see similar improvements and an improved ability provide warm water recreation. And at North, through a 15,000 square foot addition, we can collocate Age Well services at this site. This allows for intergenerational programming, which serves and benefits all ages, and the city's ability to decommission a building in awful condition and capture the opportunity to sell. For the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board conversation last week, we created three options of investment, each considering the system. Our preference would be option one, which is scenario B for all three recreation centers. This would allow us to respond to community feedback, improve levels of service while preparing for population growth, demographic changes, and more. This was also the feedback from the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. This scenario advances our social goals and supports

[93:01] real improvements in building condition and performance. And the cost to modernize the facilities and set them up for the future is significant and largely unfunded. Similarly, the gap to maintain buildings in good condition and to provide recreation services is real. This scenario is dependent on our ability to fund, which is our next step. And so, short In short, we have a clear understanding of what the community wants. The next most important questions are, what do we want our levels of service to be? How will we prioritize? And what will we afford? And these questions must be asked in consideration of the citywide needs, not only for buildings, for operations. Just in Parks and Recreation, we also have unfunded needs to support park park maintenance, play area refurbishment, and more. So, back to Michelle to wrap this up. So, we have narrowed 75 buildings in need of investment down to these 15 and identified them as a priority.

[94:00] Three of which absolutely are our recreation centers. So, tonight we are asking for your feedback and your priorities so we can further refine options and a mix of investments across these buildings. Our goal, like has been said, is to support investments in all these buildings over time. So, this is our second staff recommendation, and based on your feedback, we will take the next steps and develop um investment scenarios across these buildings. There are many financial levers that we can pull, and we know it might not be enough in total, but it is a key part and a key next step to layer in the different funding strategies over time. And so, we're going to start looking at this just with our CCRS fund, and I'm going to let Charlotte just uh say a few things about that. Good evening, Council members. I'm Charlotte Husky, Budget Officer for the City of Boulder. Good to be with uh with you here this evening. As brought

[95:01] forward to City Council last October, our current uh 6-year CIP, spanning from 2026 to 2031 in the CCRS, or Community Culture Resilience and Safety Tax Fund, assumes a total of 73 million in debt issuance to support three capital projects. Those listed here, including the East Boulder Community Center, Fire Station 2, and Civic Area project. We are thankful uh to Boulder voters who approved the permanent extension of CCRS last November. And as we were sharing forward as part of this ballot uh measure planning process, with this permanent extension, we now have additional funding and financing capacity to consider within the CCRS fund. We recognize, however, that this is a multi-year approach, as Michelle has uh spoken to earlier earlier in the presentation. And with our existing backlog of facilities infrastructure and

[96:01] maintenance, we still require additional capacity. And so, we are considering tax ballot measures that we will we will be bringing forward to City Council on May 14th, as well as continuing to look at tradeoffs within the existing budget for this capacity. We will continue analyzing these tax measures and bring forward scenarios of options to City Council uh for discussion for Council discussion on May 14th. So, this is just a quick kind of reminder of just exactly what Charlotte was talking about. Again, we're here early at April 9th talking about our city facilities funding needs. Um and then do plan to bring back um scenarios along with uh additional discussions at the May 14th meeting, and then continue on um with these additional steps uh looking at these ballot measures.

[97:02] So, I'm just going to put back um up here. These are the two staff recommendations that we are making tonight. Again, the first recommending prioritizing funding of minimal capital invest and infrastructure needs with currently available funds. And our second, based on Council feedback here tonight, staff will develop investment scenarios across a mix of priority buildings. Again, to be brought back um as part of our continued uh uh discussions um on budget. And so, our last slide here is our key Council questions for the evening. So, we do want to ask if Council has any questions on what was presented on both the facilities investment strategy and our recreation center scenarios. Our second question, does Council agree with staff's recommendation to prioritize investment in minimum infrastructure needs first with currently available funding? And our third question, does Council agree with staff's proposed next steps to further develop a mix of investment

[98:01] scenarios across priority buildings, including our recreation centers, and options based on perhaps feedback? Um So, with that, I'm going to go ahead and take down uh these, and I think the these questions will go into the chat. Stop sharing. Thank you so much, Miss Michelle. If you wouldn't mind popping those questions into the chat box, that was quite a another Herculean effort um in putting those pieces together. Um thank you, Charlotte, and thank you, Ally, for um all of the incredible, intense research and um reporting that you did to inform this conversation. So, to our first first question, does Council have any questions on what was presented in both the facilities investment strategy and the recreation center scenarios? And I see Tara, followed by Rob. Tara. Okay. Let me just get out my notes.

[99:02] Okay. So, first thing is sometimes our SER framework objectives, I think, are at odds with each other. For instance, we talk about environmentally sustainable, which sometimes can clash with financial stewardship or an economically vital. So, my first question to staff, I have like three questions. My first question to staff is as an example of Ali mentioned, for instance, an a pool that's electrified being much more expensive than a regular pool or a hybrid pool, for instance. With our finances at in dire straits, let's say, how do you make a decision how much to push one SCR framework, one pillar, versus another pillar? Or can we as a community say, we because I want to get the most for my money, can we push the financially

[100:02] um can we make sure that we're being financially um financially um vital? Or can we have be good stewards of our finances? So, that's question number one. Um yeah, I appreciate that. Uh it's a great question and and it is one that we grapple with. Um So, it is true depending and like a lot of these these uh scenarios, every building's different, every project is different. I will say um electrification in a brand new building is not as significant and is not the same kind of cost as it is in a renovation project. And so, those are two different factors that we have to weigh depending on whether we're talking about a new building or another um or renovation building. I think the other thing that really has to be considered and we do weigh over time is that total cost of ownership. And so, when we look at energy

[101:02] efficiency and how we operate buildings and the the upfront costs of putting energy systems in a building over then looking at the total cost of what those systems may save, that's part of our calculus. Um but I think that those those detailed costs and what the actual difference is um is worth the consideration um looking at those those differences. Uh those are things that we can evaluate and bring back. I will say typically though, after we provide an energy efficient building, which is a lower total cost of ownership, um sometimes that difference between electrification is rather negligible. Um so, I think but it is it is a it's an opportunity to look at where we want to save and how we want to balance goals. Well, I don't think it is negligible though with the pool. Can Ali, is it? That's part of the analysis that come

[102:01] back with Michelle because to the the whole 50-year analysis and what it saves operationally and whether it's a new building or a renovation, it's it's not a simple answer. I think we'd love to bring it back. Okay. So, for further discussion. Okay, my next question is is retrofitting versus a new build. Um so, why would we if let's say that retrofitting was more expensive than a new build, why would we do a retrofit? Just for fun. Just kidding. No, they're complicated. The reason we retrofit and we reuse buildings is because there is a tremendous amount of preserved embodied carbon. And so, it really comes down to reusing buildings and it's something that we have heard in facilities in particular as we've developed a lot of projects is the interest in reusing buildings and the preservation of embodied carbon. And I I feel that there's probably a voice missing in the room to truly quantify

[103:01] that, but it is significant. And so, that is really why we do look at reusing buildings and not just demoing um every building as we look to to build new. There are some buildings that are easier to reuse than others. Um building new is easier. Is it the best thing? I think that's that is where we look at it in a case-by-case. What is what is the how much of an existing building can we truly reuse? Um versus how much we just have to take apart because it's hard to reuse and then you don't have much left over. Um versus, you know, what we can get from a new building. So again, it's case-by-case, but we we really the bottom line is it it is a preservation of embodied carbon, which is significant. I hear you. You know what's going around the community is how much money we spent on the Alpine Balsam parking garage saving it. But we'll leave that for comments later. Okay, my next Yeah, I have my next

[104:01] question is um when we have to make a decision often we say that we have the we won an award for building we have fire station the new fire station's example, most beautiful fire station ever, for sure. But how do we decide be giving the money that we have, which is not a lot, whether we have to make the best building ever or we can just make something really good or just good enough. You what goes into those decisions? Yeah, that's also a great question. And you know, um some of them we we get this you know, a lot. We have good-looking buildings. Um the cost of that compared to what just the cost is to build the structure itself, again, we're not talking about a lot of um additional cost to make these good-looking buildings. It is largely our co- our buildings are driven

[105:02] by our code requirements. In the case of fire station 3, our form-based code drove a most of the exterior design decisions. Um and so, a lot of what we find is we're regulated into and I don't want to pit that. I you know, many of our codes, most of our codes are good. There's a reason we have >> appreciate you saying this. But that is that is really we're driven by codes into a vast amount of this. And so, there really is little to skim off the top. I I I if we could even find that. And I mean, I love a beautiful building. So, I'm asking what the community's asking. Yeah. But I guess the last question I have maybe for staff is I think I talked about this at the retreat. Is there any way for us to find out where we're not getting our I don't want to use the term rate of return or anything like that, but where are codes or form-based code or our environmental codes are so stringent

[106:01] that we're we're paying so much more in certain areas and not getting the rate of return on you know, how the cost of the building versus how much it's costing to meet all of these codes cuz we're in a different time period right now. It's called the time of we don't have any money. And so, how do we make these decisions and is it possible, and I mean this as a question not rhetorically, to look at those codes and to say, you know what, this one just isn't worth the amount of money that it's costing us? Yeah, it it's fair. I buildings cost a tremendous amount. I don't think we're going to find a lot in extra codes. And and for one, most of these codes are international building codes. They're not things we can excuse ourselves from that are driving this. Um I you know, I think there are probably there's probably room some in some small places, but I would say it's marginal or

[107:01] negligible um compared to what we are required to do again, much beyond what the city's imposing. Okay, thanks. So, um for the rest of for the remaining, maybe we'll just do our top two and then go around and then we'll come back for um for thirdsies, okay? Thank you. Rob. Oh, just two, Tasha? Okay. Um I saw those hotlines, so I feel like a lot of people got questions answered. They did. That's fair. Um okay, I'm going to make um I guess kind of a suggestion. Um we have fire station 6 in Gunbarrel. It's literally a softball throw away from Boulder Rural Fire Station, which could house another crew there. I'm not going to get into the politics of Local 900 and Local 4415. So, is your question could have they

[108:00] considered consolidating fire stations with other departments? >> Yes, that's going to be my question. Okay. Because I mean, it's there's some redundancy in Gunbarrel. Is that a consideration? I'm happy to take this, Michelle, and and unless I've got something wrong in it. But I I will say I so appreciate your question, Council member Kathleen. I I think consolidation in general is something we've been considering across the city. In fact, it's one of the main reasons we're heading up to a new campus soon because it's just more cost-effective to have us there. Uh I will say um that the topic of that particular fire station has come up from both unions and leadership in different ways. It is ongoing conversation and no decisions have been made. Um but certainly the conversation has sprung up. Okay, that's good to hear. Um my second question, I'm going to try to consolidate a whole bunch. I know that

[109:01] we're going to get a report in May that is using the tool that calculates all these different scenarios. Will that tool have scenarios for other consolidation options like police, fire, police and a a rec center? And will we get numbers from the replacement costs of the 11 buildings and the savings from the 13 leased buildings and data like that? From So, we are using that model that I know was discussed in the council memo and some have seen. And so, it's one tool of many. It it doesn't really do everything. It is helping us balance again some really large capital needs over time looking at some of those big trade-offs. So, I think some of the short answer is is no, it's not going to have all those different data points that you're referring to

[110:02] for May in in that calculus. We're really focused at the moment on these priority buildings. What we're really looking to bring forward in May are strategies and different kind of options to think about. They're maybe not necessarily very specific capital projects, but they will consider opportunities to consolidate. They will consider different kinds of opportunities to phase things because we know we may have to break some of these big building costs down over time. So, those are the types of things that we'll be looking at bringing back in May. Okay. I've hit my question limit. No, she got Cara got three. So, I'm feeling a thing of fairness. Go ahead, hit the other one. Everybody gets three. Awesome. Thank you. I just want on the public safety building with police and dispatch in it. I wasn't clear. I know in Mark's

[111:00] hotline, we're not going to rebuild it there and we're going to build it on the eastern campus, but do we own that land? We own the land in the eastern campus. Yes, that I mean that is very much >> I'm sorry, the land where it currently is now off of We we do. We do own that land as well and that's a part of our consideration as it's part of our real estate portfolio. And so, we'll consider how that could be a tool. You know, how we could leverage that potentially. Okay, thank you. All right, thank you, Tina. Oh, wait. Yes. Um thank you. I just have a couple questions and the first is for the disposal of property. Do are we going to try and more aggressively pursue that as a timeline or is it based on market conditions? Just when could we expect that to begin happening? So, again, every property is unique. Some of them are pretty kind of um

[112:02] I'll say free of other ideas. And so, I think as soon as we can look at some of them, we do want to bring them forward as we look at after we consolidate, after we move staff out. Some other properties like those particularly on the Eastbook end are part of some other considerations of how we move forward. So, those may you know, are more within those conversations. But if certain properties, yeah, we're I think hoping to start looking at those as soon as as soon as they're vacated. And I would say we would want to look at market conditions at that time, you know, to see if there's a particular positioning, but Okay. And then my other question is our fire and public safety services are used extensively with CU as well. And how do we get CU to be involved as a financial partner with some of these projects? Is that something that we're

[113:00] actively doing? I'm going to look and see if others have any kind of comments. We in our facilities department, I mean we've not necessarily engaged with CU to look at that, but I think that's something that we can consider as we look at again our goal is to look at all of our financial levers and I think we can we can take that back and look at that. Okay, that's all I have. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Tina. Mark. Um I'm going to make one quick comment but before I ask my questions. At the beginning of this presentation, the city manager said that a number of comments that that had been received by her almost appeared to be personal in nature with regards to staff. That's not correct. They were in fact very personal in nature and they were very inappropriate. And I'd like to remind people that we have a dedicated and highly professional staff in this city

[114:01] and they do not deserve that kind of commentary. And I would ask people to at least understand that and be a little more courteous in in how they characterize the the doings of our staff because they are they are first rate. Now, in terms of questions, my my my first question is that how are we supposed to make choices in the absence of a a an understanding of the levers that are available to us and the funding that's available to us. If you ask us do we want to choose A or B with respect to the rec centers, everybody is going to choose B. It's like asking a child, would you like to have ice cream or celery sticks? It's not a meaningful question at at this point in time. I'd love to see B. Everybody would love to see B. I don't understand how we're supposed to meaningfully make that that decision

[115:01] without understanding where the money is coming from. We're talking about over 200 million dollars. And I'd also like to understand how we're going to do this in the context of actually addressing the public safety building among others and the need to to deal with our firehouses. Um And I do have a specific question on that. When I campaigned in 2015, I ran all over the city saying we have 380 million dollars of unfunded infrastructure liabilities. And today in conversation with staff, I learned that our 500 million dollars of liabilities of which 100 is funded applies only to the 15 buildings. So, how did the landscape change so dramatically in a year where 380 million dollars would have cured all of our ills and now 400

[116:02] million dollars would only go towards the 15 buildings? Can someone address that for me? Yes, can I I'm going to start with I think your first question. These are these are great questions. I I think with the first question about decisions and choices and so, first um we we are not asking for decisions tonight. We are not asking for choices. We want to bring some of those back. So, we have we share the exact same sentiments. We would love to build everything. That would be really great and and fun. We know that we have limited funding. And so, we're in a position to try to weigh kind of all these things also. And we acknowledge we have to understand what our our funding envelope is. Like what is possible. And so, that is exactly what our next step is now that we have started to look at the funding

[117:00] that is available currently and what these potential ballot measures could generate is to take some of these um priorities and these buildings and look at what could be possible. What we're really asking for tonight is not any choices, but just looking if there is feedback from council on how we may prioritize. Do you have feedback? Cuz the options there's tons of options and there's a lot of ways to look at this. And so, one, we want to present to you the situation and what we have in in front of us. And really just look for if you have additional feedback and priorities as we take that next step because we couldn't agree more. That is exactly what we need to do is look at what's available and how do we mix this. I guess my last question >> Actually, I'm sorry. Before you go on, Mark, I have a point of order. Okay. On your comment, Michelle, about giving direction. So, we got some guidance on straw polling and there was a specific

[118:01] comment around not re-litigating when we give staff direction during a straw poll. And I just would love to get some clarification on if we give direction and then there is research, then does that block us out of other things that we didn't necessarily give guidance or direction on this time? And is this an appropriate point of order? I think it is. >> Good evening, Council. I'm Deputy City Attorney Chris Reynolds. I'm standing in for Attorney Tate tonight. Um So, as Michelle said, you know, we're not looking for any decisions this evening. And to your your question, Council Member >> exactly? Can you talk to that, please? Thank you. Yes, thank you. And to your question, Council Member Adams um because there are no decisions made it's not about re-litigating a decision uh, in

[119:00] terms of direction. And so, um, there's nothing to prevent, you know, individual council members from sharing their perspectives on what direction that they think that the city should go in on these issues. Um, and so, uh, so we don't have to worry about that. Right. Yes, that's that's basically what I'm saying. Thank you. I just wanted to I cuz I saw that re-litigation thing in in that and I wanted to get that real clear. All right. I'm going to litigate for the first time. Um, one last question. Uh, You also had a question I have not answered on on unfunded liability. I I I would I would like you to answer that then. >> Yeah, would love to. It's a great question, um, council member. So, I I would love to provide some insight into that. So, there's what we're sharing, um, there's two different things and I appreciate how confusing this can be.

[120:00] Unfunded liability is really, uh, a calculation of the number of things in a building that have not been replaced. That's really what we're looking at. And so, like for instance, um, when we do an asset review of a building, it will say we need a new, uh, heating system, a new cooling system, upgrades to paint, those sort of things. Those represent unfunded liabilities. What it does not account for is the modernization that we just talked about. It doesn't account for new codes. It doesn't account for, um, improvements or upgrades with, uh, ADA. So, in many of our buildings, they're really far from meeting any kind of current ADA standards. And in many cases, particularly with ADA, the kind of clearances that are required really, um, makes involve having to build additions or to build new spaces to accommodate those. So, the unfunded liability across our entire building portfolios really it's

[121:02] the infrastructure failures. What we've presented in the 400 million is more of the new building that we should be building. And and so, they're different in that way. Um, the 20 million that we're talking about making minimum infrastructure investments is probably a much closer parallel to what really is resetting unfunded liability. That's taking care of the unfunded liabilities in our buildings. Um, the 400 million are the new buildings that would meet modern codes. And that's that's that's the difference. And then I actually have two last questions, but they're short. The first one is, the 20 million that we're going to be spending over the next few years, uh, uh, is that not just kicking the can down the road? I mean, when is it that we will begin to actually do work to actually improve whatever choice we make with respect to rec centers or other buildings? When do we actually get into the work? Because that 20 million dollars could could be very valuable if

[122:01] we were able to start working tomorrow. Uh, but we can't. And and so, I'm just kicking the can down the road for five or six years, um, and and hoping God will provide. Um, again, it's a great question. I think, um, there's a nuance. We're not really kicking the can. These buildings are not fully operational. And if we continue to not invest today, we're losing systems. And so, Okay. >> say we kicked the can many years ago, and that's the challenge we're in today, is that it takes five years. If you approved a project today, it would take us five years to move into that project. That's just the timeline of going through design and permitting and construction. And in many cases, I mean, the past three weeks, we have been I I could state numerous cases where we have had systems fail, we've had to go in and we don't have hot water, we had our own staff locked in an elevator. We you

[123:00] know, so, these are the things to actually keep those buildings running. We want to limit those investments because we really hope that we are bringing forward projects that can advance quickly, so we can limit what we're calling sunk costs in some cases. But they're not really kicking the can, they're keeping us operating. Okay. And And then, God, this is my last question. >> your third question or is this your fourth? Council member, if I can just add a little bit further. >> Mhm. Thank you so much. >> Well, I'll think about that. What I would say Yeah. What I would say too is, um, perhaps for today, um, what we're really looking for other than whether or not, um, you have concerns or you agree with like there's some major renovations we need to prioritize first, is really about our approach to there is a need to fund the mix of buildings, and that's what we

[124:00] will be coming to with how do we stack those in May in some possible scenarios. But if for some reason, council as a collective body did not feel that our approach to saying, yes, there are many needs across the city, we understand the magnitude of them, and we but we think, actually, these are the ones that we want to fund. We need to hear that, too. So, those are the the kind that's the kind of input that at least today, and then, um, that we're looking for while and depending on that or based on that input, in May, we will certainly be sharing with you, based on that, the mix and match of possible scenarios with existing funding, with and with potential, uh, funding that we could get from additional sources. Okay. Thank you. >> feel about that? Remember, there's going to be another round of questions. Okay. Last last question, I promise. Um, one of the key elements of this entire conversation is what these projects will

[125:00] cost. Uh, at what point do we dig into these projects to value engineer them, to see if the cost is actually the cost that's on on paper, what we can do to reduce the cost? I mean, it it, you know, we obviously need funding, but we also have to do that in the context of what projects cost. Is it absolutely required that a public safety building be 120 million dollars? Is it absolutely required that every fire station is going to be 10 million dollars? Um, where's the what are we doing to try to squeeze every dollar out of these projects so that we have a better capability of actually seeing them realized? At least in our lifetime. Yeah. Your lifetime. You guys are all younger. Okay. You don't want to use my lifetime as the as the uh, as the standard here. Um, it's a great question. And and and to fully acknowledge these are So,

[126:00] first, the numbers that we're presenting are they're rough orders. They are based on us looking at industry standards, our own current examples of cost per square foot, and they're based on really square footage needs. They have not dove detailed into the buildings cuz we haven't been approved to advance these projects. And that really is, you know, when you get into a project to refine costs. Um, for instance, the public safety building, the reason one of the huge the big drivers of the the price tag is the size of a new public safety building that we need. Uh, we have done program analysis, um, the past few years ago that were suggests we need a building at around 100,000 square feet. That is a building over 100 million dollars in today's, um, cost per square foot. Uh, and so, I I I think absolutely we want to get into these

[127:00] projects and look for opportunities to kind of bring costs down, but they're also just reflective of what our current market conditions are to construct these kinds of buildings. And and they are on cost per square foot. Um, I just want to then the fire stations, it's a great question as well. I don't think we're in these numbers necessarily suggesting we're replacing every new fire every fire station with a new fire station. I think this is where we're looking for blends. We're looking at what the goals are and the needs of our fire department and how do we renovate some of these buildings in more limited ways. So, I think what you're talking about is is trying to really bring some of these into, um, you know, into some better cost constraints is exactly what we want to do. At the current currently, none of them are actual projects for us to really dig into. So, what we're bringing to you is a rough order, but it is based very much in industry standards, square footages that we're used to using. Um, and so, it gives a pretty rough order of

[128:01] of the costs. Thank you. And Matt's been waiting very, very patiently, and I turn it over to him. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, I have two young kids, so patiently waiting is the name of the game. Um, so, um, appreciate the questions that have come before. They've been helpful, but they also maybe raised new questions on top of that. Um, let me first start with fire station four. Um, I start there cuz that that's my neighborhood fire station off Darley and Broadway there. Um, it's the epitome of a single family home. That is that is a tiny one there. I recall when we were talking about CU South related stuff that there was a conversation about response times, population at CU South, and whether or not station four would maybe have to shift to the east a little bit to stay within the framework of those response time requirements and accreditations. And I'm just sort of curious, do we have certainty that that won't happen? And therefore, please let's do build a new

[129:01] one. My only concern is are we building something really new where there's still a decent chance that we would have to move it to maintain those standards. So, maybe I misunderstood, but I do remember there was a conversation about four in that sense or CU contributing to a new fire station out on theirs to again maintain that envelope of response time. So, I just want to ask that question that pertains to four. Maybe the chief is around to answer that question, but that was something I recall in our CU South conversations. Yeah, I I would defer. I I do know those conversations. I I certainly would defer to some others who may know more about the details of those conversations, but I I what I can say is when we have evaluated properties in station two as well, um we work directly with fire and they're the ones who set up the with like the polygons that essentially look at the call volume and look at the best positioning of the stations and where they serve um the people. And so, every time we evaluated a property, which

[130:01] frankly is rare when they come up in that area of town. It's kind of hard to find property. So, we're constrained there. Took us I think close to 10 years to find a property for station three um just because the way they come up and how they meet those polygon standards um that whole assessment was done and it did kind of underlie our our purchase of the new property for station four. So, um it it was assessed and analyzed. And that was existing polygons or with a future context of the population and density that CU South would bring? I think Chris, you may have some more to add to that. So, I might Sure. Thanks, Michelle and Chris Meschuk, Deputy City Manager. Uh Matt, that uh the the dynamic model that Michelle was describing that we built allowed us to model essentially five years of call volume and then model if we move a station, what happens? And it's an interconnected system. So, if you move

[131:00] one station, it changes the call volume on another station. Um and you're correct that in the annexation agreement for CU South, we had a a clause in there a paragraph in there about public safety. Um We have since done that more dynamic analysis and what that analysis actually showed is um close to where essentially where station four is now is actually an ideal location for response times, which is why then we were fortunate enough to snag a property that is, you know, let literally next door and across the street uh for us to be able to do that. So, uh still on our mind and obviously will still be something as as other growth and development happens in the city, but right now um the analysis was was pretty solid on on that area. That's all I wanted to hear that it included CU South and it dynamically responded to that population shift and yet still the location was picked based on those those new pieces that's exactly awesome. So, thank you for addressing that question head on. Appreciate it, Chris. Um

[132:00] Next question is really kind of a follow-up to and and I'm I'm sort of logically trying to work through how how we make sense of this. And this has to do with the renovation versus new build. And I totally get the need to protect embodied carbon. I know our former council colleague Lauren Folkerts was a major champion of sticking with wanting to maintain that embodied carbon and being thoughtful about that. In fact, she's taught me what I know about that. So, I I totally get that. What I'm struggling with is then the immense cost when we're not going to tear down like say East Boulder Rec Center because the embodied carbon. So, we're in an additive state and that comes with tremendous cost, but we've already committed to fully rebuilding the South Boulder Rec Center no matter what. And in which case if we're doing that, doesn't it mean it's most cost effective to add more of the infrastructure at a more cost effective basis than it would be to add it at East at a major premium cuz you're not

[133:01] rebuilding it? So, I'm trying to understand how that works because the numbers just don't seem to add up to me. Is it So, anyway, I I just want to end there cuz I'm trying to understand how those things actually make sense. Yeah, no, it it it's a great question. It's it's a complicated equation. One thing I just want to be clear, it's not necessarily tremendously added cost. There in in every building is very different. So, some buildings, particularly ones that do have a complicated form and, you know, roofs that have interest like intricate structural systems, that's going to be way more cost um costly to renovate a building like that versus a building um that has a regular shape, a rectangular form, and a regular structural system. So, it it is a little case by case. And that is where in the case of East Boulder Community Center, when we looked at that building, we said, "Geez, that building has a regular

[134:00] form. It's got two rectangular wings that come out." And so, adding structure and adding to that building can make sense because you're adding to a regular form. It has flat roofs. Like the way you can add on can minimize those costs of putting an addition on. And so, it's a little bit of apples and oranges from one building to the next necessarily. There is an incremental cost. And but it it I would not say that it's enormous. It's not like it's double the cost. It it's less than 5% um in in that kind of range to reuse a building versus building new. Um and again, every building's a little different. So, that that calculus is different. But that was a big driver in looking at East Boulder um in addition to the fact that we're looking at a 55,000 square feet worth of a structure and the fact that we don't have to tear down a lot. We don't have to do that. We might have to add a little bit on and we

[135:00] have to reconfigure within versus another building where we actually have to tear down a lot. We have to do a lot of demo before we're adding back. And so, that's a bit of the nuance that goes into that that that calculus. So, I wouldn't say that there's a huge incremental cost at East Boulder um to make that renovation. Uh well, okay. I I I hear that. I I just look at the price tag and what's proposed to change versus what a new facility brings and to me that seems like I mean, that that seems quite substantially different. The square footage is definitely something to look at in there cuz a lot of times that's the biggest drivers. We're looking at two really different square footages. Okay. Okay. I I I appreciate that. Um my last question cuz I know we're going to do three um uh centers on it's it's not one of the critical projects, but it's important because it could feed in here. We have some existing projects that are in the pipeline that are outside of this 15

[136:00] critical. Are we looking at reevaluating phasing or whether or not they're truly needs versus wants because we are starved for resources at this point to handle the critical. And I'm wondering if we and being on council have made I I own some of the decisions that have been made there. So, this is I take some of this responsibility. Have we looked at at at peeling back some of those existing projects? And in one in particular that I think is, you know, I'll just use an example is like the civic area. I get the East Bookend and think about year-round farmers market, but the rest of that project isn't I don't deem it as a need, probably a want. And so, can we peel back some of that resource and reapply it to some of these more critical needs? Again, the needs versus wants calculus. And so, I'm wondering if there's ways for us to look back and and really figure out where that opportunity is to peel some resources back to really put them where they're maybe most effective given our constrained financial environment. Hey folks, I'll just talk briefly about

[137:00] the civic area that the same round of CCRS projects in 2021 that included funding for East included the civic area. And we advanced that project for a lot of reasons. You've already mentioned the one around the opportunity to leverage the East Bookend. It is one of the parks in the worst condition on our system. It has aging infrastructure, dated irrigation that leads to all kinds of challenges and issues, responsive maintenance, and isn't designed in a way that is supporting downtown vitality in a way that it could in the way that we see downtown park investments do. And so, really that project has been advanced due to its condition, due to the opportunity to leverage and support investment with the East Bookend, but really because of what downtown parks can do for economic vitality at a time when we really need that. This is the largest swath of land in downtown Boulder. It's a key connector between the Pearl Street and the Hill where we're going to have a lot of people going back and forth. And we are overly reliant on sales tax. And so, it is a

[138:00] way to drive revenue that can help fund some of these other projects. I appreciate that, Allen. Thank you. We'll we'll come we'll circle back to those conversations, I'm sure on the 18th as well or in May. Appreciate it. Well, those are my questions. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Any more questions from those who have not already posed one before I ask mine, which are cuz y'all did a lot of mine. So, I don't really have I don't have a whole bunch here. So, um All right. Seeing no other hands, let me just double check on mine. Um but have Oh. Uh um at what point I I remember, I think it might have been last year when we were doing budgets, I was asking about what is the criteria or formula for us to as a council to consider using reserves. And I just asked that because there are certain things that to me are urgent and important

[139:02] and and others to to my colleagues point could potentially be pushed back. Um and and and then again I would also be remiss if I yeah didn't bring up the the kind of things. I was just curious about just in this in the research and work that you've done were there any conversations around tapping into concert into reserves for any of the urgent and important priority ones? Thank you for the question council member Charlotte Huskey budget officer. Um we have the city has a reserve policy of 16.7% across our operating funds, 20% for the general fund. It's important to note that our reserve policy really focuses on considering emergencies and natural disasters. We have those reserves in place to help to support if there are natural disasters that occur such as floods and

[140:00] wildfires. And so really when we're talking about tapping into reserves our reserve policy focuses on those particular areas in lieu of funding one-time capital infrastructure projects or ongoing needs. Okay, thank you very much. Um Those are all my questions at this time. All right, any other round two questions? Seeing no hands going to move us to question number two. Does council agree with staff's recommendation to prioritize investing in minor infrastructure um major maintenance needs first with currently available funds?

[141:03] Um Rob Van Mark. Thank you Tasha. Um I just feel like I need more data to be able to answer this question. Um I know there's a life cycle cost analysis for these buildings. I I just feel like I want more um information on debt service projections, um you know, a chart showing the proceeds from the disposal of the 11 properties, the lease savings from consolidating the Western campus. Um and the voided deferred costs on the retired assets. I I kind of feel like I'm making a decision in the dark to be quite honest. I don't feel like I have enough information to agree on the proposed next steps to further develop. I mean I do agree with a mix of scenarios, but in that scenario

[142:00] I just need a lot more data and like if we can't capture what we're going to get from the disposal of 11 buildings or the savings from the 13 leased buildings. Um and then combine that with our debt service. I mean I remember it was 100 million for the bonding against the general fund. That debt service was 800 million a year. What is our debt service on the CCRS? 73 million. Just all of these little factors if we could have um I mean I keep hoping this tool is something amazing that will give us these answers in a a clear form so that me personally so that I can um make that decision for you. Council member just a clarification, is that in response to that just the major maintenance needs or is that a sort of a combination of the mix and the and the major maintenance, right? It's a

[143:01] combination of all of it. Um because I feel like I want to see the whole picture so that I can kind of drill down into the priority maintenance picture and the 20-year. Thanks. That's that's helpful clarity. And Michelle maybe I I don't know how you feel about it, but um there is a no matter what we figure out with the rest of the funding, there is an immediate major maintenance need and maybe that's something you can speak to. Yeah, I think that's why thank you Arya. Um And just to help provide that clarity why we've separated these two things so distinctly. Um I think all of your points around trying to make these major capital decisions and what's next and and what the the tools could be um is important and and that's where we also need to go and layer in a lot of these revenue sources and how that could help um fund major capital projects and what we what our next steps are. Um

[144:00] the minimum um maintenance needs that we're identifying um are just known uh imminent failures and imminent risks in buildings. And so um I think that's where we're looking uh for support in being able to really keep buildings operational. Um we're putting band-aids on things right now where we need to replace the heating system in the very near term. The projects that we're identifying um in these major capital these major capital projects like I said if we had all the money tomorrow they would still take five years at at best to hit the ground. This this is truly keeping our existing buildings operating today. So just to to make that distinction um that's really what we're coming forward requesting is is money to keep our current buildings open and operating. Um I mean if it's that simple of a question then yes. I I of course I agree with that.

[145:00] Thank you. Mark. Share my colleague's concern with wanting to see the whole picture. It's not going to change my support for putting the band-aids on since we have to put the band-aids on. I don't think we we have a a real choice in the matter and I know we're not going to be breaking ground on a new rec center in the next year. Um so yes, I'm going to support the request but I'm also going to say I I I support my colleagues desire to get the whole picture as quickly as possible so we can actually understand better what it is we're doing and and when we're doing it and how we're doing it. Thank you Mark. Nicole. Um to me yes feels like the only option that that we really have here unless I'm

[146:00] misunderstanding the situation. The alternative to this is that critical buildings experience critical failures that cost a lot more money or at best create massive disruptions to critical programs and services. The plastic-lined evidence in the public safety building that that was that was pretty wild to see. Um you know, none of us are municipal finance experts or um or facilities experts. So I feel comfortable not getting into the operations on this. Also we do field a lot of questions from community. And so to Mark and Rob's points I think if there are if there is some information that you can give us that can help us explain this to community a little bit that may also help because I think some of these questions um are out there in community as well, right? Well, why why spend money on filling buildings? And it's like yeah, but we also don't have new buildings yet to take the place of these and keep maintaining those programs and services. So if there's any information you could provide us, I think it would be helpful

[147:01] um in communicating. Sorry, that was sort of a tangential answer as well, but yes, that's my answer. Thank you Nicole. Ryan. Yes to two and I'll just say yes to three while I'm while I'm on. I I was quiet with the questions because I had the benefit of conversation with um the team this morning and I'm on the the long-term financial strategy committee. So I've had maybe more time than others to understand and internalize a lot of this. Um and I just wanted to say um well, two things. One I I mean I'm optimistic and hopeful that we will be able to provide for all of the needs with the rec centers, with the the fire and public safety centers and so on. But um if I could just then add to that to say, you know, there's sort of a I'm going to question three if that's okay. I'll just say and be be be done. Um Where we are now is at a at an opportunity to to really take stock of a

[148:02] kind of a change in strategy with with all of this. And so um you know, we have now a an asset management program for the for the whole portfolio. I mean I guess in 2021 really it started. Um but this is pretty new. Um we we're hearing from um staff about making these projections with preventive maintenance in mind, with thoughtfulness about the whole lifetime cost. And um I if I have any concern, well, I would say my biggest concern is that um we have a really important job to do here to to shift into a position of of greater financial sustainability. Um I think my greatest concern is that we if we do it in sort of cuts and pieces at a time, we're going to have decision fatigue from the community if we you know we do some of it this year and some of it next year so and so on. So what I would love to see as we it look at these

[149:00] investment scenarios is the whole thing that the 400 million plus the rest of it to describe our entire shortfall together. The community can come together with it and let's focus on this whole denominator that we need to achieve. Wrestle with it at that level and then let's get the whole balance of it done. And I I'll just close by saying I know that's what staff has been so involved with over these last couple of years to to really calculate a super complex problem that that's just landed with them from from years of deferred work and they know it and so now the hard part is to get it to council so that we can know it and then help the community understand it and I'm really grateful for their work and I would agree with what Mark said earlier that they're just doing a stand-up job with the financial you know group and and the parks and rec group and really grateful for your service. Awesome. Thank you. So I will go ahead and answer sorry

[150:00] are there other council members I don't see any other additional hands for question number two around the minimum infrastructure? Any other comments or moving forward with that? Tara. You're on mute. Yeah, for those of us that want to say yes, can we just say yes to that question? Yes, you can. Yes. Thank you. Erin. Good. Thank you. And Tina. Thank you. All right. And I'm a yes on that too. Now we're on to question number three. Which is does council agree with the staff's proposal for next steps to further develop a mix of investment scenarios based on the priority buildings including the rec center. And then there's not another number here so I'm assuming that this last little piece here is also a part of question three which we're going to have a conversation about question but

[151:00] based on the feedback of these questions specific questions next steps will be considered for the ballot measure the budget development for 2027 and the six-year CIP. Just wanted to add that little piece there. So we are now on our last question with 30 more minutes 34 more minutes in our allocated time no pressure. Who would like to go first? Oh wow. Are we all okay here we go. There we go. There we go. There we go. Come on get in there. All right. Meh. I'm waiting for others to chime in first. Um Good question. So yeah kind of a mix there. You're right. There seems like there's a pseudo fourth one there. Um Yeah, but whatever it's all good. I see your adoption. I like it. Um All right. So with regards to next steps um Yes, but I I think there's some reprioritization that needs to occur and so I just want to flag that for staff. I I I think you need to be prepared for

[152:01] there to perhaps at least for me I don't know about my colleagues to to be offering some reprioritization of some of these objects. I'll just throw one out. I think it's it's totally reasonable just given the way it's been evaluated and given the five-year time horizon if we started now to have something and as Mark pointed out we're maybe kicking the can with this sort of imminent maintenance. I think it's fair for us to consider that we redo the cadence for the rec centers where we do East Boulder rec center because there's already existing contracts. I get that. I may have issues with what we're spending on but that maybe that train's left the station. I think we then go to South Boulder rec center is the immediate next one so we start that process. If it's going to take indeed five years we have to start the clock as soon as possible otherwise we run the risk of even more expensive fixes down the road. And then I think you go to North Boulder as the third. So I'm just going to lay that out there so it's no big surprise when we get there to the 18th and I do think we need to discuss that civic area and and really think about needs versus wants at that core level and I think that's a real kind of policy decision again owning that I was

[153:01] part of that decision decision that made that put community or the civic center under par but we did so in isolation and I get that we're no longer talking about projects in isolation anymore. So that's a great evolution there. So so those are the things that I would flag just going forward but I do think the next two things would be the bonding against the general fund and certainly where the DDA fits in. I know that's a long-term revenue generator but if it's long-term maybe that's a payback option on the money we're investing in the civic area redesign. So some of that money out of the general fund or from CCRS I should say funnels into other projects. So I think there's some clever ways in which we have new-found capabilities and I'd like to see us explore those permutations to the fullest extent so we can actually best advocate to community about the benefits that those various potential ballot measures may have. That's what I got. Thank you. Thank you kindly. Tina. All right. Thanks so much for all the information and and I'm I'm just uh

[154:00] reminding myself and staff correct me we're not making any decisions about what amenities are being offered at any rec center at this point. Correct? Okay. Great. Just want to clear that up. I just also want to um note that this is an inherited issue and I appreciate that we're now looking holistically at this portfolio for a long-term predictable schedule of maintenance and refreshing and sometimes renewal renovation. Um as you know I was on the school board for eight years and they have a very clear and disciplined approach which is largely based on bonds which are pretty big. But it's a it's a really good approach I think to learn from but I think it looks like we're on the right track. Um one thing to think about if we do continue to ask for funds from the community and if we create this more robust approach toward our facility maintenance is to think about something like the CBAC which is a committee for

[155:01] the school district that helps just create community input into just the facility conversation. I felt that it created a lot of trust in the community as because we are spending so many tax dollars to have that voice and parks and rec did a really nice job with this in this perspective but it might be interesting to think about a facilities board. I hesitate to say that because I don't really support more boards and commissions in general but that connection between facility maintenance and the community I found to be incredibly valuable on school board. Um the other piece is I'd love to at some point adopt a policy around leases of public buildings so that there's equity around the expectations and who is chosen to use those buildings. I think it's been appropriately opportunistic but we might want to think of something that's a little bit more lasting and predictable as well so if that comes up I'd be I'd love to talk about that.

[156:01] Um the other piece is making sure that our disposal policy is clear and transparent in the public as we go down this path. Um and just make it make it clear that the community understands how we're going to be selling or transferring properties to other public entities if that comes up whatever it is I think I want to be clear with the community. Um the other thing is just um finally is I I like this idea of looking at the investment strategies. There was a sentence that talked also about what budget tradeoffs might play into this into these solutions as well. So I I do encourage staff as difficult it is going to be in this what I assume is going to be terrible budget year again to think hard about are there budget tradeoffs that we need to know about right now that we're making and and and how do we talk about that with the community because it's very unlikely through the general budget and through this facility budget that we'll meet everybody's needs

[157:01] and the the sooner we can be clear about that with the community I think the better but overall I think we're doing great and thanks to Pratt for all their work on this too. Awesome. Thank you. Nicole. Thanks. I almost forgot to raise my hand. Um thank you staff. I just this is just such extraordinary work and uh really in in in five years including the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic you have brought all this together so thank you. Um just a couple reflections related to this question about the investment scenarios. There's so much changing right now not just our city and our country and our world. I get the sense that community is really change weary. Um and that feels like part of why this conversation is making people really nervous right now. I'm curious as we're considering scenarios

[158:01] what would the community need to invest and how over the next 20 years to prioritize these facilities at a level that meets all of our goals and framework and also keeps what people are hoping to have in these spaces and just like a just to get a sense of what would this cost to do this at the level that I I'm at least hearing from community right now that we really do want all these things to kind of stay as they are. What would that cost us because it may be that that you know we can maybe people are change weary enough and have funds to invest that that that might be willing to get there and if not, at least we'll know that. Um I think it would be really helpful with as the scenarios kind of come back and and yes, I I do. Please go forth and bring us some scenarios cuz this is a really hard question to think about. Uh what I would love to have is a matrix that shows um not just life cycle costs, but some of these other

[159:00] goals, uh equity, climate goals, um recent governance frameworks we've adopted, like alignment with those frameworks, like the facilities plan, the Parks and Rec strategic plan. Um if we were to grade these different scenarios that you're going to bring back to us on those pre-existing goals and frameworks, how do they come out? Sort of like you did for the buildings with the red and the green and the grays. Could we have something like that as you bring these scenarios back um in terms of alignment with existing governance frameworks and and pre-existing policies and plans? Um and to the point about people being change weary right now in community, I think it might be good to include some other scoring criteria that aren't necessarily within those frameworks. Things like preserving existing services in their current locations, um maintaining historical program patterns, responding to neighborhood level expectations for citywide amenities, those kinds of things. Uh just so that that can be part of the decision matrix, too, cuz I I

[160:00] hear that in some of our questions that are coming out that it may be that that's the those are things that will weigh into the decision making and it won't just be our pre-existing frameworks. Um hopefully that all made sense, but thank you. I'm really looking forward to seeing some of the scenarios. I think that will help a lot in terms of getting concrete and and in understanding how this all fits together um in a bigger system. So, thank you. Thank you, Nicole. Tara. Uh I want to agree with Tina that the Parks um and Rec Advisory Board did an amazing job. By the way, Parks and Rec Board, I listened to your entire last week's discussions study session, and it was really, really helpful and very informative. So, thanks for all your extra work that you've been doing on this. And that also includes Ali and the Parks staff and just everybody here tonight and everybody that's been working on this. I do want to say that I my questions

[161:02] earlier were about saving money, and that is because I want the community to see that we are trying to save money, okay? We have tightening our belt, I believe is very important to the community right now. Once we start asking for more money from them, they're going to say, "Well, what have you done?" So, I'm hoping that in our next few conversations, we can say, "This is what we have done. This is what we plan to do." And not convince, but just show where we are working hard to keep the community trust and even increase it and also to save money. So, that's why I did ask those questions at the beginning. I'm not trying to micromanage, but I'm saying a lot of community members speak to us. They spoke to me. They said, "I'm I know about this, and we're spending too money

[162:01] at too much money on that." So, how can we show all that we're doing and we're going to do to um move this conversation along. Thank you, Tara. Aaron. Yeah, thanks everyone for all your very hard work on this very difficult subject and very complicated subject. And um I really appreciate the effort people have uh put into answering all the questions. I I had to budget about 45 minutes just to read the answers to the hotlines. I don't know how long it took to to answer all those questions. Um so, appreciate all of your work here. And I do support um the uh approach for the the next steps. So, I look forward to seeing the scenarios that you bring back. Um Uh my colleagues have said some some great things so far. I want to echo the thanks to the Parks and Rec Advisory Board for their recommendations. I thought those were uh good recommendations. They did reflect the community's desire to see um no loss in in major services, right? And

[163:02] we've heard that loud and clear that people would like for us to have at least as many recreational services as we have currently, um which of course is no surprise, but um as Ryan said, I'm I'm hopeful and optimistic that we'll find paths forward to provide those services. Um I do want to continue with our current projects that we're working on, like that first phase of the renovation for East Boulder Rec and and the downtown civic area. I know we're not prioritizing specific projects. I'm just in for reinforcing that I think that we're working on good projects currently and look forward to seeing those continue. So, um it'll be good to see the next steps. I I will say if we can continue to look for those um slightly cheaper ways to get any of this done, if there are value engineering opportunities or creative solutions um to some of these problems that cost a little bit less per some of the things that Tara said. Uh I know that folks would certainly appreciate that, and then we might get a little bit closer to realizing these goals.

[164:01] And then I'll just come come back by circling back to what Mark said, which is that there have been some really um personal uh attacks on staff members through this process, and I want to say that I just think those are inappropriate and uncalled for. I know everybody here is working very hard for the good of the community, and so I really appreciate what you all are doing. That's what I got. Thanks. Awesome. Thank you. Okay, there we go. Excuse me. Um echoing many of the comments um made by previous council members, um but wanted to emphasize um the consolidation. I especially um appreciated Rob's comments about the fire stations um and others. Somebody else brought up the CU as well, but I you know, just based on the level of the collaborative nature of

[165:00] emergency and disaster response, um it seems like there could be some some deeper work in in sharing the burden of the cost of some of those facilities related to that. I also really appreciated what um Tina shared around the licensing. Um and this is to me and just more of a prioritization, especially since the Michelle, your comments about, you know, the 5-year time frame. It's kind of what can be done in service of in in that amount of time frame. And I did want to circle back to my comments while I'm in the lease conversation that all the lease lease lessees are not the same. And so, although I appreciate the idea of a stand of of some kind of of criteria or standard leasing agreements, um I do want to be mindful of, for example, the Pottery Lab, right? Um where we we know that our arts are having a hard time with um and nonprofits in in doing our building. So, and if we say we want to do that, then, you know, maybe there needs to be some exceptions or considerations, and I would be open to that. Um as far as the the the some of

[166:03] the elephants in the room are the what I'm calling facilities adjacent. And so, that would be the airport coming conversation and area three. Um Matt, I love you brought up wants versus needs, so I'm excited about that conversation. Um and then um for the budget, just really making sure that um right now, the majority of the of the um KPIs or outcomes that are a part of that project are all are primarily output based, and so getting some more outcome data would be very helpful. Um and also just change over time. Often times, we only get one snapshot shot or two, but it would really be helpful to have some more change over time when it comes to the data to the budget conversation. And then lastly, um one thing that we haven't been exploring, and I'm hopeful maybe I don't I'm not I I I'm not on the long-term financial planning strategy group. Um but um if there's any

[167:01] enterprise opportunities there, obviously we have one being um our water utility, but I'm curious if there's conversations around, you know, developing solar or something that will, you know, I I feel like we're we're leaning very hard on sales tax, and although I appreciate Ali, your comments and expertise on the importance of having a thriving downtown park, um I think going back to the polycrisis, this is not business as usual. Um and I just have some significant concerns um around our ability to primarily focus only on increasing sales tax. I know that there's that mix, but um I I would be very open to thinking differently about how our city brings in revenue beyond ballot measures and sales tax. Um and especially with enterprises, um and I and reclaiming uh or and expanding potentially our science and tech footprint in a in an entirely different way that we hadn't considered. And that's the big thinking. I wish we could

[168:00] bring some big thinking into this conversation um like we did with the arts conversation. Um what we've always done and tinkering around on the bits there is is to Mark's comment, kicking the can. And so, um I'm hopeful that that investment group is also thinking differently about the way um that our city brings in money. And that's all that I have to say about that. Thank you so much. Um anything else for the good of the order? No. I'll just Nuria. If I may, thank you. Um A, I wanted to thank all the council for this conversation. It has been a hard conversation. I know that you're facing a lot of questions in community. I I think we've got what we needed to move forward in terms of bringing some of those scenarios. You will see some more specifics on what could be. Um I also want to acknowledge that staff has also been on a journey in the past few years just because of our financial constraints on looking and re-aligning

[169:01] and seeing where there could be savings. For those in the community that may not recall last year we called for a 5% reduction. We went down for the first time in many many years to about 28% of our total cost across all funds being personnel, which is a fairly low number in municipal governments. And we are this year as I've kicked off budget are asking staff in anticipation of a variety of things including a conversation about compensation as we enter into union negotiations. I've asked staff to consider additional cuts. Right? These are complex problems that are multi-layered and that our funds do a variety of things not just buildings but programs and personnel and to the conversation about what are the trade-offs. There are multitudes, right? As we think about it. Um and this conversation about where facilities has been for many many years parks and recs

[170:01] have been in their department plan on the old version of how we tiered things. You're okay where you are just continue being fiscally constrained. We're no longer doing this and we're bringing a holistic portfolio. And I just want to recognize for you and to community that it is because of this change of bringing everything together. It seems daunting and it seems big and that is the only way that we know to really think about this in a comprehensive manner. So I just want to finally thank you for being with us on this journey as we're tackling a huge problem. Um and we're trying to face it with integrity and with thoughtfulness of what can we done because there's a lot of things we can do. It's just now about timing and strategy and your feedback has been really instrumental in that. So we will talk more about potential scenarios on in May but just appreciate this really hard conversation we've been

[171:00] having. Okay. Anything else? All right. Well, thank you so much everyone. This has been a wonderful study session. And I look forward to seeing all of your beautiful faces next week. Mayor, you just came off mute. Did I miss something? Oh, just thanks to you. >> I guess I was like uh-oh. Good night everybody. Cuz I was looking at the wrong script apparently. So Alas, take it all in. prioritizing facts over feelings and that's kind of where we are right now. And so I I just really appreciate all of the

[172:01] information qualitative, quantitative, experience um to get us to this point um and it's not going to be perfection but it will be progress. So just thank you. This is our team. This is what we have and it's more than a lot of other places have right now. So also be mindful and be grateful of this team. Be grateful of the excellence in the people that we get to work with. And you may not love everybody or like everybody but everybody comes with unique gifts and skills and talents and this is the time for that to shine. So thank you so much. Have a wonderful rest of your evening and I'll see you again soon. That's all for now.