April 8, 2026 — Design Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:08] Great. We'll start with, Roll call, just introduce yourself, and your… roll out in this meeting. I'll start. I'm Brendan Ash, Chair of Dad? Steven Eckert, I guess now… Vice Chair? Acting Vice Chair? Pretending to be Vice Chair? Vice Chair? My name's Lee Johnson. I think I'd just keep quiet for a while. Welcome, Lee. Welcome. Thanks for joining us. My name is Amelia Harvey, I'm with the City of Boulder, and I am the Board Secretary. And I'm Kalani Pahoa, I'm the staff liaison to the Design Advisory Board.

[1:06] Alright, So, Lee, we usually kind of have this set up… we've been trying to be a little more, structured with our meetings, so we're gonna go through some slides here, and these are… this is sort of standard for how we run the meetings, even though we have no project review this month. Well, you're gonna see how we kind of get… get started. So we've done our roll call and call to order. I'm going to read some rules of decorum and participation instructions. We'll move forward with particip… Approval of the minutes and participation before we get into our discussion. I got a quick question, Lynn, before you start, just about notes and minutes and stuff. So you record it? Do you… I guess, how does the notes, the minutes work? Do I take the… take the Zoom and translate it, like, with AI, or do I take many minutes?

[2:05] How does it matter? So… For this meeting, for official meeting minutes, I take those, so you don't have to worry about that. Okay. When we get into our board matters discussion, and you're discussing the board retreat planning, that might be a time when you might want to take your own notes document, you can share it, share the screen so everyone can see it, and so that the board can take, their own notes for how they want to plan the retreat. Kalani, does that sound right? Yes, because Steven, your notes will become the agenda for the retreat. Okay. So what you're using will be that, that portion. Okay, but typically I don't take… No, you don't… to do. Yeah, it… we have the video recording, and we'll have the, action minutes, the official portion, you don't have to worry about that at all. Okay. Good. Yeah. Alright, so I'm just gonna read through some rules of decorum,

[3:04] The City has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive, meaningful, inclusive, Civic Conversations. This vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members, staff, and board and commission members, as well as democracy for people of all ages, identities, lived experiences, and political perspectives. For more information about this vision and community engagement processes, you can visit our website. The following are examples of rules of decorum found in the Boulder Revised Code and other guidelines that support this vision. These will be upheld during this meeting. All remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person. Obscanity, racial epithets, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited. Participants are required to identify themselves using the name they are commonly known by, and individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online. Currently, only audio testimony is permitted online.

[4:13] I'm just gonna… Pause for a sec, I see KJ here, gonna remote him. And can you make me a co-host, Amelia, so that I can, like. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Appreciate it. And I just keep reading through these, and then we can go back and introduce, Christopher. So this is a Zoom webinar format, so there are opportunities for public participation at DAB meetings, and those are announced. The chat is disabled in this meeting format, but when we indicate it's time for participation, you can use the raise hand feature to speak. This is going to be for people who are tuning in to watch the meeting. DAB members obviously have the ability to talk without raising the hand. If your name is not displaying, you would enter your name into the Q&A, and then when it's your turn, we'll unmute, and participants get 3 minutes to speak.

[5:13] And then there's a few more instructions for the race… where to find the raise hand feature for folks participating, and I don't see anyone in here tonight. more instructions on that, just to make sure everyone can find it. A few other tips, since this is a digital format. Check the top banner of your Zoom window for tabs, where you can view different screens, because sometimes we have multiple people presenting materials. So if you get lost, take a look at the top, and you might see different tabs that you can navigate to see different views. And we do use a timer for some portions of the meeting, which will appear in the corner of my screen, and this just helps us keep on track with different portions of the meeting. And that's it for the participation instructions, so we'll move on to approval of the minutes, and I'll hand it back over to Brendan.

[6:08] Great, so the meeting minutes are a little bit… Tricky, because, I had to recuse myself, and Steven is the only… Board member that was in attendance at the meeting, so do we need to postpone the approval of the minutes? You know, that's a good question, Brendan. I think that… that… I don't know if your recusal will also stand for the minutes approval? If that needs to happen, and in that case, we would only have Lee and Steven, and we wouldn't have a quorum. So, I would say, yes, let's look at the approval of the minutes to the next meeting. Let's push those. Yeah, that's fine. And then we can revisit this when we have a full house. And the applicant. Still has received these. They have the draft here.

[7:00] Okay. So, and they have anything that might have come in, with any changes from, staff, as far as edits. So they have the most current copy that was on the website. All right, well, I move to postpone the approval of the minutes until the next meeting. Alright, I think… Yeah, public participation. Doesn't sound like there's anybody… There are no attendees at this time, so… We can move forward. It's just us. Alright, then I think it's, board matters. So, First, on the agenda is welcome, Lee. I'm glad you… I remember meeting you at the open house, so I'm glad…

[8:03] you're with us this evening. Maybe you can give a… introduce yourself and tell us your background and a little bit about yourself. Excuse me. I grew up on the East Coast, New Jersey, Princeton, went to college in Ohio. Then architecture school. I've lived in Los Angeles for the last 35 years. I actually lived in Boulder in the… 89 and 90 for 2 years, and then I came back here 2 years ago. I have a family member that has a health issue, so I spend a lot of time doing that. I'm a super easygoing guy, I like the art world, the… informality of it, and everybody sort of looks like they crawled out of a dumpster, but when you talk to them, they say pretty interesting things, and kind of in a way that you… maybe you don't disagree with it, but you gotta respect it. And…

[9:02] I'm not married. I don't have any kids. And I don't know all the answers. Great, well, neither do we, so… You're in good company. Okay. Well, again, welcome. And then, so, really, the only thing on our agenda is. Do we want to do our introductions too, Brendan, just so Lee can… We could do that a little. Same thing. I mean, I, you know, I think, We have a retreat coming up, and that might be a good time For us to kind of introduce ourselves when more members are present. But just… Just briefly, I'm a practicing architect here in Boulder, primarily commercial architecture.

[10:04] And I've been on the board that I interviewed, and… applied to be on this board in, right at the start of COVID in 2020, so… I've been here for 6 years. Cool, yeah, Steven Eckert, Have I been on for 2 years? I think I've been on for 2 years, I don't even know anymore. Lost track of time. And art… practicing architect in Boulder as well. I've lived here since… 97… That's kind of crazy, so 30 years, I guess. I also grew up on the East Coast, near Syracuse, New York, so upstate, New York, real upstate New York. Canada, if you're from New York City. And, yeah, I have… family, two daughters. My wife's also an architect, she teaches at CU.

[11:04] In environmental design, and I do mostly… Mostly residential, multifamily, and kind of neighborhood. Designs, and then a little bit of commercial. As well. Yeah. So maybe we could open up the Word document for the… Yeah. So I just share it. Yeah, and you'll see, the banner that Amelia mentioned across the top. Steven's screen share will show up there as a tab that you can look at as part of the document. Okay, looks like I… Alright, and then… did you get my… Request, or whatever. Yes.

[12:00] Okay, so let's see, go ahead and share again? Okay, then I picked the… There it is. Alright, can you guys see that? Yes. Okay, great. Let me make it bigger so I can see it. So, Levi, just a little bit of background, since I've been on… the Design Advisory Board used to meet in person, and since I've been on the board, we've been virtual. And it doesn't allow us, as a board, a lot of opportunity to meet each other, meet with each other in person. So, because it… then it would become… if it's more than two people on the board, it becomes a meeting, and it needs to be publicly documented.

[13:08] So, we have an opportunity to have our… our board retreat, that's coming up in… on May 13th, and our objective tonight is to just… Come up with some ideas on what we want to accomplish in that board retreat. I… I can't really say that we've done… these… this before. So, I'm kind of new to this, agenda, process. So, I think, last year we did a… training on, diversity and inclusion. That was sort of the standard city training, and I would count that to be somewhat retreat-like.

[14:00] This year, we can come up with some ideas on if we want to do, you know. some type of training, some type of, continuing sort of an introduction and getting to know each other as a board, or do we want to, dive into what we call these, parking lot issues? So, as a board, we're… we're… The design advisory board were limited as to what, You know, what about the project we can… Comment on, or… or… Critique or… or discuss. And it's usually limited to the design guidelines from… that come from the city. And so we're, you know, we're limited to things like, massing and materials and, somewhat into the site layout. We can't discuss things like, zoning or, traffic flow or…

[15:11] I don't know, sometimes, you know, we're even limited as to if we can comment or talk about or give guidance on colors of a building. It has to be a little broader and fit within the design guidelines. So, we've, as a board, have come, you know, if a… what we call a parking lot issue comes up, which is… Something like, you know, in… that's in the purview of maybe the… the… Planning board or, or planning staff, like. The entry to a site, or where, a retention pond goes, or… Just, you know, sort of items that are kind of beyond what we can talk about as a board.

[16:05] But… feel like it would be beneficial to the city and to… you know, constituents of Boulder, if we weighed in on some of these topics. In… in maybe a less formal way. I don't know, Steven, would you… Yeah. How would you describe the parking lot issues? Yeah, I think it's exactly that. Like, things… I mean, you can read through, kind of, the one, and they're kind of… they're not in any, like, order of importance or something, but some of the things that have come up… you know, at various meetings, and… You know, the idea is, on one hand, we want to get Kind of, like, more efficient, and give… more valuable feedback, I guess, is kind of the… goal.

[17:00] And on the other hand, we also want to make sure you know, if we're kind of like a focus group, either way I look at it, of design professionals and people who are interested in design. And, you know, are there things that… I mean, I know all of us have heard, just living in the community, things that people, friends, and… colleagues have complained about, you know, can we bring them up as potential things that we could look at, or make a suggestion to City Council or whoever that they might look at it, You know, coming from a design perspective, yeah, I think, that's basically it. I know there's… you would… the tricky thing I know for myself personally is, like, we'll get these projects, and we all intimately… know how much hours and time and blood, sweat, and tears goes into them, so it's a little… it's always hard to be like, start over, you know, like, or whatever, and it's not that that is necessarily what we say, but…

[18:01] It can be tricky, you know, when we see these things. You know, to sort of have a discussion that isn't… Really challenging for the applicants to… carry out. That being said, like, we have a… responsibility to sort of say, hey, well, these are the guidelines. But there have been some guidelines that I think, and we can talk about this more, You know, that have consistently come up, that are maybe things that were… we're sort of, I don't know, bending the rules is the right way, but we tend to be like, yeah, that's fine, that fits in the spirit, and maybe those things we might want to look at. A little bit more closely, and, Yeah, so that's kind of the idea of the parking lot, you know, that during the regular meetings, if something comes up. That we want to look at more. We'd sort of go in the parking lot, and eventually we'll… Try to talk about it. Yeah, I mean, I think there have been two instances that I can kind of remember off the top of my head of…

[19:05] Where the applicant or the project meets… Meets the zoning code, or the… meets the design guidelines generally, and we've been kind of split as a board as to, Whether or not… even though they meet it, whether or not we think that it's appropriate. Right, right. Like the… there were some awnings that needed to be replaced. It's fine. Pearl, or What is that? Spruce and 11th? Yeah. On the corner there that, we were divided, that generally, like, if they took these metal on… metal and glass awnings off the building. And replace them with fabric awnings. It generally meets the requirements for that area. In the downtown district. But, you know, whether or not we've

[20:02] All the board members felt like that was, You know, the appropriate or right move to make. We were kind of split on that. Another one was the, the, St. Julian Hotel, where they, you know, they were building a tower, and by right, they are allowed to build several stories above a parking platform, and the board was somewhat split as to whether or not they should be allowed to block The views from… residents in the adjacent condo. So that… those would be parking lot issues. Like, they're way beyond what, you know, what we can really discuss or advise on. So… you know, those would be something that we can talk about. Yeah, it sounds like you're talking about being human and have an opinion.

[21:03] Right. Right. But… Oh my god. the one I just wrote, because it triggered my mind. It's pre-parking lot, but, like, the floodplain rules. Like, it's super interesting how Boulder interprets the floodplain rules, right, after… especially after the flood. And as a community. like, the design community and the city have not sat down and hashed this out, so what came up, like on the St. Julian, is, oh, we can't have any park benches along along Canyon, because, you know, they don't work with the floodplain rules. Well, that's, like, absurdity, right? Like. Having metal park benches that are bolted down to the concrete. is this a floodplain risk or a disaster? No, right? And so that's the kind of thing, you know, that… That, hopefully, like a design community with us being

[22:00] You know, sort of leaders in it. And be like, hey, let's talk about some of these rules, because… you know, how the city interprets them, they have a lot of latitude in the floodplain. They don't think they do, but they actually do. you know, FEMA allows the local municipality to administer those floodplain rules. Otherwise, New Orleans would never… renovate anything. It's all in the floodplain, right? But anyways, that, you know, those kinds of issues that I get all revved up about, you know, would be nice to say, like, hey, let's… You know, we all want to make our community better, so how can we do it? Yeah, and that's a good example of… You know, we were tasked with the relationship of the project with the, you know, the public realm, and human scale, and… Our hands are kind of tied because of the… Yeah, right, right, we're gonna have a 20-foot buffer with a 6-foot wall, and we can't do anything in that buffer, including, you know, like…

[23:03] any landscaping. It was like, okay, like, come on. And that was, yeah, that was the same… Situation when we did the student housing at the… Old Harvest House. So that's… that is a good one, where it's, like, on a platform, a plinth, but how are we… how are we gonna dress that up? Right, right, right, right. Yeah, I think that's a good one. So, I might. Do you want to go through… a little bit. Oh yeah, go ahead. that, the retreat agenda would be… so, the, you know, before the parking lot items, it's the confirm yes or no, the 20 to 30 minutes brief of council work plan from Brad? Is that… That's part of the retreat. That would be… So we would do 30 minutes of training.

[24:03] hopefully I, you know, I had suggested that we start the meeting maybe with training on how to more efficiently run the meetings. I think I certainly could Always use help. Right. Right. with that, because it becomes… it is a little bit of chaos. And… I think training on, like, how we run the meetings, but I think… Also, how, We, as a board, review the meeting minutes, because they're… they're so important, and I think sometimes, you know, we… we get busy, and we aren't reviewing the meeting. Yeah. As closely as we should, and these are… these are the official recommendations from our board, so… If we're not, you know… if we're not giving concise but, you know, good feedback to the applicants, I think

[25:06] you know, it's… the meeting has been sort of a waste. I think that we have some… You know, that's where we have some latitude in, you know. Pulling our ideas throughout more of the project. So I would… I would say, like, meeting minute… You know, meeting training on running it as… An efficient meeting, and then, you know, meeting minute review. guidance. Yep, I think that's good. That's part of that first 30 minutes. Yeah. Is that… do we think that's enough? I think, Kalani, you said that you might have a… A good idea of But…

[26:03] training that we… we could do. Would we need to add additional time for the meeting minute? Conversation. For the meeting minutes, I'm sorry. in… within the CAO trainings? Yeah. I think the CAO training's definitely separate. Training? What… can you remind me what the CAO… So, City Attorney's Office is going to go over. That's right. the… the, kind of legal and the board's role, the purpose of the board, and any other of the kind of legal ins and outs that you don't get in in the regular training from, from the clerk's office. So they'll go in through more of those and be able to answer questions about site review criteria and other directed questions, so I feel like 30 minutes is a good amount of time. And also covers a little bit of time for Q&A with the board.

[27:02] Okay, and then next is that 20 to 30 minutes. Poor. So should we add, like, The 30 minutes, and then, like. 10 minutes Q&A or something? Is that… I… We only have them. You know, you can? Well, I would… right now, I'm just… you could say we… you need 40 minutes, you want 30 minutes in training, and then, about 10 minutes in Q&A. Yeah, I mean. I was thinking 20 minutes for the training, but it might be 30, you're right. I mean, the training, it's that… that… CAO training is… is… Basically, just a refresh on the guidelines that we all Has been through, and… and are… Aware of, right? Well, it's gonna be also, Title II, which is what the board's purview is. And so that'll help frame up your later conversation about some of these criteria and the topics that you want to cover.

[28:03] And see how, that will work with the board's purview. Also, wants to do a refresher for all of the board, since, most of the board has been long-term, board members, and the onboarding process was during COVID. And so, Hela would like to run through, board expectations on all the legal procedural elements. Okay, that's good. So… Yeah, 30 minutes and then 10 minutes. There might be some, you know. She may go into a little bit on the, on the… Site review criteria versus the design guidelines, or if there's any questions around… around those two. That could be handled during the Q&A portion. Yeah, that'd be good. And then the second… the third bullet down was,

[29:01] is… we… we would just like to confirm with you, if you wanted to have a… there was some mention about getting a… a brief from staff on the City Council work plan, post your letter to Council. Oh, yeah. that or not wanted that for the retreat, so that's kind of one of your… Yeah, that'd be great, and, you know, just hearing what they… How they landed. Yeah, what their response to the letter was and stuff would be great, you know. Yeah. That'll give us a chance. If you definitely wanted to plan that into this program, we can make sure we have staff for that to come in and. Yeah. Too. I know I've been grumpy, like. grumbling when I run into Aaron, like, why don't you give us a… it just seems pretty, like… all the time that people spend on all these boards, they need to make the effort to respond to all the letters with a letter. You know, like, it just seems…

[30:03] Like, kind of should be required. And I… anywhere. has asked, yeah, before to have, more response to their letters. Yeah, even if it's just, like, we received it, thank you, you know, or whatever. Just kind of, you know, like, common courtesy. stuff. So, anyways, but that would be good to hear what… what… what they think. Especially in light of Bura, bura, right? How do you say it? Bura, bean. Rekindled, which was kind of a lot of things we wrote in our letter about You know, ways that we might be able to help with You know, getting commercial spaces reactivated. You know, some of those ideas. So… Is there a chance that we could swap these two on the timing and agenda?

[31:01] I put that first, and then… Yeah, I just… I feel like… You know, start out the meeting with something a little more positive, and then… turn? And then do the, I mean, I just… I'm worried that this, CAO training is gonna be, like, you know, here are your Here are the bumpers and limits and guidelines and rules that you need to be following. Yeah. And then, you know, not… not the fun stuff, like… Stay in your lane, kind of. Stuff, and then we can jump right into the, like, all the topics that are out of our lane. I think we'll have a little better understanding of why they're not in our lane. Yeah. And, I mean, I… I think it would be nice, maybe, to pick, like.

[32:04] a couple of the parking lot issues, because I just am afraid that this could… Really run… run away from us. Sure, and a lot of these are, like, overlapping. This was kind of like a brain dump of… Yeah. And I appreciate that, and we tasked you with that exact Thing, so maybe we could… Come up with. like… Well, maybe it's, like, dope. the parking lot is not… like, we've got parking lot, then guidelines, roll-up tab, meeting management. Maybe the parking lot stuff goes… In the middle, or towards the end, or something. Maybe we start with the… start… it seems like the guidelines would make the most sense to start with. You know, especially… like, Lee joining us, and… you know, I think reviewing those makes sense to, like, oh, okay, here's where they come from, here's where… how they were…

[33:05] Passed, here's how, you know, legally we're, you know, all that stuff. you know, are they being looked at in the new comprehensive plan? You know, all that kind of stuff would be… Seems like the… I don't know. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, I wonder if, you know, if we do want to do some kind of… year or something. Training, if… where that fits in. Yeah, I… I mean, I would say that, one, I'd have one question around the guidelines, and is there expectation from the board to do a brief, introduction to those during this? Retreat planning session? I think. I think that would be good. I think that could be good. You know, especially because I'm assuming you guys have changed a little bit, you know, because now you're, like, really honing in on, like, the… deficiencies or not, you know what I mean? Like, in our mediums, so… and I know that's…

[34:04] Maybe evolved a little bit, so that could be cool. So, I would say that that's more training types of session in here. Okay. And we can definitely do that, but looking at the other training things that… meeting management training, and… And, those types of rules to really get something that's effective. I'd say for the guidelines, it's probably at least a half an hour. To D. site review… the ones you use the most? Site Review Downtown. Maybe more like 45 minutes to kind of walk through those, and do any question and answer. I don't know if you want to spend your time during this retreat doing that, or looking at… Other things, like the meeting management training, or, Honing in on specific parking lot items that you feel that are, directly tied to

[35:05] For, you know, putting letter… that are going to go into your letter to Council for next year, kinds of things. So… Yeah, that might be a good way to… phrase it, because it's really open. I mean, I think we have, like, two. We have a lot of topics. Two and a half hour retreats planned right here. Say that if we don't have another board meeting. coming up, or you have a cancel… like, some… we don't get an application for August or another month. We could have something slotted ready to go for, like, guidelines training, or the meeting management training for those times. And maybe the retreat, when you… you're talking about You know, maybe formatting those or getting those set up, and that you're not actually trying to get that done during your retreat, so… Yeah, that makes sense.

[36:00] Yeah, I think that… that is a good idea. I just can't imagine this. I mean, we're… we're already at… An hour and 10 minutes, and we haven't even started our retreat. Yeah. I would say you're gonna have, like, 10 minutes at the beginning, right, to do introductions, since not everybody's here. So, you should count, like, 10 to 15 minutes. To introduce everyone. Do our icebreakers. Just kidding. Yeah, I mean, if you want to do icebreakers, that's another thing to talk about, like, right now. And then go from… from there. And we have seen retreats where it's, Some of it's kind of planning other things during the year. Like, what are you going to do with your parking lot? Is this going to be something you, you know, table for the letter, or, you know. trainings you feel like you want to have done, so…

[37:04] Is there a way that we could… . What if there was, like, just a really quick guideline… I could do a quick breath. I mean, because I guess we're not really gonna talk about them… - in… except when it gets to the parking lot items, like, oh, if, you know, which ones… you know… feel archaic, or whatever, you know, the issue is, or maybe they're fine, I don't know. But maybe there's just a quick… So, like, if… I feel like if you… it sounds like if that seems… if the guidelines are important, and you're seeing some things that are, you know. You want to make some recommendations for code changes or things like that. Might be helpful to do a brief at the beginning. And then maybe you don't address all those parking lot items. Maybe you really just hone in on what guidelines are.

[38:06] Then you can have a really full discussion for the hour that you have left in here. Hour and 15 minutes, because I'm pretty sure that that's going to take about an hour, hour and a half. Right. To walk through all of those. It may be that you need to strike some or table these other parking lot issues for later on in a different discussion. I know we had talked about, like, a kind of mini-check-in later on in the year. On parking lot items that would then go into your letter. Right. So that, that's a possibility there, too. But we just want today, it'd be good to know is if you have expectations for staff to… Do a brief on anything, because we want to be prepared for that when it… for the meeting. So, I think, I think we can pull from the parking lot items, I think we could pull… like…

[39:03] Yeah, like, which… the bullet under the revisiting design guidelines, which ones do we consistently come up against, and can we move that bullet up below guidelines? Sure. So if we do a brief overview of the guidelines, and then… That can be just, like, a… Sub-bar discussion? And then, Like, for… maybe roll of dab, we could put… under the role of DAB, sub… sub-bullet could be the in-person versus Zoom, floodplain rules, And…

[40:03] Let's see… When… yeah, like, or like the… Maybe under guidelines, you could move the one entries Are lower than sidewalks because of their heights, and… That can go under guidelines, maybe. Doing some funky formatting. And… and then also the stucco. Policy. So then I… we can kind of delete revisiting design guidelines, because we're talking about that, and then new design guideline topics can go away. And then… .

[41:05] This one's kind of part of… roll of dab, I guess, same kind of… Yeah. And that, you know, it sounds like Even, you know, the planning board liaison agreed that we, as a board, could Potentially be helpful in… In site design and planning. Like… That we… that we just don't ever get input on. The timing of the projects. Yeah, I mean, I feel like that keeps coming up, and we just… There's, like, not a crate. No, I've heard, like, Brian was… Telling me years ago, like, they looked at that, too, and he said, it's like, you're sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't, like… Right. There were issues too early.

[42:03] You know, where people got too involved in, like, design, you know, designing it… Versus… Tweaking it, and… I don't know. Yeah, like, I mean, that's… where I sort of… as the years have gone on, I feel like I really just trust the… City staff and planning. staff and planning board to… Right. Let us know when… When it's an appropriate time. Well, I mean, some of it's a larger discussion about the way Boulder, like, reviews project? Like, Longmont, if you're doing a big project. You have a pre-app meeting, and you have someone from every transportation, landscape, they're all at the meeting. You have a, you know, an hour meeting, you talk about all this stuff, and you come out of there feeling really great about, like.

[43:02] You're not shooting in the dark, waiting for feedback 3 months down the road. And, you know, Boulder, we don't really do that. you know, like, that would be great, because that would be an appropriate time if it was a big project, to have someone from DAB Like, be at that meeting, right? Right. But I think the bigger… like, the bigger picture issue is that we… you know, you have to come to DAB if you're in the downtown district. Right. So, it's really, like. the… we're talking more about the projects that are being recommended to us from City Council or from Planning Board. Or from planning staff. And so if they're being recommended you know, to come to DAB, then… The, like, the timing of those projects is all over… all over the board.

[44:03] So I think it's really kind of a case-by-case. Right. What if it was something like, you know, like they do with the… what's it called? The, Shit. With fire issues, you can do, like, a courtesy… You know, they'll come and walk. Even though you, you know, you haven't gone through the process yet in the county. I think it's city, too, and… Same kind of thing, where you could almost say, hey. To the applicant when they're… when they're first applying, like. This is going to be reviewed by DAB if you wanted Some early feedback. they're willing to give you some. You don't have to do that. Yeah, like a pre-app, optional pre-app. Yeah, like, they could come and… Because there's definitely some things we've seen where it'd be like, oh my god, like. like, I think of the one, It was up on Broadway, right? Right by New Vista. Like, there were so many things of that one that would have been…

[45:06] Like, we wouldn't have been out of our purview just being like, hey. Like, I think they would have really benefited from us explaining, like. this is the entry to Boulder and the university. You know, he's from Florida, that architect. He didn't know that. Right? It didn't click, and I think that that would have been really… beneficial. And we wouldn't have, like, designed a project for him. And it would have helped them, you know, later on, not with… just with us, but with the whole thing. I don't know where that project's at, but. No. And, you know, maybe no one would ever do it, you know, they'd be like, yeah, right, we're gonna spend extra time. If you could get, like, you know, nobody would voluntarily submit a… Because there's something… There's a lot of egos and money involved. I know, I know, but, like, that's the one that, like. I mean, it would be curious to see what the developer said after that project, you know, after our meeting.

[46:03] because the egos and money put aside, like, could have saved a lot of those things. Yeah. with a little bit of advice earlier. I don't know. Just a thought. I mean, I… you know, I would say if we could move… If you could add to that bullet. You know, that we… that we would like to see more pro… we just… we would like to be recommended more projects. Right. We think that it's… that it's helpful to, like, the city as a whole, and… That, you know, projects could benefit from some design insight. Because we have great things to say, always.

[47:03] Yeah, so I just think, you know, every year in our letter, we keep saying we want to, you know, we want to see more projects, and we want to be more involved, and we want, you know, we want more, more, more, and then… Right. In tandem with that would be the timing. So… Great, I think we've… we have all our parking lot issues under… Two topics, so… Really, that last one is like… Sort of, like, you know. Is there anything we haven't talked about? Kind of thing, you know, like… Yeah. And then, yeah, I think, you know, maybe the role of DAB, if there's… if there could be more, more partnerships, like… Christopher had… had the… us on the… the joint board. For the… Boulder Junction Phase 2.

[48:04] Oh, yeah. That was super helpful and engaging. you know… Would it be beneficial for us to attend more planning board meetings? Right. things like that. Like, is there other opportunities for DAB to be… In partnership with other… Right. Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, exactly. I mean, I think back… I'm forgetting who came. From Planning Board, but… when they said that, oh, you know, I didn't even… I haven't even seen, like… Detention ponds. You know, along the sidewalk hasn't, like… it must be coming up, but we never even thought about that. You know, like, things like that, like… We're just sort of like, oh, great, you know. So, will you put under site design? Will you put, you know, like, potential…

[49:05] Partnerships, or board crossover, or… You know, that would fall under the, our… are… Regular meetings with council, city council, that we've asked for. Right. Sure. And then, yeah, so I think… I think that that's… you know, 30 minutes for guidelines, 30 minutes for roll of DAB. And then I think we do, like, Instead of the… we have… and now we have… Half an hour now? No, we have 15 minutes. We have 20 minutes left. So I think… Sorry, Steven.

[50:00] Yeah. being real bossy here. Can you take the 10-minute Q&A out? Because… Yeah. Yeah. You think that'll just happen in… I just think. So then what's our time here? It's like… I think, an hour. And then I think… we can… I think you can delete the… That parking lot items bullet, because we've… Move them all. Yeah. And then, the project updates… Maybe that… that's part of the… Council work plan. So I think we can delete that. And then I think that last bullet, we spent… That's up here.

[51:00] Yeah. Is that… is that what that… and then I think for, If… do you take the meeting management training and you move it format it over. To, like, a solid bullet. And I think we spend… 10 minutes as a board discussing what Training we want in our next meeting. Right. Oh, I gotta get this to format. No, but… Oh wait, it just did it. Wow, alright. I never… It's always a miracle. You could just say 10 minutes. for this one. Yeah. birth. Can you solid add up?

[52:00] Future meeting training ideas. At the end. No, just… so after the 10 minutes, just… so instead of meeting management training, just say future meeting management training ideas. So just add future. Okay. Perfect. Does that sound… Yeah. Yup. And I suggest one thing, too, because, you… it sounds like you're gonna have some… Things that are gonna… Kind of rotate cyclically through there. Is maybe setting a little bit of time aside to see how you want to use, say, 10 to 15 minutes in your regular board meetings to address These types of either parking lot issues or things like that. That's true. so that… You don't have, you might have an agenda next time. You know, in your last half of the year work… working session, where you… it's not, with so many bullet points.

[53:07] Yeah, that makes sense, like, 10 minutes at the end of our… every regular meeting to sort of, like. Yeah, what came up. Parking lot things… Yeah, any… like… Big items we wanna… Eventually, put in a letter… That's… yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah. So where would that be in here? That would be, like… Maybe… Kind of. It's kind of. In… in that, so for future meeting management training ideas, and, allo… Allocating time. Yeah, board operations, board management type of thing.

[54:01] To board, you know, to adding a regularly scheduled discussion to board matters about parking lot issues or something. Yeah. That makes sense. So this meeting is scheduled from… 4 to 6.30. Do either of you Board members have a hard stop at 6.30 on… That's on a Wednesday… that's our next Wednesday, right?

[55:02] Yeah. Probably, like, for me, it's like… it's like 7 is the hard stop. I know I have something at 7.30 on Wednesday nights, but… So May… sorry, May… 13th, yeah, it's a… It's our May monthly meeting time, yeah. So we're gonna confirm in the next two weeks whether we have a design, application, if that's the case. That will bump the retreat out, but… The meeting has a hard stop at 6.30. I would just suggest that I know we should check with the other board members, because we don't know if Rory has a hard stop at 6. If… what I would do for the agenda here is, Have a backup agenda with 30 minutes off. Take off 30 minutes, just in case someone has a hard stop.

[56:10] CAO training? I know. You can tell I'm excited about this one. Just tell us what it is. There's still controversy with that, you know, because what kind of board we are. But anyways, they'll come up. No, I think it's… I think it's good to get all of us on the same page, but… Yeah. I don't know. Well, that sounds like a lot of rules. I, I, I think… I mean, I think we would just have to… our additional topics goes to 30 minutes, I mean… Yeah. You just have to… Yeah, we would just… Trim… trim the conversation.

[57:00] One thing… I would love to do this one, especially this… Like, in person. Even if everyone couldn't do it in person, like, have an in-person option or something, because it'd be so nice. Let me check… we'll need to check the staff availability for in-person. Yeah, check that. I mean, like I said, even if, like, the board members met in person, and you guys were… Zoom, that's okay, too, like… Just because with this kind of discussion, it seems like in-person would. And we may have. More efficient. Staff, then that is, not in person for… Yeah. I agree with Stephan, I think in-person would be nice. And then, you could possibly do… This… the, Council Work Plan Brief could be 15 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes. It maybe doesn't need to be as long.

[58:04] Well, it depends on how… if it's super positive and… and, like, collaborative, it's gonna be longer. If it's like, well, they read your letter, and okay. Well, and I would say, too, remember, it was a one-year work plan. It was a fast-track one. So you'll be doing another letter this year, because they're resetting for that? So… I mean… you know, I think if we do… 20 minutes from, the council brief, and then… We could have a… 10-minute discussion about potential partnerships, or… crossover for opportunities for DAB, and then… And then… we would scrap the rest of the roll of dab. I don't know. Sure. But hopefully, everybody can stay for two and a half hours. Yeah, maybe we get it out early.

[59:03] The question, that's probably good. Can I… in green. I actually… And maintain a quorum through there, so as long as, most folks can stay past 6. Yeah. I thought that the retreat was… In person. So, I just assumed. Last year, when we did the training, it was. Yeah. I mean, it would be nice… You know, if we do additional training, it would be nice for that to be in person too, but, that might be asking a lot. I think it would depend on the training. Like, the meeting management training that we've had before with other boards is in person with, we have a consultant that comes in. So that's an in-person training. It depends on, Sometimes a clerk's office has digital trainings that they might foresee, so… So yeah, maybe we could potentially do… Two in-person meetings this year.

[60:04] Yeah. When you guys… Clinti, when you guys moved to, broadway… What's that officially called? What are you guys calling that building? Sounds like… Western City Campus? Western City… Western City Campus. Because it'll be Eastern City Campus out towards the Municipal Yards. WCW? You guys don't have a catchy name yet. Yeah. Question. Western Sea. When you guys move into there, are you gonna do more in-person stuff? Is that the goal, or… Well, I… part of our in-person is, there's staff resourcing issues, there's also technology, hybrid meeting issues, and clerk's office, what things can handle, so… like, this. Board is not, it is a digital-only board. So, it just depends. I don't know what that resourcing and that… the technology's gonna be like at that point, so we'll have to see.

[61:03] I'm just curious. Okay, well, I guess we'll… the… the last items are… we just have to wait to see. One, to see if we get… Any applicants for an additional project? Yeah. And then, you know, the quorum, who can attend, and then what their… Hard stops are. So we'd love tonight to know if… it sounds like you three definitely will be there, so we can work on checking attendance on the other two board members. And then… It's 5 of us now, that's it. Yeah, there's 5. I'll be there. fair. Yeah. And then, We will look at the, we'll also confirm when we do the quorum check if anybody has a hard stop earlier than 6.30. And,

[62:01] Then by April, let's see, April 22nd, we should know if we're getting applications in, and we'll email right away. And let you guys know if we're gonna do the retreat, and then if we're… we'll look for an in-person setting for that, and then what staff will be virtual versus that not, but we'll have to find a room. So look for some communications towards the end of the month. I would say one thing that we should check here is that, this agenda. We talked about getting some input, during the meeting on Monday. Do you want to send the agenda out? what's the deadline do you want from the board members for that? So… Before that actual retreat. Yeah, because we want to… if you… when do you want to get any feedback from them that you can kind of… Tinker with any of the timing or subjects. Well, I think that it would be specific to… the two topics, you know, getting feedback from the other board members if they want to add something to either guidelines or rule of DAB.

[63:07] Yeah. Could I switch? As part of that, like, part of your outline here is that you give us, because you, right, you don't want to email the whole board because of the… Right. Open meetings regulations, so if you could give us a blurb that you want us to send out with the email that tells the rest of the board members what you're looking for from them on it. Right. That would be helpful. And we can put it in there and get it to everybody. Okay, and then I think that… The deadline of the… . The meeting would be… P… May… A week and a half before? We've put the agenda out on the 4th, the meeting's on the 13th, so, If you ask for feedback by, say, the 27th? Monday, April 27th.

[64:07] Then… that'll give you time to work up any changes and get that to us by the Friday the 1st, for us to post it on Monday. Does that… Okay. Writing-wise. Yeah, that works. Okay. Yeah, and then I think… Steven, if you can just write, like, Feedback. But we, like, specifically, say, feedback for… The two agenda items. guide… under guidelines and design guidelines and role of DAB.

[65:00] Maybe agenda items? Feedback's… oh, 4. roll of dab. And at the… just at the end, after Dab, maybe say… oh yeah, perfect, that's fine. Perfect. Kalani, is that… sufficient. Yeah, that's perfect. I just… they would have… you could have been asking for all kinds of other details that may not be helpful for your agenda when you go to edit it, so… Right, perhaps. Well, and I know for our board that well, I don't know, maybe you get more correspondence than I… C, but I feel like… I feel like the rest of the board's gonna be okay with what we've… Outline here. And we'll make sure that it comes to us, you know, as far as they send any feedback, and then we'll make sure that it goes back out to all of you individually, so… Right. So that's one thing. I don't know, Lee, if you've had your training yet. I don't know if you've had your onboarding training in the first half through the clerk's office, but when you get emails from, staff that have… it's to the board at quorum checks.

[66:13] You want to reply individually and not reply all because of, once you add more than two members, it's… It constitutes a meeting, so we try to stay within the bounds of the… Colorado open meetings laws. Okay, yeah, no, I don't have that, orientation thing till April 21st, I think? Okay. That sounds great. So, it sounds like you'll be moving through that process. But, Lee, we regularly meet with Hag Seth on, Signal, so we can use Signal anytime you want. I'm just kidding. That gets around it. Okay, you can do the training, and then give us a refresh at the retreat. Yeah, that would be good.

[67:02] Okay, are there any other issues that we need to… tackle tonight. I don't think so. Yeah. That's good. Okay, I think that we… we did a good job. I think we have a good… Retreat plant. Yeah. So, Amelia… and an additional training meeting. So are we figuring out if this is in person later, or is it sort of… is it online as it stands? As it's… we can… if we have the retreat, it can be in person, but we're not sure if it's definitely having the retreat yet. I forgot. We have to wait for 2 weeks before the application window closes, and so we're just waiting on that period. Okay. Can I add a couple of things at the top of your agenda for this, is just one to… in the introductions, right in that time period is also to select someone to be your retreat note-taker.

[68:09] And a timekeeper to help you move through the agenda. So whoever… You want to work through those roles as part of it. And a timekeeper. And then generally, Brendan, the chair, has played the facilitation role through it, like you do in a normal meeting, so… And I think that that's it. Cool. Okay. It's exciting! Sounds good. Amelia, do we have any other… Formalities that we need to… Nope, just, a calendar check, which, as Kalani mentioned, we…

[69:03] Just because of the cadence of the month, we don't know yet if we'll have a project, but we will let you know as soon as we're aware. And, adjournment. Okay. Unless any… has… anybody has anything to add. I think we can adjourn this meeting. That was… It's very quick. That was quick. Okay. the notes here. Thank you. Yeah, and Amelia, I'll send… I'm gonna just… maybe clean up a tiny bit, and then I'll send it. Yeah, that's great. Thanks for note-taking, Stephen. I know it's not… Huh. It wasn't too… Too bad. It's hard. When you start typing a word and spellcheck doesn't even know what word you're… Can I misspelled it. It's kind of the architect's, good. For it in my life.

[70:04] Alright, thanks guys. Thank you. Immediately. Nice to meet you, Lee. Nice to meet you. Okay.