January 16, 2024 — Downtown Management Commission Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:04] Great. It is January sixteenth at 4 pm. And we can go ahead and start the meeting. I will take roll call. Starting with Newsome here. Hello, Eric! Hello. Kevin, and I will hand me over to our chair, which is Stephen. Thank you. And I don't. Okay. The first item on the agenda is the procedural item of approving the November 14 min may have a motion to prove the November fourteenth minute. Okay, do we have any members of the public present.

[1:01] Okay, then we can move on to the consent agenda. We will discuss this unless there are questions by commissioners to commissioners have any questions for staff about the consent agenda. financial, separate. separate, separate. Yeah, we'll do that next. We can get just this. Oh, one question for vitality. Since the outdoor seating. dining thing comes up for a review again in a month. Is there any expectations, hopes, changes? Sure. I can speak to that. So I received just word of mouth, some interest from businesses who are interested in applying February and we are going to be hosting an outdoor dining workshop next Tuesday for any interested businesses to drop in. Learn more about the program, ask questions, prepare their application materials

[2:16] to kind of mitigate some of those delays that we've seen in previous years. So we'll be doing that next week, and then application will open up February one, and I've had a handful of folks say they're interested in applying new people. Yeah. also did hear of any better not continuing, or that will happen. Actually. not the discontinuity program, and you are currently participating, but no longer. Not that I, the only one that I can think of, is Ruthie's. They have declined to continue. They had paid for a little spot, and they decided it wasn't going to their business. Oh, yeah, Rudy is saying, as a business they're just not going to be using.

[3:06] and then there has been a closure at the kitchen next door. They've paid for their lease. And they are. They turn it into an event phase, or they are going to be until continue to utilize that parcel turned into is that the continuing to utilize the Parklet, too, and have a move, so they won't have their brick space. But will they transfer with the yeah with the space? Or they, I think they might have to reapply for that space. So Mike, who's the owner? Gemini, next door to Hopa, is opening up a new concept in the Hopper space, and we'll be wanting to use the outdoor dining. So let's make sure that he's cool. perfect. cool. Yeah, also 2 years pilot

[4:16] and so will be one prepares. Be back to council and know how it's been going for something that they'll want to see the program continue well, beyond the pilot period. Correct. I have a question, maybe, for you. Older streets as stop public. Okay, the Boulder social streets. it said. You said that staff will go back to City Council in 2024. When do you think the timing will be to hear? Because II mentioned that the plan for future events? So there is not then. So we there was significant budget for activation in 2,023. That is not that budget. We're gonna see what we hear from city council through their retreat process to understand what their priorities are. We have a memo that's been prepared. That could either be an information out of the Council just to brief them on what we learned

[5:14] from all the work that was done last year. But currently. just here I have how the city thought it went by program, just more of an assessment of this success, or something for successful something for it. And why this? Does a future learning for us? Some books from project management.

[6:01] Come, talk to Tmc. At our March meetings. Any other questions on the consent agenda. Okay, now we move on to fund financials. Any commissioners have questions for staff. I have a question, what? What are these actual for? 2023 through? Just says, 2023 year today? Is that the whole year. So we we haven't closed out 2,023 entirely. So this will adjust slightly with any any invoices that are coming in final close out of the year. But it will be pretty close to numbers. Okay. it's kind of like 3 million dollars. So we had a pretty aggressive capital campaign. That's one of the things that will roll over. So what we might have encumbered them in 2023 spent them so As

[7:09] the projects roll over or close out. Those numbers will adjust. Thank you by saying that you're comfortable with the number being higher because it's gonna eat into this. Some of this year's budget, too. but it's not executing. Roll over. So those are the numbers that are supposed to pay attention to, because once this figures, it ends, and all of December gets closed out. Then those numbers, can't move over. and operating was about 150% higher to see 3,800 versus 3.8 9 versus point 6 9 second one down, and the budget versa budget versus what we spent. So a big part of our operating on an annual basis.

[8:04] Is the past program which continues to be quite a bit more affordable than we had traditionally budgeted. So that's something that we're gonna be looking to in our long term fun planning is understanding how we might wanna shift some resources to focus on the priorities. You're gonna be hearing later this morning this afternoon. Sorry. From Regan on pilot program we're pursuing with commutify to redeploy dollars that were previously previously spent on just the past to other types of transportation and management tools for downtown and border junction employees. And so we're we're gonna be working in some other ways to deploy resources, because our previous expenses are not as high as they used to be. And that's been a big one. But then I also saw income was lower by good point

[9:00] 3 million. So that'll go up as we close out. 2023 that'll be closer to actual. But you'll note that with the implementation of gateless, we did lower some of our visitor parking rates. And we've had some turnover in our permanent partners. So we are expecting a the pre brief decline in parking revenue. Going to Gaylas. We do have some linkage folks who are trying to cheat the system. All is to worry about a gate. Preventing them from paying for their parking. So we're gonna continue to monitor that we were anticipating some revenue loss. But we've also seen a reduction in expenses, amount of money that we're spending on repairing gates and keeping the the garage is up and running so. and we'll continue to to monitor that. Make sure that

[10:02] the intent is as revenue neutral as possible. And not so pretty keep track of that. But you're not concerned about that yet. No. And then the same same vein, the it looks like we're like 300 1,000 less than our budget leases, rent and royalty. So we think that number is going to be closer to that budget number. The leases, rents, and royalties are typically based on if our spaces were fully least, and we continue to have vacancies at 1,100 spruce. So that's impacted that so that's probably the. That's probably so, as long as that is so, we have 2 vacant spaces over there. So we certainly want to close that gap and get those spaces fill as quickly as possible, but this is presuming everything is fully leased. In all of our spaces.

[11:07] What does filling that look like? So we contract with Cbr. They manage all of those places, so we largely try to not have government be the the ones working the deals on that. So they do have some possible tenants. We've been trying to focus on women minority on businesses, local businesses, and so we can. Once we have a tenant that has signed. We're happy to share that needs with you all night there is a prospective tenant. Whether or not it works out. See that Cpr manages. Cpr. okay, sounds like we can move on. So next is the Public safety update from Boulder police department. We have 15 min allocated. Maybe you could share for 10, and brought with me Commander Barry Hardco.

[12:11] So if you didn't hear the news we're going through some changes, and Chief Harold is moving on to. I must say bigger and better things, but I think we're we're pretty big and awesome here. She is accepted position with the Federal Government to continue to do her work, that she's passionate about which, shows has me stepping into the roles, you know, police Chief, the city manager asked if I would be willing to step up into that role for yet to be determined amount of time. But it it doesn't seem like it's going to be super short. So II feel like I'm gonna get to step in and and really dive into this role for some time is there in Chief, so I'm excited she's shared with me that she expects me to run the police department like a chief and not just a placeholder. So that's what I intend to do. Well, the reason I brought Barry with me today is he will be stepping into the roles interim deputy Chief of operations. So he'll he'll be doing all of the things that I typically have been doing, including company meetings like this.

[13:07] I'm gonna still do my best to show up. But my schedule is in the last week gotten a lot more. So. I'm yeah. I'm really excited, and I feel like we're gonna be continuing to operate at a high level like we have. I don't think that there'll be any noticeable gaps in service, or anything like that with a a little bit of a change. So I don't know if you wanna say anything, Barry. But Barry's been here quite a long time. Yeah, very excited about it. Been here for about 34 years. My dad was a cop here, so I've been around Boulder for my entire life. I was born a bit. PC, so on Broadway, so really excited about seeing this part of policing, I've done virtually everything else. This is the whole new role for me. And yeah, very excited big shoes to fill. But it's gonna be fun awesome. Just a few updates. I think it's been. It seems like it's been a little while, either I couldn't make the last meeting or somebody.

[14:07] Alright. So we've got a lot going on. We've had somehow still successful hiring push. We just finished 16 new officers in field training. So that's 16 new additional officers out on the street. We still had. It's I call it a trickle of departures. Now we've had a senior level. People leave to go to other jobs. But the good news is because of our increased hiring. We've added 2 additional officers to the ball team down on Pearl Street 2 younger officers that are. Ii just really excited about it. And they're working 9 90 to 7 pm. So now, most days the week love coverage for about 6 Am. And 7 pm. so that we're hoping will help with just the visible presence from Mall. We've added 2 2 or 3 additional spots up on our hill team

[15:06] to deal with our college population. But they also that team at night when we're having issues down on the Mall, they they're just they come down the hill stuff. So we're hoping we can save off additional departures. And we're gonna continue to fill those teams. They all got taken down not completely but heavily, during the pandemic cause of staffing. And we're slowly trying to build it back up. That includes our traffic section. So we just graduated for from the Academy, and then we had 8 more start the Academy. So it's a constant kind of backfilled spot. So we're excited about that priorities. Right now we're working with the sales team safety at public spaces on the new safe phones to see what that looks like. Not much different for us, because we've prioritized a lot of the spaces. But it's a new thing that we're kind of learning how to deal with there. We're also working with municipal port. We've got some upcoming meetings with Judge Kahn and Chris Reynolds with the prosecutors office

[16:00] to see if there's ways that we can better address our high utilizers. Population, that sort of thing. Devil. We talked about having our high utilizer working group. It's actually an idea that started out this department because we were our officers are really frustrated to do with the same people over and over and over again, and writing people 30, 40 tickets a month. So what we're trying to do in what other cities have done. We just run a study on Seattle Show. If we have our hands on someone we're in contact with one of our high utilizers as opposed to writing them. Another ticket. We're taking them to jail and based on State statutes. They have to get out within 48 h on lower level offenses, be able to take them in front of the municipal judge. Right then, to say, this person has 10 municipal ones. Will you please figure out something? So they're not just right back out straight. So Judge Kahn is very receptive to that, and we're we're hoping that we can see a little bit more. And that's really for the most serious violators that are causing strings on all the systems. that's about it on the high level stuff

[17:00] real quick. We close that 2023. And we've got some stats specifically to downtown. So for the Mall. The Mall area, which is basically kind of see the sector here. It's a few blocks on either side of the Mall for 2023, we start double digit decreases in almost every type of property crime which includes burglary. Large decreases, which is great because a lot of jurisdictions are seen still big increases on property crime. Unfortunately, we didn't see rises. Robbery and assault calls in this area. But that's we're only talking. We're saying up, maybe 10 for the year. So it's not like some cities where you're seeing just massive problems. And typically the people on the assaults rather unless it support each other. So nothing of over concern overly concerning on that other than we're seeing a little bit of upset we've asked our officers to do a lot a lot more. And we've seen the results. And that's the statistics for 23 specifically to the Mall. Our calls for service are down. For example.

[18:12] voice complaints, disturbances, burglary, are all down. Trespasses are up 44 number 44 from the year. but what we've asked our officers to do is just have a get out of the car, have more of a presence. And what we're seeing in 23 we saw 107% uptick in pedestrian context. That's some of our officers are going up to saying, Hey, can I talk to you for a second, or Hey, you have an open container. Let's talk about it. We saw 63% increase in traffic stops for this area. 36% increase in directive controls. That's where the officer calls out on the spent time in this area, for whatever reason. And then total proactive activities up 1,214 contacts for all those. So we're continuing to our officers are are always willing to to step up and we ask them to. And we're still focusing on this area with their stratified leasing model and all those things so happy to see that at the end of the year our focus this year are going to be to figure out how we can come down double digits on all of those types of crimes and problems. The one ask that we have, and I think I've said this before saying, every time we have a meeting with business owners is

[19:19] we hear the frustration, and we hear people say, I don't even bother calling anymore, because this reason for that reason and and I'll fully acknowledge on a you know Barry's been our night shift commander. It's busy on Friday and Saturday, and a business or calls it says, Hey, 20 min ago someone shoplifted that calls probably not gonna be at the top of the priority list where we have in progress calls but people still need to call, and that's big for us, because it helps us track statistics. It helps us justify hiring more officers which we love to get to full staffing, so we can ask counsel for more officers. And it really helps us track statistics. So that's the big. Ask just to continue to call. The one thing I will say as well as we're really looking at our 2024 engagement community engagement strategies. We lost a lot of the face to face contact after 2020. And all of the things that we're all aware of Covid murder, George Floyd, all the things and we're really trying to get back on the community. So what I would ask of you all.

[20:14] Chris has already been helping me out a little bit with this is, if you see events, if you have things that you're making, you know about that. You think it would be great to have us combined. Please reach out. Let us know. Hey, we're having this thing. It's easy for us to look at City calendar. But I think we we miss a lot of opportunities to have good contacts when it's not a a cop enforcement situation. So I commit to you that if you send us information you may not always get me, but you will. We will send you a police officers to come out and have engagement and anything. So that's all I have for overview. No, I just one thing I want to reinforce with you. All is something that Chief preferred mentioned our hill team, or it's our neighborhood impact team. They were reduced down to about 4 officers, and prior to Chief Fred for getting here.

[21:02] They were required to spend most of their time on the hill, so they back when I used to be in charge of the impact team back in 2,014, and it was Hill and Mall. We spent a lot of our time on the Mall as well. That was back when we were staffed with 10 officers. We have increased staffing for them. As as Chief mentioned, they're up to 6 now, and what has been conveyed to them is the expectation is that they will take ownership of what's going on in the Mall as well during their work hours. So I think you're gonna see. During they usually work from 5 at night till 3 in the morning. During that time period you're gonna see a a larger police presence especially during Bar Close. Usually from 100'clock on this, your larger police presence down in the downtown area. And because of this increase to the to our neighborhood impact team and a change in in their responsibilities. I would anticipate you're gonna see more of what we used to back into walk through the bars

[22:01] talk to the talk to the the employees of the bars make sure everything is going okay. Have more interaction with everybody and and get an idea of what's going on with the issues are, yeah, but it is big. You'll see more of that as we continue to increase staffing, especially for that neighborhood team, so that they can get but feel free to call. In the meantime, if you guys are feeling something weird that the Vibe is just off, and your establishment don't hesitate to call and say, Can we get a couple of people walk through it? I feel like we're pretty good about that, at least. Do you think that the previously lower staffing, like in 2,023, contributed to potentially an environment where more shoplifting or robbery can take place. And you see, like the opposite happening, if you're you know, there's more presence police presence on the Mall. Great question. So yes, and there's there's more to that equation. So studies have shown it's very clear a police presence prevents crime. Having a uniformed officer. If somebody let's say I just said, I'm gonna go down to the Mall and say, you know what I'm gonna find somebody to victimize today. If I get down there, and every corner. I see cops walking around. I'm probably gonna go alright. I'm gonna go elsewhere.

[23:09] The problem is tracking that to determine if we actually prevent crime, like, we know we prevent crime. If we stop somebody in the active stealing car, it's it's the. It's the thing in our professional officers all the time. You'll never know the impact you make, because someone may decide not to do something because of just your presence. So II think it's a huge deterrent. And when we focus our officers attention on where we're seeing Hotspots Circle K, other areas, we see a drastic decrease in calls for service. There. What we also see, though, is we're one part of that equation in the criminal justice system and Colorado right, wrong or indifferent. I'm not weighing in on whether I believe it's right or not is truly made it where you will only go to jail for very serious offenses. I'm not fully acknowledging jail is not the answer for somebody with a drug addiction mental problem, lower level offenses. But people have expressed us all the time of Give me another ticket. I know I'm not gonna go to jail. So there's there's multi multiple facets to that equation of why we see an uptick. And it's not. An it's not unique to boulder. If you look around statistics, Colorado number one in the United States for Carthage, and other jurisdictions here are trying to figure out the same thing. So

[24:23] okay? And a related question, around the assault. you think, were those assaults in downtown? That statistic was specific to downtown? Actually the one thing with this that was specific to to district 3 statistics. So that's all of District 3. So that includes the hill. Which obviously, with this was a unique season, but not good. When we made it all through football season without a major catastrophe. We did have a guy we've done out in one of the bars on the hill, but our cops are right outside the restroom, so we could easily. If you want next time I can. I can have our analysts. Look at that more to see what the statistics are. But II know just by looking at it very back me up on this

[25:17] we have our on house population mo. A lot of our victims are, and offenders are announced. And so that's some of these assaults, I know for sure. Some of them are like after bar type fist fights. Very rarely are they random very rarely, or they offender. There's not a some sort of correlation but if you'd like for next time we can. I think I'm I'm most interested in the impact, you know, on the Mall and on the businesses, and just the general perception of public safety. And what you know, I think presence is is going to make a big difference. We've seen that with the downtown ambassadors, but also with police presence specifically for crime, because the ambassadors said they can't get anyone to listen to them, but they're they're there to be helpful. So I think we have always been supportive of the combination of like the right use case.

[26:11] so that I'm good to hear. I'm glad to hear that there's more gonna be more presence. And I'm curious to hear, maybe in the future. if there are issues after you know they leave at 6. I know the main time of crime is is during the daytime hours, but I'd be curious to hear in the future what impact you notice after they've been in there for a while? Absolutely. And I get we get monthly stats that break it down like. I'm a day day of the week, so I can. I can bring more robust stats next time congrats to both your new roles. First of all, so it'll be great. The high utilizer thing, I think, is fantastic, because I we've talked about that before that we've all seen the same people over and over again. And one of them is back. And you know what percentage of the interactions you have, do you think are really

[27:02] concentrated around that high utilizer population. So so it's a new enough endeavor. We don't have great steps. We just started this, probably about 6 months ago. We have identified about 46 people that are on this list, and that the nice thing about what we're doing is so like the Seattle city was only people going in charge of the crime. We have high utilizers that actually don't have a lot of police contact. But they're huge, utilizes er ambulance services, mental health. And so that we have everyone at the table. We sit in this room, and it's mental health providers, hospital staff fire police, everybody. And so we just have some data agreements that have been signed like for the hospital, we had to get through some type of stuff to allow us our analyst to have the stats from everybody. Our stuffs pretty easy. So we've been waiting for that. What I can tell you is, we have successfully taken a few people off that list. The big goal was to say, Alright, we get every morning I get a list of the prior recipes. If one of them's on the list of our utilizers. I email that out to the whole group. And then, if the owners in the jail people are on, there is to say, this person is in jail for a week. Who can? How can we meet them at the back door of the jail to potentially take them to a resource.

[28:11] So they're not right back down in here, in an environment where they can easily like drop some things. And so we have seen, some of these are hard cases. I mean one guy, our number one I utilizer, had 60 tickets in a in a like 2 month period, and he will flat out. Say, I don't want to go anywhere. I want to be on the streets 57 years old, highly addicted to drugs. He jumped out the second floor window. He agreed in municipal port to go to some treatment. and so they dismissed all his cases. We set the treatment thing, jumps out the window leaves. And so some people like that. I mean, it's it's tough. But we have actually moved some people off. There's a great facility called for lion. That is a long term treatment facility. We've been able to take people there. So II think we're gonna see successes. but it is challenging because of their I mean, these are truly the people. None of them are allowed in the shelter. They've all been banned from shelter. You know, we've we've talked about the lack of resources. So yeah, it's it's ho! I'm very hopeful, though. Well, that's way open the emergency shelter over this extreme cold is pretty much everybody, and he's from direct. We're just shelter, have been banned from the main shelter. So we're not. Gonna that's the story. You don't know.

[29:20] Yeah. And we surprisingly very within our calls. All weekend didn't have any major issues. I love that high utilization proactive force track you're taking. I think that's really great. I mean, if you can not react and be proactive, hopefully and truly, I appreciate that truly, it is a form of police reform if you think about it, because if we're able to remove somebody from a situation where they have to repeat police contact, the likelihood of something going bad. You know you have one of the 1 million that 1 million police contacts. Some of those may go South and end up in a confrontation, and if we can remove, that is even a barrier, then it helps, and our officers get frustrated with these people to the repeat. So I think we could have a model that other cities could use if we continue to, on the path connected to that is how many of these high utilizers? Or maybe I'm just generally curious. Are

[30:24] they are related to complaints that the business owners have like people in front of their businesses. I I've been hearing that a lot, and I don't know. Since last year it wasn't a prerequisite. We looked at everybody, all of our top contacts on multiple fronts. And there people that are not afraid to be out in front of business, and things like that there's I can't name names, but there's people you all would be very familiar with that are on that list of

[31:08] one person in particular that was been kept out in front of a business for months. Medical issues to John and wanna take. And so II don't know. I really don't know of noticeable difference between this year and last I think what we will notice and what we have noticed is, there's a couple of those prolific people that we have gotten off the streets and the services of people like, Oh, my gosh! I haven't seen so and so that person that used to always be here is gone on a date. you know. People would be like going to. Some have to know we actually got them into program. So the more we are successful with that, the more we'll have it. It just more resources in our in our toolbox to be able to cater to whatever that individuals needs, there's always, almost always a drug problem. Typically, it's a combination of both. Thank you. Impressive is cure bike. Most of the time when our officers are having an account with somebody. All of the other systems have failed.

[32:21] You know, if if these people could be somewhere else, they could be there. And so when we're having review contact, we don't wanna number one officers to feel like the job is fuel and decide. You know that I want to do the same work as they don't have the impact. One over 2 is just having having additional resources where it provides our officers so cover. So they're not the only ones having to deal with certain individuals. So I'm hopeful that it's gonna continue. We're not there yet. We're hopefully soon we are. We are presenting the City Council on February eighth on my uter. It's a study session. But we are presenting the Council. Because we're going to ask for significant funding to assist with this endeavor.

[33:08] One last question remaining really into that is, do you think that, like the lack of treatment facilities is, it's like a huge issue, actually getting success in this program to to what extent progressive state to me that was that was puzzling. And but when you look at it, it's not. It's not necessarily been a boulder. City issue, county wide statewide. The State metal. How we have one State mental health Hospital. They get fined millions of dollars a month because they are not doing what the State is regulating. They do. We have 60, 80 people at a time, sitting in the county jail waiting to go to the State Hospital for evaluation you saw with the King Super shared. He was, it took forever to get a proper evaluation, and so, if we had no even regional mental health facilities, Cal perfect would be. Every county has the facility, and the the sheriff will tell you the same thing with frustration. There.

[34:18] This the the 400, some beds in the jail are meant to be double occupancy, but they see so many mental health cases they have to. They have to put so many people alone because they can't be housed with little people. That that's why we end up getting frustrated because the jail standards are high. So in a perfect world. Ii would love to see the State and the county, and you know, other step up. We're one of the things we're exploring with our utilizer initiative. I don't think I'm giving away secrets, is looking at private donations as well to see if foundations and other people will help us with this in Denver, because I'll say it all day long. I don't think it's compassionate to let somebody stay in this on the street when it's 20 below 0, because we don't have a proper facility for them. I think there's got to be a better way to do that

[35:05] is, is our deal still pretty highly occupied. Yes, but it's better than it was. I mean they there was over the late summer. The jail standards were basically they had the no vacancy sign right, and had to be serious. They've come off of that and I think they're doing pretty good. The sheriff, I will say to his credit, we've done a couple of operations here in Central Park recently, where we're targeting drug dealers because of overdoses. And if we call him and say, Hey, we're gonna do operation this day. you know. These tick. These drugs may not meet your criteria where you take these people on it, and he's always with us on that. But yeah, there's still some that we really wish they would take. They just they've got to have those criteria else and they didn't break around on the alternative sense sentencing facility that will provide a lot more beds. But that's again, probably a year more out whatever. Great.

[36:00] Okay, thank you. Pretty serious. I just arrived here at the that's the the the, the, the, the, the, the, the the that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's the end of november most recently I was the CEO of downtown San Luis Fisbo in California. But I went to Colorado College, and I was in Colorado Springs for more than a decade. So really really happy to be back. Oh, in Colorado, despite the extremely rude weather. But I will be willing to forgive. It is amazing. I wanna start off first with a actually a community safety update. And I know the chief rebirth just gave you a really deep dive into some of the current statistics. But one of the other ways that we're working with the police department at downtown. Holder partnership

[37:10] is the community Services Officer Mitch Trujillo, who may have been to this group before. He's gonna be reaching. He's gonna be doing a crime prevention tips and safety workshop for businesses. So that'll be certain. Place on January thirtieth, and it's in our office building Broadway Building. We have about 10 spots open for that. So if you're interested, it's open to downtown business owners, and he's gonna go through setup tips things about how to set up your your environment to prevent shoplifting and also just some, some safety tips for people in the workplace. So I'm looking forward to that. If you're interested. Retail restaurants, hospitality, First Level businesses. But I think anybody who wants to can certainly content so if you're interested, just email to send an email to Terry.

[38:05] I, we also had a very successful holiday season downtown. So you'll note that some of the lights are starting to come down from the periphery of downtown. But we're gonna be keeping the lights up on the Pearl Street Mall through the end of February. And we'll be changing some of those lights to represent more Valentine's Day pink as opposed to the red green for the traditional winter holidays. That was a great initiative. We had seen Nick on the brick bricks. We had our holiday lights of December parade, which had lots of people, despite it also being cold. and our promotions are doing pretty well. We additionally had 26 new businesses open at the street level in the calendar year of 2023. So that's a nice statistic to share with you all. We are aware of the second and third floor vacancies, and certainly have some ideas and strategies to put into place. Not just us is downtown boulder partnership, and in collaboration with the Chamber, with the city and with lots of other civic leaders who are really looking to solve this challenge. I did hear an interesting statistic earlier today, and I think I was listening to marketplace. And they're saying, but office vacancy has actually been on decline since the 19 seventies, when a lot of offices started moving into downtown.

[39:19] So it's kind of easy for us to think that Covid changed everything. But it's been in a continual evolution of office spaces. Through the years. So one of the things that I'm interested in exploring, although I know I'm very new in my tenure is maybe some concepts for partnering with the university, potentially doing some adaptive reuse and working with the community vitality. Team on some ideas about how to bring in some tenants who perhaps couldn't afford some of the astronomical rents that are in the the bigger spaces that are available. I'm on. Yes. Is there any possibility of figuring out ways to bring those rents to a less off astronomical level? That's sort of the that's the golden question. And unfortunately, it's up to the property owners, and for the most part because they are the ones who own it. And we do live in a society that is governed by capitalism. Free markets. That's not something that our organization has discussed. I've been doing one on one meetings with all of our Security

[40:25] Council members with city staff. And it's it's possible that something like that could come up. I think the only thing that I've heard about. And please, Chris, stuff in here because I'm so new. I'm not an infant swogle thing I heard about a vacancy tax is something about potentially on residences that came up during the campaign. But I don't believe there are any initiative. There's no movement that is part of the conversation, certainly, for these commercial spaces. But wanted to make sure that we don't come up with solutions that just exacerbate the problem. So I know it's part of the conversation. Don't know of any timeline or or implementation

[41:12] conversation. Right now I will add all the stuff at the state level. The input know what needs to be hacks is deep. Taxes have gone up about 30% from the last time. Right? That had dependents. It goes up way faster than reptiles. Yeah. And that's a whole other level of complexity that has cost some challenges for a lot of the special districts. In Boulder County, because the assessment was disputed by so many property owners because it escalated so quickly. So that was one of the really fun things I got to learn about in my first 30 days. But we are, we're going forward with a lot of our plans for the winter and spring. One thing of note for those of you who like attending downtown events, we are bringing back taste of pearl, which hasn't been around since before the pandemic. So we're really excited to bring that back. That will be on Sunday, April fourteenth.

[42:09] And tickets will go on sale for that soon. We're also looking forward to our annual awards. Luncheon will be honoring some different citizens and some businesses. That luncheon is almost sold out. We only have about 35 seats left, so that will be at the St. Julian Hotel on Friday, February second. If you wanna get tickets for that and I have just been engaged in a listening tour. I've met with around 50 people so far, and including Stephanie and Don, I really appreciate your time. And Stephanie came to our combined bid and downtown little partnership meeting last Thursday. So if you are interested in sitting down with me, I'd love to hear your perspective and learn more about why you chose to serve on Dmc. And just delighted to be here. and I didn't prepare any slides. So you're not going to get that by Powerpoint for me. But I'd be happy to take any questions if you have any.

[43:04] I have a question back on the topic of the maybe the potential repurposing or creative strategies for the commercial vacancies. Is there right official like working group to solve this problem? Or is it a lot of separate conversations happening now, and so like the leader of this initiative. And II asked cause. I think I'm hearing a lot of rogue links, but not a definitive way that, like we're, we're, you know, as the Dmc. We can be involved and support in some way. I don't know also what our role would be, but just just thinking about that. And or is this all kind of unofficial conversations? Now. that's a great question, and you may have some more insight than I do. II would share that. Just last week alone I went to a luncheon with Chris. Actually, we were at the the community builders for commercial brokers.

[44:01] people talking to really becoming more of a strategic thing. Yeah. And one of the things that I'm really interested in, and I can't make any promises about how quickly this will happen. But I really wanna have a deeper understanding of what the actual numbers look like. Because it's really hard to track those those businesses up there right like, it almost takes somebody going up the stairs and walking into every single one, and that just takes a lot of time. So I don't think we have. The really accurate numbers from the different property. Managers at different communities are challenged by this. Like the people in Dallas and downtown, Houston and downtown Denver, they are all having the same conversations, so I think it might require some data gathering. So we can really figure out what is fact versus what is feeling? Right? Yeah.

[45:08] yeah. And also like II was Denver right now is reading an article about that they did an assessment, some some like architectural design firm that seems to be expert in this about, like all of the buildings that could be converted from commercial into residential like, based on feasibility. And it feels like we're moving towards the direction of doing something more formal, like a formal analysis of what is the state of the commercial vacancy, and like what are the potential solutions? Who owns it? And II think I just say to Chris, and when becomes more solidified, I know Matt, Benjamin, and I. We had coffee, and he mentioned, I think the Dmc. Should be involved in this because it's it's primarily in the downtown. And it's like something that we want creative energy on and all the stuff. So I I'm just saying that I'd like for us to figure out how we can get involved. Support that when it solifies more. Is. I think it's within our

[46:07] roughly right, Chris. It's certainly within the boundaries within the boundaries. There are, yeah more commercial properties within downtown Management Commission than probably our other districts. I would note that the Chamber is very interested in in leading the conversation a lot of ways. Cdb, very likely is going to be moving into the chamber. So is very. It's certainly not an informal conversation. and anticipating that Council is going to be highlighting economic development. And I said the D word which is you don't hear very often. So in their council retreat coming up here in month or so, so we are going to be hearing more about this, and it's not going to be just a community by tally, or just a downtown thing either. So there certainly is going to be updates and work to bring to

[47:07] you all but the the commercial. They could see challenges and just limited to the downtown so, and and the city plays a part in some components of land use rules. There are a lot of way a lot of things that could possibly change that will help incentivize. The transformation of private commercial space. We need vitality and and the resources that we have access to might be able to influence a portion of that to kind of set the stage of of some possibilities. And I think that as we explore the affordable commercial pilot program that will be happening within gated. I'd say that there might be some really good synergies and opportunities there back to being under view by space. In some interesting ways for approvals of yeah. So, and we heard some great things from the Cdb last week. Related to energy code requirements and landmarking with how many buildings in boulder or becoming more than 50 years old. Every, you know. Potentially, every building is, gonna have to go through some sort of landmarking conversation. If you want to make any changes.

[48:16] is that appropriate? So there are a lot of hurdles the city has put in place over time that that make transformation really challenging. It's it's hard for a restaurant to convert to a restaurant in a space that was a restaurant. And there's a lot of reasons. There's a lot of reasons why. Yes, just that little bit better. And so that yeah, planning very much. Part of the conversation. How do we better incentivize and streamline processes to be more flexible? Because we don't know how it's all gonna play out any other questions from commissioners.

[49:03] Nice to meet you. Thanks, patina. Okay, I think we're gonna move on to matters from Staff. We have 75 min allocated for this and 75 min left in the meeting. But I imagine that was estimate so community vitality and plan and I'll start well first. I wanna acknowledge that Elliot Levanti is shown up on screen. I don't know if he listened in when I tried to answer your questions on the phone financials. And if there's anything that he wants to add or clarify to my answers. good evening, Commissioners. Thanks, Chris, for answering those questions, I was you really waiting to hit the unmute button? But unfortunately you got it all perfect. So if you guys do have more questions about our fun financials and the the future health of the K. Jed Fund. Always here to answer those questions

[50:17] to Chris's point the year end will close. Traditionally, we have a kind of a soft, close end of January, and then a hard, close end of February for the previous fiscal year. We are working with Cv. Our property Management company to get those final lease payments in for 2023 just kind of reconciling those books so that that number should go up significantly over the next couple of weeks so by next commission meeting we should have a good update on that something else you'll see is we're gonna be working hard to chew off that ambitious capital plan going into 2024, especially any of that stuff we could not achieve in 2023. So just wanna let you know we're working hard to get done what we're trying to to say. We're getting done so hopefully, those numbers only increase. Not at the point that our revenue, though, isn't increasing.

[51:17] One extra point I will mention on the parking revenue. Chris mentioned the decrease in expenses. One of those expenses that we saw decreases actually are credit card processing fees. So, as you know, most retailers have to pay credit card processing fees. However, ours are a little higher than normal, because our low amount per transaction so rather than the one and a half percent for visa mastercard discover it's actually quite a bit higher than that, because a lot of our charges are a dollar 50 so that's one thing where we are seeing some cost savings which will be great. So kind of that offset of loss of revenue. We're also decreasing our expenses a little bit as well. So we're seeing some

[52:02] more economic activity downtown as well which is great. So more and more people, I think, are kind of wanting to get back to that pre covid level of life. So we will continue to see that reflected in our reports. But I think, Chris, you nailed it. So I just wanna say, thank you for having me. And it's nice to meet you all. One quick question between Patina and maybe La is, do you have any reconciliation of like? How the holiday season went for shopping and sales tax? You know. Unfortunately we don't. It's a big lag sales tax. So our Central finance department produces a sales tax. report pretty much every month. And more thoroughly every quarter, and we will certainly have that report for you next Dmc meeting in March. So we can give you a little bit more update on our sales tax figures. Ii don't even wanna guess, because I don't really know exactly how it went. But I know small business. Saturday is something that does attract a lot of people to the downtown area.

[53:09] I can provide some anecdotal evidence if you will. We actually did a A marketing survey with several different downtown districts across the State of Colorado, where we all asked the same questions, and we sent out a survey. So this is not scientific. but it is again anecdotal and we got about 75 responses from this survey, and the results, unfortunately, were all over the map. So some people reported that their sales were down, and other people reported that their sales were up. Small business Saturday, and stuff. Small weekend is always a big driver, and unfortunately was really cool that weekend, so that did not start off the holidays shopping season very well, but the last few shopping weekends before Christmas did really well, and there was more foot traffic downtown. So we can provide some headcount data and and more of that on the other side. And I'd be happy to also present some longitudinal data. If you want to see how we compare to other communities throughout the State.

[54:06] Okay. alright, thank you so much, Elliot, for those clarifications. I'm gonna share my screen as we get started with the presentation. You might need to know. It's you don't need to PIN me because it's showing up perfect. Let me start this before I get into this. I wanna note we have a new item on our work plan. Can, are you able to lift up the yes. thank you. It just showed up this weekend on Sunday we had a pipe burst of the 1,500 pearl garage and in the emergency. I think some thoughtful folks who showed up to address the emergency turned off a lot of valves in our fire panel room, including the boiler system. So are in the deep. Freeze. The heating system for the entire building froze up and so we are in the midst of no heat, no water, the entire pearl facility. The garage is still fully operational.

[55:17] But our office and tenant spaces are significantly impacted. I do know one tenant space does have water water impact. So we're in the midst of working with restoration services. Various insurance policies. To to work through all this to get the billing up and fully functioning. This is really warm in here compared to the temperatures we have. We're looking forward to the the slight warm up in the weather in the next few days. Hopefully, we can Boston things out and get things moving again. But we'll probably be giving you some updates on the the

[56:00] the expense side. But it's gonna take to get everything back up and running. I'm gonna be providing an update to counsel just via email, just let them know about these impacts. But largely, I mean, I'm mostly concerned our team. We're we're resilient and flexible. the retailers that are impacted. We have 4 commercial tents who are not able to open. And so we want to get them reopened as soon as possible. But with that we I have my presentation of our our annual work plan. I think it's like 8 slides. I'll just fly through them real quickly. I wanna remind you all that everything you probably heard them say this many times. Everything that we do at the city of Boulder Falls under the sustainability, equity, and resilience framework. A number of goal areas that began 15 years ago is the triple bottom line. There was a time where that was like the the catchphrase, or making sure that you're focusing on environments

[57:03] social and economic making sure you're thinking about all those things all at the same time. We've expanded over the years to these 7 goal areas. Then we wanna make sure that we're contemplating and all the work that we do throughout the city. Specifically in community vitality, we have 3 strategic pillars that we focus on in our unique work in the organization in support of the the Sarah framework but specific to the work of community vitality. So they are cultural library. That's our office of arts and culture or offices, special events district vitality. That's our general district management and our key commercial areas. This is both the the capital programs that we've had over years, and the maintenance of the things that we've built. which we're dealing with right now. And then access for all this is our programs and and products that encourage folks to get to our key commercial places and as many months as possible. We know that the more money well, it's a lot to spend money on ecopass and other benefits.

[58:09] But the only thing more expensive than doing that is building more parking garages. So we really wanna encourage as many visitors, residents, employees, anybody who wants to come to downtown boulder or key commercial centers. Let's make them to take other modes of transportation. So we don't find ourselves building more pipes that we need to break. So some key highlights that you're all hopefully work together. It's government so some key highlights that you all have been very much involved in in 2023 for some cultural vibrancy. Our team distributed over a million dollars the 158 grants in the community. There's a new art installation at Belmont Park, called the the Rain Garden, which you haven't seen. If you haven't seen it yet, probably wait till it's better weather to check it out or raining not snowing. And then, of course, all of our commercial area activations from

[59:14] social streets on Thirteenth Street to the Apra Fest on the West end to a number of events led by Boulder transportation connections. At a boulder junction on the District Vitality front. We had a ton of capital projects going on in 2023, in pretty much every single one of our downtown garages. I think all of them, except for Trinity, and have something going on at some time or another, and continue to have some things going on. So those projects are largely getting wrapped up. We still have some work happening at the Saint Julian, and project wrapping up at 1,100 spruce, and maybe Randolph Randolph's wrapping up as well. Of course. Just some time to start the round for a 2024 capital campaign in our downtown facilities, which I'll talk about shortly.

[60:06] Regan led a project for the past couple of years on Fuller Junction way, finding and branding those signs are currently being installed. I don't know, so not sure how much time you all spend at older Junction, but some some new interesting branding. But I don't. I don't wanna call them branding because it's more than that. But, icons. Let's say they're the that have been designed in partnership with the residents and employees in the area as well as the Boulder Directory Commission to credit kind of more, create more sense of place in the Boulder Junction area there, New Way, finding signs on Perla. Did I just not notice them before there are new way of finding something.

[61:16] Well, we're still lucky to have the the business Improvement district in the downtown boulder partnership to help us with those those unique things that create that sense of place, especially with high number of visitors which is a segue into our conversation around the University Hill revitalization efforts which Regan has also been leading that work in anticipation of the Hill Hotel opening, which will be a Moxie Hotel and the Limelight Hotel and Conference center. We want to leverage those investments the greatest extent possible, and make sure that when folks are coming to those facilities that they're they're going up to the hill also having a great experience if they're coming downtown. And so we have a lot of recommendations from the Urban Land Institute, which we've been talking with you all and with you can't see about the work that's going on there to build their connections between downtown and the hill. So more to come on that I'll talk a little bit more about that later on. The access for all fronts are all very well aware of the big change in the garages going gave us. We also have the new lollipop signs that are much more dynamic. And they work

[62:27] which you all were involved in, and and establishing the resources to help make that happen. We were able to incorporate real time. Parking space information. It's still getting dialed in a bit. If you've noticed, the map doesn't always add up if you've seen them. But we are really glad to be able to provide some better with finding guidance and real time information about garage capacity. and last but not least, we've been. We've updated all of the on street signage throughout the manage department districts. So big changes and the customer experience all over town work that Cb does last year.

[63:11] So again, we're continuing to do some repairs, some some projects are rolling over in a number of garages. We're also working to get the spruce parking lot. Repave. We've done some pothole repair, but we want to get it up to better standard this year Regan is continuing to do work in partnership with Cu on the affordable commercial pilot program. So you'll be hearing more about that moving forward. As I mentioned the Hill University University Hill revitalization work is ongoing. You already heard about the outdoor dining pilots. Program and the work we're doing there. We're also small thing, but a really important thing, wanting to make sure that we are improving the tree canopy. And the districts that we serve in the great system possible. The first place you want to start is the

[64:01] Trees adjacent to the the buildings that we own and maintain. And so we're working on getting those tree grades and trees improved for 2024 on the cultural vibrancy side. In anticipation of the 2, a sales tax. We want to be having some conversation with the community community and the community in general around what the priorities are going to be in the near term, and over the 20 year timeline of that new tax. And so that'll be envisioned as an update of the community cultural plan over the next year and a half, anticipating of of future budget processes, questions between this previous flight, with the hotels coming and stuff like that. I know there's like gondolas and all sorts of stuff. Is there anything simpler that we can start planning for now for signage? And hey.

[65:01] yeah, it's not on your agenda this month, but I imagine you'll have it on your agenda in March, and so we are exploring some near term. We're hanging fruit similar to the way, finding tools that we have on Pearl Street Mall. Are there some cheap, easy things that we can do? With the hilltop opening to late March? I don't know. II don't always feel comfortable walking around that bend as a small woman, and I think a lot of people feel the same. And II just, it's easier to just buy quickly or avoid or drive. And so I do think, like a concerted effort around

[66:04] that space cause. It's not well lived. And it's like kid in. And it just doesn't feel like no one. If something happens to you, no one would see you like that sort of thing. And so II feel like, yes, there's the basic like downtown this way. But that walkway and that behind space. I feel like it even lighting. I was, as it mentioned, but like the lights at night in winter, like, there's a difference between many people probably going out or not going out right. It's just you don't feel safe at night at 4 pm. Right? Cause it's dark already. So just thinking about that, and how you use light to at least make people feel like they should make that trip. The number of quarters that we want to highlight from downtown Eleventh Street already has. There's an 11 street portal with some pedestrian scale lighting that we've spent a lot of money on. But there isn't signage that kind of guides you that way. And then the arboretum that the multi use pad that is part of the civic area planning work that's going on. That will be some significant investment

[67:11] in that connection along Thirteenth Street, up through that space. And so they're in very short order. There will be some major planning and investment for that specific corridor. In the meantime, you wanna highlight all the other ways. That you can get up to the hill? Oh, yes.

[68:02] we're in the midst of a strategic plan for our office of special events. It's been underway for a few months now. So they'll be translating into a number of recommendations about how city better facilitates event planning and implementation process, and maybe some other recommendations around revenue generating options, so that we can be more proactive and more involved in the special events and activation outcomes in the community. So nothing to report on that. No. I'm hearing more from us on that the team is also planning to do an audit of all of city owned public art. Now that the older public library is its own separate district. We have inherited a bunch of art that the the library had in its basement. And so our office of arts and culture

[69:01] is seeking to understand what we own. And and we need to make sure it's stored properly and exactly right. So a lot of work happening there the 20 year lease for the dairy center. expired a couple of years ago. We've been doing year by year extensions, but really wanting to enter into another long term lease with the dairy. It's a city own building in our office of Arts and culture is leading those negotiations on the city side. there's also some work to expand our city public Earth efforts into into our neighborhood. So through our training, want to, and some Arpa funds that we have. The American Rescue Plan Act

[70:01] want to be expanding. Our opportunities in neighborhoods around the city, particularly the have been impacted by Covid. And then again, we're gonna continue our granting program. We anticipate again over a million dollars being granted to the Arts community members over the year. On the District Vitali side. This year we have a 5.2 million dollar capital improvement program. We have need to assess the current state. We've been doing a lot of work over number of years. We need to now check in assess where each of our facilities are at and map out the next 5 to 10 years for capital improvements. So that's a more plan. This year. We know we need to replace both the Hvac. And the fire suppression system before the entire system grows up. Yes. So that's a capital program. That capital project likely be expanding.

[71:09] We all know, we need to replace some of the upper level landings at the elevator. If you spend any time on those landings you might be a little stressed. They're okay. We have put in some temporary infrastructure to make sure that they're safe. But we need to replace them entirely. We also need to replace the fires suppression system at that garage. At St. Julian. There's question because I was talking with the fire Inspector Guy, who came by my office, and they have mixed feelings about fire pressure suppression systems, and they try to get rid of them doesn't exist.

[72:15] People spaces cause like with my office because we use our attic. We have to have it, but if we didn't use our attic we wouldn't be required to have one, and it would be a lot simpler. But we do put the crap in all right. So I guess that's my. I'm sure your team has thought of this. But this is a new thing that I recently discovered is that, like you can get around it by changing some of your ways, and then you don't need a fire suppression system. Alright. Well, I don't have an answer for you right now. I'm glad you called the question. We don't have to replace it then, because it has. It seems like it's caused us a lot more heartache right now, but he would know

[73:00] alright, and he's a lot more on it right now than after Marshall. So he's the the specter guy. Oh, okay. good to know. Let's see, we are also planning for the fiftieth anniversary of the Pro Street Mall coming up in 2,027. So working with parks and recreation on many other partners on what we want to prepare for the fiftieth anniversary. And then next 50 years, talking earlier, I was gonna inquire about the 5 Year Plan, and, like, you know what it is now cause you've been here exposed to it. But on Earth the gender activities priorities list that we kind of came up. That was one of the things. Is there anything in the short term that we need to be as the Dmc. Can do to help further things along? So there's all these things about Calliways and all these other things, and it's going to be awesome.

[74:00] But as to know how that's going to happen. So this, there's this last bullet item on here. So real quickly working on improvements to the mobile vendor cart program. So we get more small business supported through that program. We have resources to underground excel power lines that are currently above ground in the downtown. So we're gonna be working to identify prioritize underground partnership with other departments and plan initiatives. Last, but certainly not least, is this Gid alternatives, analysis and capital planning. So that doesn't say all the things done that you just said, but what that and what that is is contemplating is understanding our long term fund, health and resources that we have available. And translate, translating that into a 10 to 20 year. Capital plan. In support of

[75:01] things like the downtown vision. The downtown vision plan. Course there, framework all these other moving bits and parts and pieces, the connection to to the Conference center on the hill. And so our team. Matt. She's asked these cultural vibrancy and district vitality teams to be scoping and then conversation to to plan out what that looks like. So we'll certainly be turning to Dvp's Vision plan in the contemplation of how you want to leverage the resources that we have available to us through the gids to further as many visions as possible in the next decade or 2, so more to come on that on the access for all side in 2023 we had a lot of public facing transformations that our customers are became very well aware of this year. We're planning more in some more internal stuff. So we're replacing, working to replace the back end system that connects all of our payment systems, our enforcement systems with municipal court.

[76:13] So think about when you if you're parking on Park Mobile, it's important that in real time our parking Enforcement officer is working on the street knows that you pay for your parking. And so there's a back end system that connects all of these things together. and if the ticket is written, it's important for Municipal court to know that ticket was written, so that when you show up to contest that ticket that just showed up on your windshield all the systems are communicating together. The system we have right now called t, 2 has been around since the movie t, 2, literally, and feels like it operates like it. And so we are. process to likely replace all of that system. We're hoping that as far as the customer experience. It's as seamless as possible. But it is a lot of change and a lot of work on the internal side.

[77:05] You heard a little bit about the community pilot program where you guys on the agenda. She's gonna go up after this. I'm not gonna talk about that right now. But we're also doing with this changes in these systems. And considering the changes with gateless, we're also doing a comprehensive product review of all of our parking products and access products to make sure that we're best meeting the needs of the customers that we're trying to serve and finally, on our maintenance side. We're working to implement a digital asset management system so that we can better streamline the work of our our maintenance teams. So we can understand the things that may be happening every day, every week, every month. to keep our systems operating as smoothly as possible, using digital systems as opposed to written down operating policies to to make more. Make our work more efficient and to keep better track of who's doing what

[78:04] that is. Our 2024 work plan. It's just a few things. As always, we are very ambitious. and as always, my hope that we get through everything that we say that we want to. We also acknowledge that we have a council retreat coming up in a few weeks that might reprioritize things a little bit. This is what we're saying. We wanna do. These are the goals that we've set out. We also know that sometimes pipes, pipes, freeze, and our attention gets pulled elsewhere. But we have a fantastic team of folks working really hard to understand and appreciate what the priorities of the community. The community are what our priorities of our commissions are to translate into constant improvement transformation. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions about the overall work plan, or we can go into the detail of unified pilot. So does this plan, then, have to be read by by council. Is it budgeted. This is all budget. So yeah, this is this is our plan work plan. It's what we've budgeted for been planning for and then we want to match it to reality. Basic, impossible.

[79:17] And so just wanted to share with you all what? We've identified as our priorities through our processes. Okay. alright over to Riga, and I will stop sharing my screen. See science reading? What? Fancy? Oh, thank you. But still clearly a city of boulder presentation. Yes, fairly quickly. So we're launching a pilot program this year with commutify transportation demand management pilot program.

[80:15] For those of you who are not familiar. Commutify is a tech startup based here in boulder, and their focus is really on creating platforms to better understand and quantify commuting commuting patterns as well as encourage sustainable commutes. So they're a great company. We've worked with them in the past on the door to downtown project, which you may or may not be familiar with but the pilot program will run through 2024 and the focus areas are gonna be in Ca, Jed and Older Junction Access district. So Cajun will be referencing throughout presentation.

[81:03] First, just wanna provide a high level overview of the purpose and the outcomes that we're seeking to achieve through this program before diving into the specifics. So the purpose in summary is to encourage companies, engagement, and a job to fund and participate in sustainable commuting practices through a financial incentives matching program directed at their employees. So it'll provide financial incentives to employees who use sustainable transfer make transportation methods to get to and from work. So, for example, carpooling Rtd B cycle, walking, etc. And the result that we're trying to achieve here is that commuters will be more aware and educated on boulders, multimodal transportation options. Really all in an effort to reduce carbon, footprint, decrease traffic congestion, improve air quality, and then support local businesses, which is a component I'll get to but essentially the financial incentive money can be used towards local retailers in case it can be chat.

[82:17] So now, diving in a little bit to the specific elements of the program, first Communify will develop a public information hub for employers and their employees to learn more about the program and explore the transportation options that are available to them. We'll then work with community to conduct outreach to employers within Kjit and Bjat so that they can register their organization on the project landing page. and then there they'll be able to determine the amount that they would like to incentivize for each employee. So again, if an employee takes a sustainable commute to work, they can receive a financial incentive from their employer in doing so.

[83:04] and the city will then match that incentive up to a dollar 25 per trip with a maximum match per employer. So that's still got to be defined. But we do have a limited pool of funding, and so there will be a maximum amount that we can match per employer for that up to dollar 25 per trip. If that makes sense. Let's see, and then community will then assist participating employers in recruiting their employees to join the incentive incentives program. So essentially, they'll develop and maintain an online dashboard where employees can register into the program, and they can all also validate their qualified commuting trips either through self reporting or automatic integrations which we're working on with our micro mobility partners. So, for example, if an employee takes a B cycle to work that will be recorded on the B cycle app. But then we'll automatically integrate into that community platform.

[84:09] So we're working on that. it sounds like reimbursing bus trips, or something like that is how sounding like versus, like an employer buying bikes for their stack. which is not a per trip kind of thing. It's more like. right? Yeah, or like a parking cash out program, I think, is another term that's used compared to, is it only work? If it's an employer, employee relationship? Or could you work with all the Co working spaces in boulder, for example, where it's not an employer employee relationship. But it's a benefit. That's a great question. At this point the pilot program is focused solely on employers employers in Bjat and huge it in their employees. But

[85:07] I'm I'm very open to that feedback and happy to chat with communicify about it. We're still developing the product. And I think as long as you can demonstrate that you're an employee within the district doesn't necessarily register with it with the platform. Yes, yeah. But the employer will provide that financial incentive. So I guess as long as you do. You know the tax treatment of that is employee tax on that 1 25 or 250? Okay. I'm not sure that might be too deep. That's significantly burdensome to a player. So, and I think so, we are wanting employers to participate in the program. But you don't have to be a participating employer

[86:06] or your your employer doesn't have to participate in the program to participate in a tool. So while there, so we do want employers to also participate in and put money into this thing. We also wanna make sure that anybody in the district just as we have with the Eco pass program can benefit from this tool. And I might need to do some talking with rich cause we've done. We've done a soft launch of this before with downtown employees as long as you had downt. As long as your email was within a downtown messaging standpoint. That is, my big confusion is like ecopass has already paid for. So what is the other option other than biking, or something like that? But that's free. So I'm trying to understand the interaction on the paid Eco pass. That's already free. What are they getting reimbursed for? I guess I'm

[87:07] it's not a reimbursement. I don't think you can think about that way. It's more of a incentive not to get in. Your money can only be spent on certain things. Really, we want people to be because what we've learned is especially this last few years with Covid. we have all these eco passes out there. But people aren't using them as much anymore. So we really want to use these carrots, if you will, to encourage folks to use, not just their Eco pass, but car share the scooters. These cycle, any of any of these options available to them, and use this tool as a as the way to incentivize the new behavior commute commute to 5, I know has not solved winter, which is a big issue that we all face in Boulder. I think it's I think it's it's a as a 50 of the year by commuter with my own bike. I find that, like it's.

[88:11] there's very little incentive for me to do alternative modes of transportation in the winter cause. It's chat very challenging. So I think in this program. My. if you just like, if if you increase the amount of utilization in the half of the year that you can commute more sustainably, then maybe it would be worth it. But also, II would just say, like the winter is just the game changer in the wrong direction, and not because of the cold, but because of the darkness. Incentivize, you know, like this isn't just about every other remote but driving. We also are going to be pushing, parking, related products on here. We want to sign up for metropolis. We want them to be aware of the $3 product.

[89:05] yeah, it's it's really a platform that's to connect them with all of the transportation options available. Them, even if that is driving and making sure that they're aware of the more affordable products like the dollar 25 product at oh. negative 20 degree day. But I'm gonna take a ride

[90:08] work? So technically, they have the ability to earn up to $5 a day, which which is pretty cool. But again, there will be a limit how much we can put towards matching each employer. So if this program is really successful, we may need to communicate down the road later this year. Hey, we're reaching that funding limit. You are more than welcome to continue incentivizing your employee. But there will be a cap, at least for this program in terms of how much we can provide. I guess how many. Like. As an employer myself, I just, I believe in this, but I also don't know if I could justify allocating money towards this like where does? Where does it become? Where the risk is on the employer? And I guess that that parts a little bit unclear like, who's the right fit, like our restaurants with their low margins, gonna be incentivized to do something like this.

[91:01] even if they care about climate, it's like they're just trying to keep their business flow. So yeah, what what have you heard? Have you heard any like initial? We haven't started conducting the outreach, conducting outreach to employers. In the coming months. But I will say, and this is the last component here is that the participating employers can apply for the State tax credit for the pro from the program, which is the alternative transportation tax credit. They can receive. A 50% tax credit on any funds they use to invest in alternative modes of transportation in which this program would certainly qualify. And then I skipped over the last bullet point, but employees will also receive their financial incentive money on this platform via a virtual mobility card. We can provide a physical card on a case by case as requested. But those funds can be used to be reinvested, reinvested into sustainable trips or local retailers, that we're still working on identifying. And Key and Vj

[92:17] announced to the public to kind of like sign up and stuff. Are we announcing ahead of time? We're going to start conducting outreach ahead of time for sure. so this is the timeline. But we are currently working on product development and configuration. We'll start testing and conducting outreach in March, and then the official launch and incentives program officially begins on April first and then next steps. So the incentives program will run until the end of the year, so employees can earn funds until the end of December, but they have, until the end of January 2025 to spend their incentive money that they earn.

[93:01] And then we'll evaluate the program, identify opportunities for improvement with the goal of hopefully expanding it potentially to other areas of the city or at least continuing it in the coming years, if successful. but happy to entertain any questions from commissioners. Again, we're really still on the beginning phases of developing this. So I can escalate. Any questions I can't answer to community, but happy to chat for any feedback you have as well. So just in the general picture, individuals can sign up for it irregardless of their company. But the company can also put 50% of the payment in and double the money they would get from commuter fine as well, and the company has an incentive to do that for the taxes, which then the they would get 50% of that back through taxes. Yes. do they have a lot of people lying about that. They took trips and that they otherwise didn't track. I mean, like, well, is that automatic integrations as much as possible? Yeah, yeah. Well, there's like, aside from these cycling. But I mean, then they're lying to their employer. So I don't know. That's

[94:22] yeah. It's I've just yeah. I think we just want to try it for now. And see how it goes, and then, learn as much as we can. There is a ton of fraud to bring people to downtown, so that's one of the nice benefits to is that.

[95:20] yeah, I guess, like, my question is, how many people actually work for employers like locally, there's so many people working remotely and like II would hope that there are different phases where we could figure out that maybe the employer employee relationship isn't the only one that incentivize. I don't know. Like. like, if an employer is not. it's just like all these people I know who work here like a lot of people. There's so many remote workers. They work for other big companies who knows where like that might, you know, it's not going to be. They're unlikely to be able to participate in this type of thing. It seems very local like, you're going to go to this retail business. Microsoft's not gonna care. But the employees

[96:08] there, so like talking to working places in the chambers and all these kind of places to put it out there. So people know about it. Because, Microsoft, you're not going to talk to Amazon. They should have some local person in charge, that if you talk to the right person. that might be a significant enticement, I imagine these are centralized functions also, but and benefits well, again, I think you know a long time one of the benefits of doing business in downtown boulder was. you have the benefit of free go past paid for by the city that used to be a great selling product. And it's not the selling product that it used to be before Covid. So we we wanna continue to be able to provide and be on the the leading edge of how do we, as you know, change it, being responsible for managing access demands to the downtown district. How do we leverage this into a

[97:14] benefit of doing business downtown versus everywhere else in the city. And so we'll learn a lot over the next year. And maybe this will be that next generation of of why doing business downtown, or more of general improvement districts is more desirable than locating your business and Broomfield, or or wherever because there are a lot of options out there. Thanks thanks for you. Alright. One more item on matters from Staff. We have Amy Smith here who I think you've got. There's a lot of new faces that are commissioning this month. Amy Smith joined us from the communications and engagement team supporting the Vitality department. All might remember Jen Bray. She was our communication program support person. And so Amy is here leading us on the communication side, and so wanted to provide an opportunity to introduce herself to you all in person and then provide an update on our Commission recruitment strategies.

[98:23] Thank you, Chris. Hi, everyone! It's so nice to meet you all. Prior to joining the city I was with the downtown boulder partnership, and so I've had the pleasure of spending a lot of time engaged in downtown matters. And I'm just gonna provide a really quick overview on what we've done. City communication side of things to share the word on Commission recruitment. There are, I believe, 2 seats open on the downtown Management Commission this year, and so things that have been done to fill those seats. Don graciously volunteered his time to talk about volunteering his time on the inside Boulder news segment. That went out this past Friday, and so Don shared all kinds of great insights into why he chose to serve on this commission the hopes of getting more people to join him in that effort. Our friends at downtown boulder partnership are sharing it in their membership Newsletter this week

[99:14] this week, and so all those downtown businesses that are members will be getting information on recruitment and application. And then we shared it out on all kinds of city channels, beginning in the middle of December. So press release went out. It's gone out. Multiple newsletters in the city's volunteer newsletter on next door, on all kinds of social media platforms and posts, and then the Office of Arts and Culture has also been sharing all kinds of seasonal openings and their newsletter, and on social media there and then any word of mouth you all share is greatly appreciated. That application is open through Monday, January 29. That's awesome. Tina, if you want to throw my name in the Newsletter, too. It's like, if you want to talk to Commissioner. I guess we

[100:20] is March, your last meeting. Yeah, yeah. So second to last meeting. So you're talking about bringing donuts are right. The mark just realized. Okay, yeah. Have you had any submissions yet? We can't check how many submissions we've had so far. So we don't know currently where we're at numbers. Wise. But hopefully, the answer is, yes, the effort has been there been some targeted things we've done, for instance, research to downtown boulder partnership and don your interview on inside boulder that are really like downtown Management commission focused, and then a lot of the city efforts have been commissions and boards at large, so recruiting for all vacancies across all boards, commissions.

[101:06] So I don't have targeted numbers on exactly how many people have applied for each one, yet. As as many commissions that we support. We have to. We are subjected to their process from their updates on applicants. So people know more soon. But yeah. organizations that also have those audience with the downtown business that we should chairman like the Chamber Restaurant Association or something like that. I can talk to the Chamber for sure. That would be a potential good partner to plug into if there are really specific require. As you all know, there are really specific requirements to apply to the downtown Management Commission and so that's why the outreach is is top, because it does have to be so targeted. I'm hopeful that downtown will sharing the world will be really helpful.

[102:04] But yeah, I can reach out to the chamber and see if they have any like. It's open until the 20 ninth of January. So there's a couple of more research to apply. People ask me about it that got the information from somewhere so hopefully, it's the property Rep, I mean, I don't own property, but I was sponsored by a property owner. So it doesn't have to be someone correct last year. Sounds like.

[103:10] I'm not sure what was done last year. So it seems more. Yeah. But try and thank you. Yeah, thank you all for anything you've shared and thought your time. And that concludes matters from staff. So thank you very much. Okay, the last. So well, the next item on the agenda is matters from Commissioners. I have just a very short update. But before I do that. Just do any other Commissioner's have any matters that like to bring up? There is one item. But I saw in the news with Denver having issues with someone who is on a line scooter who hit someone. They left the scene.

[104:03] and the person who that happened to was in Lego world of issues because insurance issues and stuff like that. And so I looked into lines. Stephanie was kind enough. She sent me the line insurance forms, and they are only in 2 states, not our State. It's like California and Ohio, but they have insurance. And just to force all this from happening in the future. because I see a lot of wine issues. what if there's a hit and run, and or some sort of issue like that? There is no solution for the person who was involved in my accident with someone riding a line, because it's and also Lyme would not

[105:01] share the information without some sort of like actual I imagine. So for the data, because it's private information, and so on, which is understandable. And that's solvable. But the biggest issue is, there is no assurance, for the person's hit by the blind person. So I just didn't know. Is this something we can solve for in the future, with our next contract with Lyme that they include both older in that list of places that they cover, because right now, only I think it was Ohio, California. So I do know. Allison. In transportation mobility is planning to come to the next meeting to talk about what they've been learning on the line. front. She's also planning to listen to this meeting, so let her know that you ask that question. She certainly can be prepared to help answer it.

[106:07] When she comes next month. Yeah. We also asked for I think it's good related incidents that they're tracking, too. So hopefully she can. 2. That's yeah. We let her know about your interest, and March is when she was be able to join us. Thank you. Get a whole meeting in without talking about any other matters from commissioners. Okay. Briefly. I want to give a recap on the well, 2 meetings that I went to now. Yes, apologies for not oh, that's okay. Yeah. The first meeting.

[107:03] My, so it was the did. I'm still there's a lot of acronyms still, even for me. So, patina you should feel if you get them now you're just way ahead of the game. Did. And then it was down to both of partnerships, and so they're voting board. And so I just sat and listened. But they also do have Matt Benjamin. I'm City Council attend the police department attends. They had a presentation from Samps, and my impression was that it felt very similar to our meeting slight, like 70% overlapping content. I didn't learn a lot of new things, except I heard the business owners complaining rightfully about like just the amount of high utilizers in front of their businesses, and just like all the challenges they've had with that. And so it felt, there's a lot like a lot of similar content to what we've heard, and I am appreciative of your efforts to kind of try and reduce the number of meetings that have a lot of overlapping content. And so the second meeting I went to was

[108:10] Patina's attempt to consolidate many of the people from all these different boards and etc. I'm not. There's just so there's a lot of people there, and what was cool for me is just to get a to see. People haven't seen in a while from all these different settings, like Lori, who visited us to talk about like, see you relationship with the city. She was there and then, like other the bidders there, and city council number there, and Nuria was there. So it was a, I think, a valuable setting for me to just here in the pulse, from a lot of wider groups. and I think it was net valuable for me. It was high level, I would say. That's my only feedback. It was high level because it had to be. And in this meeting we can get a lot deeper into like.

[109:03] let's just not hear an update from people 20,000 for you. But let's actually hear like what's working what's not working? Well, we're the key, like what we would, you know, just a level deeper where you kind of know more of the the details of the challenges and the successes. So I think my take away was, it's very valuable for us to be involved in bigger settings, but that we do have a unique small space here to actually work through things and answer questions that we would otherwise wouldn't have in bigger meetings. So I think the issues are the same. It's not surprise between, like a lot of these boards and commissions. They feel very overlapping to me. I don't know, Patina. If you have a comment on that, you felt the same, which is why you Consolidated. But I mean II called it the grand experiment when we met together, and then it's definitely been attempts over years to have the the business improvement district and the downtown boulder partnership, downtown boulder community initiatives for me. Together, maybe once a year, and my goal is really to consolidate those so that we're getting the same information and those high level updates consistently throughout the year so that people can develop more relationships.

[110:23] I can. I could spend a long time talking about the ways that I think the experiment failed, but I think ultimately it was successful in that we were able to not duplicate the same information being presented at meeting after meeting after meeting. I do think that much like this Commission reports up to City Council, and then Council gets a higher level of the work being done. For downtime holder partnership. We have committees that are doing that are digging into the policy work at a you know more nitty, gritty level, and then feeding that up so over time, as the experiment continues, I think we'll be able to do a better job. Getting feedback about those committee and policy decisions that are made at more granular level.

[111:02] But I it was great to have you there and and II think it's good that you were able to interact with people. And then it's not totally duplicative, and that doesn't serve anybody. What we all want downtown to be successful, and it's a very complicated place. it turns out, because it is so duplicative. You heard the same things you can fine. We can't talk there. but you just now know that they know what we know is what I'm hearing you kind of say, should we continue? Yeah, I mean, I I have asked myself for a while like. what is the purpose, is it? I think it's just to be more aware right about what's happening and who's working out what I mean, part of our role is that like the more that we understand, the more we can advise and support, figure out where to support and whatnot to. And if there's a there is a knowledge gap, I mean, there's a lot of things going on. It's hard to figure out what they are and what meaningfully, you know, intersects with where we have ownership. So II think it's I think it's valuable. I think these meetings

[112:11] happened to be like a week apart, so it just feels duplicative to me now, like I heard the exact same police report. and he repeated it. And now I really know it right. But no, II think I think that it's valuable for us to be involved in that on a monthly basis. It is bit more of a time commitment right like there. These meetings are monthly during the workday. so if we all, if we all spread apart, you know, each commission member went to one of them it would feel more palpable. But I don't think anyone's coming into this commission role thinking that they're gonna now go to like a monthly meeting during the workday, so I think we would have to split it up. II can say I have attended those meetings in the past. Yeah. And my husband was on the bid for yeah, a long time. So

[113:02] they are very, very similar. But I think that the benefit to me was, it's a different perspective. I mean, we all have one perspective. They're much more like feet on the streets. Yeah. perspective. And II think it's really valuable. Yeah, yeah, I definitely think it is. I think we should rotate. And we'll hopefully get 2 more people. And if if that's okay as part of the thing. I think that it would then be a feeder into just this meeting and just create more. Yeah, consistency. And yeah, yeah. I think I fully support you all on participating. I guess the only one of the things that I missed is didn't really have an opportunity for the folks room to realize that we have a Dmc. Commissioner there at the last minute. I'm sure I missed the other meeting. But maybe if there's some way to integrate that presence into the experiment totally. Yeah. And I think even I mean giving like, the communication channels work both ways. So when you come and cycle through attending these meetings, you can have an opportunity to present on what you've been experiencing as a Commissioner, I mean, II knew people, not because of this commission because I've met them outside of it.

[114:25] and otherwise I would have been like, I don't know who anyone in this room is, for the most part, so II do wonder if if there's any way without doing like a cheesy icebreaker. But I just that group is so big depends on how cheesy, maybe, but to to meet people. Because II actually didn't know who's there. I just didn't know.

[115:06] Is that what you meant? Because we can't get together for an icebreaker with them, we'd have to do it like. Well, that that is what I meant was, we would get 5 min absolutely to whatever Commissioner would wanna present at that meeting and one of the admitted failures. I think of our meeting on Thursday, and wanna take too much time. Here was that II knew that I didn't know everybody, but I forgot that not everybody didn't know I did. I did. Yeah. And so that was that was one spot for me. You don't know each other are because there are so many boards, and we're all drinking. I don't think most people know who we are. So II think it's worth introductions, but not just need to. Everyone else are done. Or yeah. but, broad broadly speaking, like who people are in the room would be an interesting thing. So I do think the benefit is hearing other perspectives and personally knowing people right? And so

[116:04] yeah, II appreciated the consolidation, though, because II think I was even confused. How many variations on meetings there were that we would benefit from hearing people, and as long as just continue this kind of concept, one of the goal. The ideas that I had was documents and commissioners. Should we meet with bye? One of us go talks to Tab, and one of us goes to talk to the Art Commission, and just to form more. We hear it from Staff, and you know you know you all are doing what you do. Is there any benefit of us? Just zoom it into their one of their meetings, and not all of us. But we all kind of like, okay, we're gonna talk to 4 others, or whatever. And just to. you know, cause like we. you were on the Art Commission. Yeah, the selection thing. But that was kind of like, you know, that that was nice. But another time keep doing more public art that's gonna spawn out. I don't. I don't need to make make work either. But is there good? Is there any that? And I, Chris, I wanna hear your well, I'd say it depends on

[117:16] what the condition body wants to get out of that in the sense of when you are not meeting it with a quorum. You were just a volunteer. You're a person in the community who's interested in these issues unless you have been empowered by a quorum of the Commission, saying, I would like Don to show up, to tab and testify to this thing, and so really right sizing. What is it that we want to accomplish. Out of this opportunities II totally support cross pollination. That's why our project in the garage was a great opportunity to kind of purpose getting involved with other people.

[118:15] I. And it seems like we have a different direction from what Tab wants. Yes, we don't. Yeah, I don't. We don't even know it's better than we don't know who they are to figure out who should go to each one.

[119:00] Yeah, I think there's a most alignment for sure in in the meeting that the team is planning. And what we're focused on like this, I felt like none of the content was irrelevant to what we're doing so. Yeah. And I think I think my my key question is like, how much of it is tactical versus strategic, too. And I think that's my only bit of feedback was, it felt like, I'm like, what are they talking about? The cold weather like this just does that happen every year like? But some of these things, like our people, are just kind of responding to like what happened yesterday versus like the strategic outlook on the future of the downtown. So I I'd be curious to hear how those things balance out in the next meeting, like how much of it is like responding to what we're doing now versus strategy around the future. It it it felt very tactical. but I think it was the first one, so that sound that seemed like it should concern about the cold weather we spent a lot of time talking about.

[120:02] Well, let me push like the concept of tab again, just to kind of explore for a different point of view. Because, like, there, we got the emails. I think all of us got the individual email and in a way that does impact what we're doing because we have the garages and on street parking. And you know, stuff like that. And so we have joint agenda meetings with Bj. And campsi. But I almost wonder if you know I'll put it to the Commissioners before I put it to Chris. But, like Chris, or lip or eavesdropping over here. But almost like should we raise red flags? For when there are things that maybe touch on things that could that issue directly impact the the reduction of well, that's interesting. Yes, and so I think there certainly are going to be opportunities for that partner. Form is going to be on this work plan

[121:06] for 2024. We didn't talk about it here because we're not meeting it. And actually, we've not had parking requirements and pages since. I think the formation of the district right? That was part of the strategy. We're the one of the first communities in the country to eliminate parking minimums. For specific uses and areas where we knew we're gonna be able to. I come in another way. So as different as Tab and Dmc might feel like you are. Sometimes there might be a way that you actually do meet when you're giving the opportunity. I think those opportunities could come up later this year there might be instead of handling the conversation separately where traditionally Staff would planning. Staff will come. Talk to this commission about, go to the other commission to give the same presentation. Similar to you all are in the Joint Commission. Was there a Joint Commission meeting

[122:05] last year on a very important topic. Sorry it was Boulder Junction, so there was a joint Boulder Junction meeting for all the Bjat based to work, so there might be an opportunity for some synergies and a joint commission, but also using left hand and right hand, agreeing with each other. And maybe there's a little bit more either consensus or we can debate each other better. Clearly. Well, it seems to me that Staff is hearing what's happening sort of on the global city level, that maybe we could get more input from staff on. Hey, this is happening here. Preliminary. It's probably too soon to do anything. But just so, you know, or this thing has potential to affect the what we're interested in. So maybe that at that point would be

[123:16] approach. Instead of going to 12 different meetings having one big one. Is a lot more productive and so we can certainly push that on this topic and any other topics in. I guess we're looking for you to like. Where does that overlap? It's maybe not just between us and Tab. It's like there's things that you know. I I've talked to you about this before. It's been more efficient. So our next meeting is Tuesday, March twelfth and 4 pm. Here. Can I have a motion.