November 6, 2024 — Environmental Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:05] That you know what I did not see. Everyone is that little square remote, that across the camera angle. Does that happen to be over there? No. But we can find it. Oh, there it is! Oh, my gosh, love your outfit! Thank you all right. don't get on. We rename myself like anybody's on yet. So have you guessed how many people joined? Nope. as far as yeah. Most interesting reports. That is not the table. According to the general population. I did not say that that is my own personal belief. I mean, maybe they're all just catching the Youtube.

[1:10] This is on your latest contract. All right. So I will begin by calling, speeding to order and seeing that we have a quorum, we can continue. If you wanna take it away with our meeting procedures. Where did the share screen button go? Hi, everyone! My name is Heather. I'm serving as the technical host for tonight's meeting. Thank you for your grace and patience, as we all deal with last minute Zoom updates and all the other tech stuff that happens to me regularly.

[2:02] The city is engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive, meaningful, and inclusive civic conversations. This vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members, staff and board and commission members as well as democracy. For people of all ages, identities lived experiences and political perspectives for more information about decision and the community engagement process. Please visit that website. Boulder, Colorado, Gov. Forward, slash services forward slash, productive hyphen atmospheres. The following are examples of rules of decorum found in the boulder, revised Code, and other guidelines that support this vision. These will be upheld during the meeting all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any other person. Obscenity, racial epithets, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited.

[3:02] participants are required to sign up to speak, using the name they are commonly known by, and individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online. Currently, only audio testimony is permitted online because we do not have registration for open and public comment. Tonight you can indicate you would like to participate by using the raise hand function. The raise hand button is in the participant box which could be found in the menu by hovering over the top or the bottom of your screen, and then clicking on the participant icon. When the box opens you will see the raise hand button at the bottom by clicking that button you can indicate you would like to participate and open or public comment. If you've joined us by phone. You can press Star 9 to raise your hand. Great! Thank you. Next I will make a motion to approve our minutes from our last meeting. Thank you. And a quick in favor. Great

[4:01] if that we can continue on to our meeting. Do we have any public participants seeing none. Okay. I'll hand it over to Jonathan if he wants to give us a tee up here. Yeah. Happy to good evening board members for the record. Jonathan Cohen, climate initiatives, knowing that today, being November 6, th was going to be kind of a busy day, for many, many people wanted to keep your agenda somewhat light, and give you a really good update on one of the topics that I think has come up a good number of times in the last couple of months, which is our nature based. Solutions work within the department, specifically the Cool Boulder campaign. And I I know it's a subject that you're familiar with, but thought it was a really good time to bring an update. Allow you to talk to some of the key staff that run a lot of that coalition of of city organizations. Well, the city and community based organizations focused on nature based solutions and climate. And let you ask some questions on where we are today, where we're headed. And really, just to give you a quick update on on where we're at. So I would be delighted. I don't remember if you've been to the board.

[5:19] have for in in February last year we and then I only came and spoke a little bit about Heat Islands 2023, or 2020, 2023 I don't even know. Well, I'll turn it over to Heather, and if if you'll introduce yourselves for the record, and then you can go ahead and roll. Yeah. And where? Where would you all like us? I mean, I know this is a small group than informal. It's like from here. Okay, okay, great. So I'm Heather Barents, Loza, I'm a program manager on the nature based climate solutions, team of climate initiatives. I'm Caroline Peterson, I she her pronouns. I am a civic spark Americorps fellow, serving with the climate tournament on the nature-based climate solutions team, and I'm in my second service term. So I've been with the city for over a year, very excited to have her back.

[6:21] So I. I could probably talk at this point about cool boulder ag nauseum for like 3 h. So we attempted to keep this to a theme. And we're excited to hear your questions. And like discussion, too. So yeah, there's a lot of spaces where we and if you have any questions we go, please just jump in. I did want to provide. I spoke with Brett King. Our team lead before this to see if he had any quick talking points, and this isn't work from the city team and the school holder end necessarily. But we just wanted to point out that this the Eab has been asking about a heat strategy for a while, and we just wanted to let you all know you've been heard. It took time. But this is now a priority in the citywide strategic plan.

[7:03] And this point to that's an a work item for our team to convene a city wide team around this. And some of this will be based on work that's coming out of our team. That's been a recent heat assessment. One, we did through resilient analytics, which deals with heat and vulnerability. And there's, of course, broader work happening around the city around vulnerability. But we're really excited to pull this together and this. And another big thing coming up is landscape codes. So codes are one of the most important mechanisms we have to impact landscapes around the city, and mostly prompted or largely prompted by a law coming down from the State on non functional turf. Cities all up and down our region are assessing their codes, and the city is also boulder is also in the middle of a large code and ordinance review, and update around this and that. That turf law is coming into effect in 2026. So this is happening at the moment. And Brett did suggest that either one of these topics, or both of these would be great to bring to you all somewhere in quarter one next year, probably to talk about more in depth when we know more. But they are starting to roll. So that's really exciting. We have a code kickoff meeting tomorrow. Actually. So

[8:17] we're pretty excited about that. So yeah, Update from our team, just forecasting maybe some topics that we'd like to provide. What is the non functional tourist law? Sure. So I actually didn't tell you the nitty gritty of the full law. But the State is assessing due to water use how in new development, non-functional turf will not be allowed. So in this case. And that's actually a big question is how we define non-functional. That's a question we're kind of asking ourselves, too. But when we think about like Kentucky bluegrass. You think about a massive open space that's just being watered full of Kentucky bluegrass that people are paying a bunch of money to water and a lot of water is going into.

[9:00] and that's just it. You know, it's not serving a purpose as an athletic field or as someone's small lawn that could be considered non-functional. And, Jonathan, I don't know if you have any more you want to say, yeah, sure it was codified through Senate Bill 51, the last session, and it pertains to government operation. So right now it is a State government and municipal governments, and and how they think about existing facilities, and what a plan is to remove non functional turf and not putting in new grass or new turf in any new developments only for, like public well. So there are some exemptions when it relates to things like yields when it relates to operations, and in certain places where there already is grass for certain reasons, and so I'll I'm happy to send you the bill language. What will be left? Dude? What do you mean like or private properties? Of course, just now you're saying what other examples of non-functional crap turf anywhere? Yeah, like, I mean those watering grass. Just because, right? Or are they?

[10:14] Yes, absolutely well. I don't know if these are small spaces, but like in between the street and stuff like there's all this side of highways, randomly, that never goes on, and a lot of our our drought rules are based around the baseline use of like turf grass. So there's just a lot that goes into the water calculations of water use around those places that are turf that like kind of no one's really using. And we would love to see them converted into things like when possible. And that makes sense. This law just applies to new developments. Right? So there's a mandate that like, get taken out. It's just you can't add more.

[11:02] and it's it's certainly it's triggering. A lot of code updates around the State. In terms of, I know, I think, has already gone through one with the consultants. And we're kind of kicking off and trying to make it a very comprehensive one. Okay. yeah. From the from this the city team aspect. And I'll be really interested to see how we can how this will trickle out through pool, boulder but just to start, we. We wanted to remind you what global there is, why, we're doing it, and why we even have a nature based climate solutions, team nature based climate solutions are are working with ecosystems. About a 3rd of our excess carbon in the atmosphere is from degradation. So when we think about the teams on climate initiatives, you know, having. And and the pillars we have about fighting climate change. Ecosystems is part of it. And one of the most important ways to do. Nature based solutions is with community. We have things we can do on our own land. But, for example, about 80% of our tree canopy is on private property.

[12:06] So if we're thinking about the community as a whole, cooling the entire community working with the entire community, we also have to have a nexus for working with community. We also have to do so in an equitable way, so people are not inequitably advantaged via this, and the folks who need it the most have a chance. and cool boulder has kind of become a structure for that which is really exciting. When we 1st started, I feel like this was kind of an experiment. So it's really fun to think back on where we've come and well, come out of this. There's been a little bit of branding around nature-based climate solutions. So we've got these 3 sort of logos around our action areas. This is what we're trying to rally around so connect to canopies kind of a given but thinking about how we connect shade and healthy living canopies across our city, and that can also include shrubs so just various ways of shading, shading the ground and keeping that ecosystem up high alive. Pollinator pathways is kind of our

[13:06] charismatic way of saying biodiversity. So we're still working a lot on our biodiversity messaging. We were running kind of on the idea that biodiversity might not be as understandable to people as say, everybody understands a name. People know what butterflies are. People are excited about pollinators. I do think there's a broader understanding of biodiversity on the community than we originally thought at first, st but it can be sometimes hard to tie biodiversity to climate change. So it's been an interesting journey so far, and I'm excited to do it more. But pollinator pathways, another second to pollinators, also pathway thinking about how we connect things across the city. One good example of this is that honeybees. They feed in a swarm, they can fly a long, long distance, our about a thousand species of native bees kind of hop, and they often feed in solitary, so they need connected spaces to move around and actually get enough food and can be severely disadvantaged. If there's a lot of honeybees because they can range far and wide. So one thing we can do is create small patches. That kind of range over the city.

[14:14] Absorbent landscapes is kind of our slowest growing, but one of my favorite, because it deals with water. But we leaned into the absorbent landscapes. Language because it's not just for water. It's also for carbon carbon is a resource. It's just in the wrong spot. So the healthier and more hydrated soil we have the more carbon it can hold and having carbon there is just critical to having healthy ecosystems. So that's what we're rallying around as a structure for the public. And also, interestingly, for ourselves. It's sort of how our team is made up in a way on the city end. I came in as more. The absorbent landscapes person Brett and Karen represents our connected canopies, and then we have Rella Abernathy and and Adrian Carper, who are working on the pollinator pathway, and also the integrated pest management program. But it's been a good structure so far that's held up, which is kind of nice to see.

[15:09] I did want to start with. I I think maybe the last time I would have come I would have mentioned that. Hey, we have a steering team. But that might be nice just to introduce you all to who's on us on our steering team. And I'm very proud of this act. Acronym the action coordination team or the act Berserxes societies through Steve, Eco. Cycle with Marty Devin, is representing the Chamber of Commerce. Angie is in charge of the play foundation, and play is holding a lot of our tree work. So in the Tree Trust, a lot of that more community based work sort of moved out of our team into the Tree Trust as did one of our last interns, which was great, I forgot to add, Daniel, so it's okay. No worries. Daniel is also with play, as is Mike Reichert. And then Andrea Montoya, if any of you know her, she's running the pollinator advocate program and been a really influential community organizer. Around this Amy Yarger is a horticulturist at the Butterfly Pavilion, and then Tim Peele is working on sustainability at boulder housing partners, and these folks have been really the brain trust of cool boulder from the get go. It's really wonderful to have

[16:24] more than just us trying to lead this they are. They are the the heartbeat of it as we formulate things and and move forth into the community. We've played with ways of describing pool boulder. For a long time there's been different blurbs on websites and different ways of describing it to people one of these. This is one of them, you know, supporting and mobilizing the community to regenerate our soils, trees, and habitats for resilient community climate and future sounds great. It didn't stick necessarily. And one thing we really struggled with is how to describe cool boulder to people who didn't know what it was. We went through a process of trying to write a mission statement. You know all the things that new organizations do. And this is a lot of words. But we didn't land on a mission statement we landed on. You know. What is the purpose of cool boulder?

[17:20] so it's a city sponsored, was key language. We landed on because we were really leaning into community led. And as they should, groups asked, What do you mean by that? Like? What does it actually mean to be community led. And are you being clear in your language when you say that, are you truly community led? Because it sort of seems like the power rests of the city. The more accurate or most accurate way we could come up with was to say, city sponsored, recognizing that at least half of my time as a city staff goes to being one of the lead coordinators. and that a lot of the resourcing is coming from the city giving us a certain level of control. In that. So we landed on city sponsored, trying to create climate action in collaboration with community members and partners. It aims to enhance ecological health and resilience, local ecosystems. Recognizing that we're working primarily urban

[18:12] and we want to improve health and safety in all communities across boulder. We had a lot of trouble listing all of the people, as you all do when you start thinking about equity. We leaned into language that the library uses actually enlisting the the types of people we have. So we've got that in our fuller statement. But we wanted to include not only not only the the blanket statement about Hey, who has enough nature, but recognizing in a statement somewhere there socioeconomic injustices, and that a lot of people aren't prepared to deal with what climate change is going to bring. and nature is one way to help with that. So we tried to encompass that in a statement Caroline put a QR. Code on there. Easiest thing to do is probably go to our website and kind of play around and dig a little bit. But it took us a long time to come up with the words we like, and we also recognize it's gonna change as the campaign grows.

[19:10] I. Another reason I wanted to show the steering team is that they led that. So this wasn't something we wanted to come up with on our own. We wanted a group that wasn't just us coming up with the purpose of cool holder. So I don't know. Are you all familiar with systems? Change level thinking? I'm assuming. Yes, I put this up here because the basis of how our team works. And one way we're thinking about cool boulder is in the context of systems change and systems drivers. So, recognizing that to be able to push on all of these pillars of systems change global is just an intrinsic part of that for us. And a lot of that lives in the culture and cultural and social norms, although certainly some in technology pushes on policy and law and a little bit in markets, but not as much. I really think. Cool boulders. Home is largely in the culture and social norms.

[20:06] So we we're just thinking about ways to push on all of those pillars finding pool holder a mechanism for that. And this is our diagram of trying to show like Hey, cool holder can be part of all of these things that get us to change. So awareness, having an alternative is really important adoption and social norming, ultimately leading to policy, law and rule, and then scaling up as well. So we can make a greater impact. So these are the ways where we like to think about these things we're working on to get to a bigger change. And this is just another illustration of the ways we're trying to think about these things. A lot of these are the dates aren't quite right anymore. But this is a formulation of Hey, how do? How do we get from a failing system to a thriving system. What do we have to push on? And it's been really, really interesting to see how cool boulder can be a component of that and push on the inside of city things being an outside group.

[21:12] And I think this is also showing like how ecosystems work is kind of like a later addition to climate and stuff like it points out that the ecosystems was 1st listed in the cap. I'm an action plan in 2016 2017. So just like speaks to the evolution of our department, and how ecosystems and nature based cloud solutions started to be incorporated in thinking about solution to these issues? Absolutely. so mostly, Caroline bless her heart, attempted to write an impact report for cool boulder last year it was very, very hard. We realized we had a lot left to define. But we did land on some really really cool and interesting numbers, just thinking about cool boulder. We have a lot of partners, and they're doing a lot of different things, and it was difficult to define success across a wide range of people.

[22:05] But we were able to by surveying people we're thinking about specifically the ecosystems benefit. We were able to land on some really cool numbers across all of these people, you know, over 14,000 new trees or shrubs. We're trying to always account for habitat material that's beyond trees, because the whole ecosystem is more than just trees. and then over 62,000 active engagements across the network. And one reason we wanted to gauge that was because the potential of this group as a network is massive when it comes to cultural change and interactions with the public. So those aren't ones. Our team has done specifically. But that's the entire network interacting with the public, which is massive, potential and and really, really exciting. The 741 acres benefited? Can you remind me how we were defining benefited. That's basically just land that our partners are like. either monitoring or conducting like restoration projects on.

[23:05] so yeah, benefit is kind of a lease firm. But that's like the land that our partners are actually working on to restore or improve or monitor. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and one big thing that's really important when we think about these numbers is we're also thinking about, for example, of these new trees and shrubs planted. Do they have a steward, is it not just like a stick getting dropped in the ground that someone mows over later? These are people who are actively engaged in stewarding these spaces, stewarding this work. and becomes a really cool network. And I I should back up a little. We have our partners. and I'll talk about them a little more here. Partners are a little bit different than the general public the general public is who we are facing with like a newsletter that we call an action alert and things like that. Partners we're working with closer. And they are folks who are all engaged in this relationship with us. So they've they've agreed essentially to work together and play nicely and help and work together. And it's the partner network has grown quite a lot which is really cool. But there is a distinction between how we work with our partners and how we work with addressing the general public.

[24:18] We've grown up to 50 partners where we have a huge range of people who've been interested in us want to talk about what it means to work with us. We have over 1,200 Newsletter subscribers. And I've been told the 60% open rate is really good. So we're excited about that. Yeah, I'll take it. I would just our little cool boulder team alone. We're reaching, you know, thousands of people when you add it all up across the tabling events that we're doing when we're out focusing on what is a nature based solution? Why do? Why do we care? Why do we care about shading our community. Why do we care about doing this equitably? What are things you can do is is a really big thing. We talked about a lot.

[25:00] We've implemented monthly and quarterly themes which actually has been really, really useful. And I go into that a little more later. We have a calendar of partner events, this is my favorite ways. We work with. The general public is just to have a calendar where we're collecting collecting events and managing that calendar. So folks can really get on there anytime and be like, what can I do? And it's everything from webinars that you can access remotely to like. Hey, come and plant trees here. Which is really fun. It's a fun space. And it's also a benefit to our partners, because we're trying to get people to their things as well. and do you know direct direct event engagements lots and lots of those throughout the year that will will almost always try to take an action with us. For example, we went to Growing Gardens Event as their harvest festival, and we brought instructions on how to make a sow bag, which is, How do you cheaply? How do you affordably grow native plants to then plant in your space or another space?

[26:01] So we can address, not having enough plant material if we were all to go out and plant these native plants. Another thing that's grown that's been really really awesome to see has been our name, for it has changed. We're leaning into community resource specialists right now. The pollinator advocates program has really made a splash in a lot of interesting ways. It's a really intense dedicated program. You apply. You come to classes weekly for a while, you go and do field work, and you really can't miss any of the material. And the people who graduate like we have a graduation. The mayor comes and we do. We do an official like an official thing to to really recognize it. And Andrea Montoya leads this. And really a huge part of her messaging is. if you want to do this you have to volunteer, so I'm going to be calling on you to volunteer in steward spaces, and she does a great job of pulling these folks in. So the numbers are a little smaller than our tree tenders program. For example, tree tenders. We help run, but we help kick it off. And really the Tree Trust is starting to take it on and own it. These are looser. It's like 3 Tuesdays, and come and connect with people and learn general information about trees, whereas pollinator advocates is

[27:20] really committing people to time and a lot of information. and the the tree tenders program. We've experimented a little bit with formatting. So there's been evening trainings. But there's also been these high school summits, and so they did. A smaller tree, tender training with over 50 people there, and 2 thirds of them are students. So ways to empower students and people in different spaces. And they're often. These are the lists of folks who are called on 1st for volunteer events, spreading trees in the ground for stewarding spaces. And we're running under sort of the theory of change that if you get trained in this, you now have the capacity to go forth and work with your neighbors, and we are seeing that happen which is cool and also kind of hard to quantify. But we do see how people are coming in and connecting like, oh, my neighbor did that. And this I'm gonna go out and work with my neighbors on fire. Resilience through this message I learned through this training.

[28:15] and all the people in the pollinator advocates program. Get a palette of native plants to create their own pollinator garden. Yeah, Andrea makes them design a space. She grades it very intensely. It's wonderful. Yeah, it's Andrea is really amazing. And she's gone forth and done a lot of very equity centered work. Yeah, outside of this that I'll touch on here in a moment. we've also done some really fun things to engage the community. Do you want to talk a little about little creatures? Yeah, little creatures was. This was happening right when I 1st started the fellowship. But it was one of my favorite events that we've done. It was an art exhibit at the the Boulder Public Library right over here.

[29:04] And it was focused on little creatures so like mainly insects and highlighting the importance of insects for ecosystems. And there are over a hundred artists and poets that participated in the exhibit. And it's hard to know how many people actually saw the exhibit, because a lot of people just came to the library and happened to see it, and like looked around while I was there. I saw people just like come in and check it out. But for the related events that we had for the exhibit, we know that at least 700 people came to those. So I had a pretty good reach. And then, just yeah, anyone that was visiting the library. like we saw it. And plus festival. Yeah. Also happens happens every year. We just had our rules. It's the 10, th 10th anniversary anniversary. and so that coincided.

[30:00] I guess, with the little creatures. Yeah. Yeah. And one thing cool boulder is really doing is giving us a space to be less. Hello! I am the expert coming to you from this space, you know, how do we work with arts and community members to start conveying things about ecosystems and the little creatures around us are really the baseline of our entire everything. So events that in incorporate art incorporate in these ways, we theorize, will be more impactful than, say, a webinar or at least there's the chance of that. So it's been really amazing to have that space through cool boulder and that kind of that mechanism. this has also been really fun. I don't know. It's it's up on the side. But do you want to talk about it that you helped this year? Yeah, we had. So this is another thing that has happened multiple years now, summer this summer. And then last summer you guys know Jeff and Paige, that kind of a boulder thing, but we hosted like a series of concerts for them. And they, you know, do a lot of messaging on nature-based climate solutions. Composting

[31:07] bees, all that good stuff. So I don't know how many concerts should be. We have sponsored 2, and they are meadow musics run through smp. So it's a really great collaboration with other city city departments. But just a way to bring in and reach little kids. Jeff and Paige are already really good at that. This is another strength that cool boulder has had where it's like, Hey, we make these connections with folks, and they say, well, Osmp comes to us and says we, we Jeff and Paige raised their prices. We can't afford to do all of the Meadow musics. We used to cool boulder collaborate and do one and pages like this is my favorite one, because we get a ring of tents of cool, older folks and have activities for the kiddos while the show is going on and families can come and engage and it's then. And this is a lot of the theory around partnering as opposed to creating something completely new. Jeff and Paige already have a huge reach. They have fans who buy their colorful socks. So so, being able to collaborate and tag in with something that already has

[32:09] a following and and a platform is really really helpful, and they do. They incorporated songs about climate, and they talked about the cool boulder umbrella, and how this touches us all, and it just is a strength of having a structure that allows us to collaborate in a less rigid way than we normally would through a lot of our city processes. And these are fun photos of of things we've done. There's lots of photos of cute children, painting things and planting plans and engaging and and all sorts of stuff. Our cool boulder tent is darn near getting hold already. We're not that far in. So that's that's exciting. and then this is there's there's so many scattered ways to talk about this, because so many things have happened and grown out of it, and there's been tons of opportunity that's arisen. But I know you all talked with Brett about the CFC. Earlier, the Community Forest report.

[33:07] And that wasn't a cool boulder program, necessarily, but much of what came together to do. The community forestry core. The way we did was based on relationships that started within cool boulder. A really key group that helped with this was classrooms for climate action. Do you all know them. They're they're a group of retired teachers who worked for 30 years in schools, saw Greta Thunberg and decided they hadn't had enough, and they come back in. And they run programs in schools, because as teachers, they fully understand that teachers are way over capacity. So instead of asking teachers to teach about climate. They come in and say, Hey, we'll teach about climate action. 4. Ca, not to be mixed up with CC, 4. Ca, but they're a powerhouse of people, and they are all folks who've already taught in high schools or elementary schools, or been principals for 30 years. They're really awesome. All that to say they're a cool boulder connection and a lot of what we formed through the community work, and they led and helped coordinate education days for the crew that was working for the community. Forestry Corps, the sites the Community Forestry Corps worked on were largely results of cool boulder projects,

[34:24] or projects that had begun with cool boulder connections working together. So things like this really begin with relationship. And the most incredible thing I think I've seen, and I'm grateful for coming out of cool boulder is having a structure where we get to go out and build community and build connection, and that facilitates really really impactful things like a youth core that somehow pulls together in like 3 months and had really really great impact and turns out of spreading nationally an unexpected benefit that I get really excited about. Our our partners have monthly meetings, and you know it's a once a month Zoom Meeting. Okay. You know there's there's only so much you could do with that. However, it provides a really cool structure. Every meeting. We have monthly themes that our student team picked out, and we're coordinating around speakers around those themes. And

[35:23] every month I go to other city departments, for example. Community risk reduction. I was like, how? How are we discussing wildfire risk and forests like, and trees? Because I have people coming to me a tree tender training, saying, Well, everything you're saying makes me think I just can't have any trees. So we had an ability as a city team to go to our forestry folks and community risk reduction folks and start navigating really, really nuanced conversation around trees in the wild and urban interface. How do we avoid demonizing trees? And when there's risk of fire. What can we do? What actually matters in those circumstances? And to get that straight from community risk reduction and take it to the cool boulder partners, and that gives us a platform to start asking for people to help us collaborate on messaging, and they get excited because we have a mechanism to take it to the public.

[36:12] So it's been really interestingly beneficial for us as a team to have this structure to then take it out, and it also helps. Our colleagues of the city spread a unified kind of one boulder approach in messaging about ecosystems. Okay, this is our list of partners. Don't try to read it. It's way too many. But it's really grown, and that's that's been really neat to see. It includes a preschool teacher in Lafayette. It includes arborists. It includes a couple little nonprofits that I, you know, don't quite know where they're going, but they've got big projects in mind, and they're really stoked to connect people like Drylands, agroecology, research or Eco cycle. a lot of folks doing really amazing things. And one of the main benefits we've had thus far has been communication and collaboration. Collaboration collaboration does grow out of that. But it's not necessarily like targeted.

[37:09] So we do a lot of asking, okay, there's people coming in which is really, really key. but how do we take and use that to move action faster? and Caroline's done some thinking on this, and I would love if you would. She was gonna run through some of her thoughts on how to maybe do this with such a wide range of people, and we'd love some feedback from you if you have thoughts on it. Yeah, I think this is just kind of thinking about where we go from here now that we've grown to like a pretty good size. Great reach moving towards more place based action. Which heather might talk about more but also thinking about how we work with are different kinds of partners, because we have a wide range of groups that all come together for these monthly Zoom Meetings.

[38:02] We've done some great education. But you know, how do we really work with these different types of partners to get more nature waste climate solutions active in boulder. so these are just basically a brainstorm on the different categories that we have for partners. And I can just briefly kind of go through them as examples, and talk a little bit about how we are thinking about working with them. but this is very much like early stages. We're trying to plan ahead more for how we wanna engage with these types of partners like I said, so the 1st one is is our pollinator and biodiversity champions. These are mainly like nonprofits. That are national in scale, or they're like a chapter of a national nonprofit that they focus a lot on raising awareness and changing policy to support biodiversity. So for each of these categories, you'll see what the cooler goals see people. And then the cool border role. So like, what is our role working with these partners?

[39:04] So the goal very broadly is, boulder is a thriving haven for biodiversity. That's what we want to see. And what is our role working with these partners? In pursuit of this goal? With them? connecting boulder residents to these groups so that they have a broader reach and find their work and sharing the resources that they create because they have so many wonderful experts that are working on creating resources for people. so sharing those and connecting folder with them. And then we have a lot of groups that are working specifically with youth engagement. So working in schools and or with youth in general. our cooler goal is young. Generations are well versed in nature-based climate solutions. So it's pointing towards, like the cultural change that we want to see. And then also that school grounds are centers, centers of nature based climate solutions. So the actual like school properties are implementing these types of practices.

[40:03] So cool holders, potential role is just facilitating the connections between partners and schools. And I think we're seeing more and more of that which has been really great. And then we have our producers. So these are groups that produce like physical things. So native plants. seeds, compost. Yeah. And our goal is more native plants and healthier soils, soils in boulder so maybe our role is supporting the expansion of capacity for these producers. And then connecting them to projects so getting the things that they link into the ground in boulder. You can see just a list of all the partners that you might know. harlequins grows a ton of native plants. There's ecocycle makes compost Masa seed foundation. They have a huge seed bank of locally adapted seeds.

[41:01] older mushroom. Mix mycelium compost and your neighborhood. At Christmas Tree Farm. They grow a ton of tree saplings that they give away here. So yeah. And then land series is kind of a broad category. It's just people that own multiple acres of land in boulder. So our goal is, you know, seeing them use this land to implement H based climate solutions, type work, and so our role would be to share resources to them. And then also, a big one is learning how we could track our impact and progress and then coordinating volunteers into these spaces. So there's a list of some of the partners that actually own land, some some of them, that we have the numbers for actually how much land they own or work on. and then housing slash hoas. We're actually not doing a ton of work with hoas yet, but that's a huge area for expansion, because we've gotten a lot of interest from Hoa's.

[42:08] But our goal is, you know, more neighborhoods are connected, prepared for disasters. and residents are working tailored towards implementing nature-based climate solutions on their properties. So our role could be connecting the partners who can help implement the these resources resources, especially for turf removal and pesticide reduction. So that's connecting a lot of the producers and the actual landscape workers to these areas. And there's just a few more. This is what I just mentioned. Landscapers and arborists and people that work in ecosystem management. So our goal would be that more landscapers that are working in boulder are trained in an employee ecosystems based approaches. And you know, our role would be providing resources and opportunity for training in these practices and providing just a place for these like minded landscapers to network and share knowledge.

[43:05] and yeah. yeah, this is just a big question we have is, we've had all this opportunity, amazing connect connection work. And to watch those connections grow. And it's honestly it is one of the 1st things I woke up thinking about, you know, post a big elections like, Hey, there's all these local things that connect us. And the importance of community connection is really hopeful. Because again, I could wax on poetic about what I've seen grow from this. I won't. But unless you want me to. But This has become such an important space socially like, I'll be on if I was on the phone with the Jcc. Today. And the person who runs their firm. There was like, Yeah, I've met Adrian. I met him in one of those breakouts, one of your team meeting, you know, like it. And and those connections happen all the time because of this structure. But if we're also thinking as a city team using city resources. this amazing group of folks in Boulder, we're so lucky. And now we're connected to all of these people, and some are more engaged, and some are less engaged, and some show up once in a while, and some may never come back. I don't know. We'll see. But

[44:10] How do you take this varied and large group. and point it and go for action on the ground. As I don't, we're not going to lose the social aspect that's incredibly important for community building, for welcoming new groups in And there's this added layer to bring in on the top where we start working together on it. Just wanted to see if you guys had thoughts or suggestions on that. It's a big question or just questions about anything. and we'll start with any any questions, any any inquisitiveness we have about this, so like the project divides into 3 areas. What? What's the effort? Location you think for each area is like 33% each, or like, is it one that has?

[45:01] You mean amongst the partners, or like on the city end? I think. Some of it has depended on where there's opportunity, and that actually has been the most interesting thing, and thinking about how we grow. A lot of what we've done has been really opportunistic. There has been so much opportunity in the pollinator and tree space. The same level of opportunity is only just growing in the absorbent landscape space. Culturally, green stormwater infrastructure, low impact development. Those things are still kind of coming along in a way that it's just not to where pollinator advocacy is yet. So the effort is really similar on our team end, especially because we're kind of split amongst those 3 areas pretty evenly. A lot of Adrian's time gets devoted to integrated pest management which doesn't really fall within the cold boulder sphere. but the the output is higher right now in the tree and pollinator space, whereas on the city end a lot of the Gsi stuff is very internal. But we're working towards more external facing things with partners like resource central and then collaborating. There is currently an accelerator running which is a way to gather people

[46:21] around the state of the science and the state of community work around green infrastructure. And we're participating in that. So learning a lot. We're teaming up with Denver and Fort Collins on that. So we're doing regional learning effort, wise, though, and it's pretty well split. But output wise, you're gonna see different results if that makes sense. Yeah. And when we think about like some of this community resource specialists, I was talking about you, we've had 3 cohorts of pollinator advocates, and we've had this gauge circle and people are really knowledgeable. We've had multiple tree tech trainings.

[47:02] We haven't been able to pick it up. Anything around absorbent landscapes, although we're working in different ways to work on soil water. But there's not like a community training yet. Kind of thing. So you're gonna see more about these and the butterflies than you are about the soil microbes, although we really want that to change. It's an interesting question, because I I think that the program and when I say program, I mean, this body of work within the department is is relatively new. But I think it's really hitting a stride in any really unique way. And so when I think about outputs, they're not always obvious and facing ways that heather just described. So much of it is really internal to the organization, but they're really powerful outputs. So when we find these entry points with other departments, and you saw that in one of the slides just the opportunity to work really closely with our parks department, how do we integrate nature based solutions into the decisions that are taking place within some of the master planning processes. Our water efficiency plan, our drought management, plan our grass lines, management, plan our parks, and rec plan a master plan how we think about designing some of the new parks with

[48:15] Nature-based solutions in mind in a different way than was once thought about how we think about nature-based solutions when it comes to our forestry work and our wildfire work. And so having those entry points into those other areas in such a short amount of time is really, I think, a Testament to the team and their ability to really share a really compelling message of why this is so critical. And not just from the perspective of climate, about how each of those departments can really see the value in integrating this new approach to the work that's already taking place. So and I think that's really powerful. But it's also a little bit scary, because we become thought leaders, but also a lot of doers. And we have a small team that can get pulled in a lot of different directions. And so I just wanted to think, share that as one of the in my mind, it's 1 of the critical outputs versus an outcome that that we've been seeking.

[49:11] Thanks, and I will say to the structure of coldholder has been really awesome, and that, like I get, I'm out behind a table talking to people under this tent a lot. So is Caroline. So it's Jazzy, our New Americorps. It's really exciting. But I I end up in city spaces where I go. Well, I know that. Can people in the community are asking about this because they have approached my table and spoken to me for 40 min about this. I know that there's at least something out there in the community about this and the design. Yeah. 1st of all, I love cooler did. The program was in the be parade this year. So thank you for all your work. I think it's really wonderful. And such a great community resource, especially all the kids activities.

[50:00] Have, you guys considered, working more deeper in food systems? It's see, you know, my background is also nature based solutions. And there's just so much overlap in kind of the areas you guys are working in. And then kind of climate systems. I'm just curious if that's come up and it comes up a lot. And I think we haven't had a clear avenue into it yet, and maybe, Jonathan, you might be able to talk about this, too. One thing that has happened is through partnerships. We've touched it. So, for example, community fruit rescue. A lot with them, I volunteered as a harvest leader with them all year, which is super fun because they have an awesome volunteer model, and like 23,000 pounds of fruit, or maybe 32. I'm trying to remember. I think they maybe hit 32,000 pounds moving fruit that cross over into this really, really, naturally, grown garden. Yeah. Masa also makes a lot of food.

[51:00] Who else with the garden? Garden? So we just started working with garden to table. They recently partnered with us. They were at like Jeff and Paige. the the thing that I think that's most interesting coming up about the food systems is that Andrea Montoya, when she's out working with communities. And actually my slide on this disappears. I apologize. I actually meant to touch on this earlier. weird day, but she has made connections and inroads with a couple manufactured homes communities, but she came to them, and she'll tell this story in her wonderful Andrea way. It's very like I don't know. I love how she tells it. But she came to them with this idea, like, I'm going to go show up and get them all excited about pollinators. And it's gonna be great organ plant pollinator species, and she showed up, and they were all getting to know each other, and she starts hearing them talk about how much they hate bugs. They just hate those freaking insects just angrily talking about the stupid moth, and she's like, Oh, shoot! And what she learned from that is what people are interested in

[52:04] is growing food, and over a course of a year and a half, maybe 2 years. I I remember getting a call from her. She she wanted me to come to one of these, and she called me. She's like, Please don't come. They're gonna be weirded out the city person. And so I was like great. I don't need me there. But she figured out through building those connections, how to connect food systems to pollinator systems, how to show that when you have more bugs you have better peppers, and she's now working in several spaces where Caroline got to help with one. There have been installations of pollinator plants on top of food spaces. And so it's obviously incredibly critical that we're doing both. We don't have a specific setup for it yet, and I can I pitch this to you a little bit in the back in the background it has seemed tricky, and I'm still a newer employer. At least I feel like it. 2 years in

[53:00] I've picked up that. It's it's tricky to cross individual systems partially because it deals so much like with health. And is there a background in that with climate? A little bit that you could speak to? Yeah, though I thought you did a really good job, and I was totally prepared. But I knew that you were going to bring up food systems. I'm going to answer it this way. The city has kind of dipped their toe into this idea of food policy and food systems in the past. But I don't think that we were really intentional of what problem we were trying to solve, or what that outcome was. A lot of it was based on some of land use discussions about. Should we look at year round farmers markets. Should we look at our policies to encourage more year round? Agricultural opportunities? A lot of what was happening is we were seeing what was coming from other cities that have more Mediterranean climates. Right? So we have places like Seattle and other places that have really strong food policy and food programs within a sustainability program or a climate program. And that's not where we are. And so what is the problem that we are trying to solve or think about. And so what we realized is, you were kind of

[54:14] of chasing or creating problems just to try to solve them. And we really didn't have a really good comprehensive view of of how do we bring this together? What are we aiming to achieve as a city organization? And where should it live? That's not to say that we're not interested. but, in my opinion, at least for for our department, I want us to be very intentional about what we're trying to do? And are we going to have the support and connection to the other parts of the organization that are so necessary? So where we've been stepping back into it is more from a resilience standpoint to say, how do we think about we've just gone through a consumption based inventory, recognizing the impact that food has on our emissions, overall thinking about vulnerable populations. And how do we encourage more opportunity for local food production when it makes sense to do so? What are the regulations and policies that potentially prohibit or restrict or enable food policy and local food production, hoop houses.

[55:10] gardening, and rights of lay all of those kinds of things. And so it didn't land previously in a specific home meaning a department. So it was really being run out of the city manager's office from a policy perspective, and that really didn't set it up to be successful. So I do know this, you'll appreciate this, that there's been a little bit of a resurrection in the conversation now, but mostly from the intention of Okay. where should it live? What do we want to accomplish? Who's going to do the work. How does it, then kind of move out into our planning department in terms of land use, land use issues, our permitting thinking about our parks as opportunities for kind of trialing and and showcasing new ways of local food production. So Primo's a park is a great example of that.

[56:03] Thank you. Where we were actually engaged in that planning process, to say, how could food production be integrated into the use and design of that park? Not just in a superficial way, but an opportunity for the adjacent mobile Elm Park to actually teach and learn indigenous practices, and how you cultivate and how you use that land in different ways. And so we're starting to see some of that flourish a little bit and a renewed interest in some of the food policy stuff. I will say that the county nature-based solutions team does a lot of work around agriculture, and it makes sense right because they're so much more connected to regenerative ag opportunities through their open space our open space department. and also does a fair amount. But most of those leases are for grazing and not food production account uses

[57:01] 1 1 other thing just to tag on to that is another really natural connection to cool bowl. There has been to regenerative farmers. So even some folks that aren't listed on our partner list. We've posted programs on farms. And so making some of these connections through resilience and regeneration, but not necessarily the food production aspect. But the teachings around how you start with the soil and move it to a healthier. Yeah, that's great. So exciting. I still think that there's a cool opportunity, perhaps, around the cultural piece and social norms that you talked about data. You know, educational component, just like you're teaching people that seriously, native plants are better than non native water. In terms of plants. There are certain climate, friendly diets that are sort of better for the climate than not. It's kind of a similar like. you know, we're just educating. We're supporting people in these ways. And this just seems like a natural place to do that, since you're already touching with a lot of people and a lot of partners, I know the Jcc. Does some great work on that. And so, in terms of

[58:06] that could be an answer to your question. Another way to do that. We're just generally I was thinking with that like, I guess I don't know everything you're doing. It sounds like a lot. But you know, if all these partners had a whatever Bingo card checklist, it's like, here's all the things you can do like higher. whatever not gas, landscape or like. If it's a lot of businesses and things like that that have all this space. you know? Are they just meeting high standards and then helping their other right? I don't know. Just brainstorming. Maybe that's a little too specific to answer your question. But like, Hey here. the guidelines we've working on like plant guidelines and things for the like through the city. Maybe, like I'm envisioning like a can you hit these 5 things to get a sign or something you're like, yeah, it's almost like pay. I always use pace as an example. I don't even know how good it is because I've never used them personally. But it's like having a consultant almost on hand to be like, Okay, if you want to be. That's like for energy. But if you want to be sustainable for nature based solutions like for your your team.

[59:18] you might not have capacity for that. But you know, creating some playbooks, or whatever I do like the idea of a playbook. And like we're a scorecard, or even other cities. Could you know, people anywhere could really access it. That yeah. Cause that was gonna be my fault was gonna be about creating some kind of as as much as cool boulder is an incredible program. It's very boulder specific. It is a list of things that we have done with our communities. And this specific group of local organizations and individuals and groups in order to create an incredible program in the city. But I think in in the city of Boulder we have such an opportunity to be a nationwide leader in so many things it would be about.

[60:07] how do we transform? And you know, keep what cool boulder is as it pertains to boulder, but find a a way to genericize it in order to be like, not just. This is what we did, but this is like sort of the the steps that you can go through. Find your local X group, whatever. And then you. So so it's easier for cities to start their own process as opposed to. Yeah, I just need to follow up on that. I've had at least 4 different cities. Call me because just being like, How did you do this and just walking them through that. So we've unofficially kind of been a touchstone for that and and how to how to scale up which I always have a question personally around scaling up versus replication. Because boulder is so specific and types of risks and types of groups and politics and things. So we've tried to give some general guidance, and a lot of it for them has come down to. Well, I'm 1 person, and I have no budget. Right? So what we've shot for is saying, Hey.

[61:13] there's something on our website that helps you use it. If I can add something that helps you take it. So yeah, thinking, thinking in those ways of how do you? How do you expand that impact this kind of structure? And recognizing that we don't have it all figured out by any means, and we still want to make sure we're reaching equitably within boulder before we go crazy. Interesting seminar topic for next year's 1 of the Multi City board group. to kind of like reach out to the other boards. and hopefully they can put a little more. I guess pressure into like their councils to like come in. and maybe some leadership to set those initiatives and replicate it in other cities. There is one thing that I my slide, disappeared, but I'd love to touch on, too, that I hope we can spread, and I think Arju kind of has had some influences working on flipping paradigms, using cool boulder and using city funding through cool boulder. So as we're talking about food and growing gardens.

[62:16] One thing that grew out of actually kind of a snafu at a cool boulder meeting as we growing gardens presented, and they did a great job. But it was one of the 1st meetings we had someone from Harvest Fall 1st nations on, and there was information about the past land ownership, but no land acknowledgement or anything like that, and it caused consternation. But what was really cool is people handled it like adults and said, Hey, this is a problem. People addressed it, and actually growing gardens and harvest of all 1st nations has a really amazing partnership right now, because that's what grew out of it, and growing, or often is producing food at growing gardens for the community. So it's been an amazing thing to see grow out of. That is like, how do you form these relationships where it becomes a bonding thing even when it's hard?

[63:03] and I think all of these groups have handled this splendidly, just with a lot of grace and a lot of great job working together. The thing we did with through cool boulder and with some of our funding that I would love to see spread Contracting and harvest of all 1st nations has shown up as an amazing equity partner, but we contracted with them to work with their own community. So this was an event open to the public. But we sponsored a time and a space that it was supposed to be a feed collection, but there really wasn't a lot of seat available at the time we could make it happen, but it became just time together on the land. And so we contracted with them to coordinate with their own community to bring indigenous identifying folks to a program on open space. And so it's really, really cool to be able to use some of that funding to try to provide a space that would help that subset of our population gain some more access to land and

[64:03] in a small way that this has spread out in an inner, bolder way is that other departments have asked me for the language. I wrote into the contract to make that possible, because their group had questions about like intellectual property, and there was a lot of trust building to do just to show like. like, I'm not in this for the photo. OP, like I really like, I will commit to not taking photos, and like I and I, when they made a flyer, I was like, you don't have to put my logo on it like, say, sponsored by cool boulder and small print at the bottom. That's all I need you to do. And that kind of thing is really big to some of the groups we're working with and I don't know that that will scale out to other cities, but it's scaled out to other departments, and they add, they've asked me about it. They try to learn from it. And then the county did ask us recently, you know that spectrum of like community engagement goes from inform to empower. They asked you, did you do any projects that you feel were closer to the empower end? And I shared that one with them. And I said, here's the contract language I use is like, I think this is as close as we've gotten, anyway, and it felt good because they had the reins. But we were able to sponsor it, and it will hopefully grow

[65:10] so we're gonna do a a wrap up with meeting with them as soon as they're able to in their capacity. So there's all these different levels of spreading out. That I'm always interested in, and that was one I did want to share with you all. There's we think about systems change. There has been a shift to pull community and more at the forefront, and in the the way where they get to dictate how they want things to happen. The gentle drawback of that, always in the tension that we face is. Then we'll get messages from from folks in the community saying, Why isn't the city doing something like cool boulder? It's the same. It's the same structure that we use with energy, smart or with pace. Those are not branded as city, because we recognize that in order to, in our in this case, to actually

[66:05] scale up our impact outside our own boundaries. We shouldn't brand that as a city of boulder thing, because folks in an incorporated county or in Longmont no offense to anyone in Longmont at the time, like, no, we don't want to do whatever it is they're selling. But the challenge, then is, we hear a lot of that. Why isn't the city doing something like pace? Why aren't you doing something like energy smart and like, well, those are actually our. But it's and it's not a bad thing I actually don't mind, although there is always that challenge about then showing the value of the funding that that taxpayers are paying into to see the benefit through these programs. And so it's always a kind of a little bit of a touchy, touchy tension. I'll just put it that way. but it's fine. I mean, it's not a bad thing. It's an easy one to manage. It's a pleasant surprise to give them like, oh, yeah, thank you for that softball question. It's great, and I will say, I think it's the absolute right way to do it.

[67:09] And this is that that whole idea of how do we solely shift that power and really build that community trust so oops. So I have one more question like, Is there like an end game with a project like like you can. You can look at a heat map right? A boulder. You can look at a tree canopy map is that like a 75% residential canopy goal, like, what is the project intentions? That is that. And that's where, like, we kind of are approaching questions like that. So I was like, how do we take the group? Now? Point it in direction, and the name is the direction you know. Like, how do we cool boulder? I don't. We're not to a point yet of saying x percentage of degrees via this many trees. That's the objective. And that's where the city, the city end work and the work came up where it's like on the city end. We've paid for some analyses and things, and we're trying to get to numbers that help us set really tangible targets.

[68:11] in in activating a group like this, one thing we've considered is okay, how are we gonna see if cool boulders actually cooling boulder. And we don't have a perfect number to say, like, if you do this, this will happen because we don't quite know that and there's also climate scenarios that we have to operate under, because we don't know go but one, you know, kind of Corny, but might work suggestions like I might go out there and say, Okay, as a group, cool holder. Let's see if we can plant 15,000 trees and have a dashboard and email me. When you plant your trees we'll keep a dashboard going on the website. And here it's I don't quite know how to do it. But that's the the goal is to get to that kind of target and then keep these activated folks moving towards that, I would say within the next few months we should have a canopy target, at least for high vulnerability areas, and possibly the city wide one. And then also the number of trees. To get to that.

[69:06] My second question is like. are there any polls? Will this be useful even like that you mentioned? Lab use? I like code updates. Is this something like in the future could be like integrated in the way planning board does reviews of projects, you know. Like, consider that we cannot be like, or when you know, with permits and stuff like new new. I guess, would this be part? Would it be part of the landscape? Go, for example, like you would need to have 50% free kind of be in your new residential development. Kind of deal is that kind of like something that that's already in the works, and some of those elements have already been incorporated, and it fits within a whole kind of constellation of

[70:00] of code. So at the highest level. We have this great opportunity now, and the board will have an opportunity to weigh in on updates to the Boulder Valley Comp plan that's at the very high level. Then from that, things like form base code, our building code requirements land use planning more directly. The landscape code is a great example. The 1st discussion around that is coming up next month, and then there'll be an opportunity for the Board to plug in to talk about. How do you use the landscape code? It was council that had a strong interest in using the landscape code to address Wildfire risk, but at the same time. It is the time to open up that code to look at other issues around water around. How do we think about treat? Wanna be around shrubs? And I want to make this point really loud. And I think this is something. And you just heard from heather earlier. It's not about planting trees. It's about growing trees. And so we need to think, then, about how we have the stewardship necessary to get to mature canopies. Because I will tell you there's a practice in cities where it's like you are up on the hill, and you see a tree. Well, that's just empty. Well, let's just plant a tree there and make it look good for right now. But we need mature canopy for a variety of reasons. We need the right

[71:16] species, right selection in the right place thinking about the way thinking about our urban tree canopy. So there's a lot of discussion right now and then who actually can pull those levers whether it's our permitting folks, whether it's a policy, that council next, whether it's our forestry department. So you're right on track. That's absolutely what we need to be thinking about, and that's what we are doing. So do you think we'll get a chance to talk about that during the landscape, or is it too early, like, you know, you were saying like, so we need no, it's not too early. So there is a 90 min conversation coming up in December, when we do our look ahead. In December, where Council is going to get their 1st look at the types of things that are being contemplated within the landscape code update this? All came out of Council's discussion at their retreat earlier this year, and one of the items was, How do we think about wildfire risk. What are the opportunities that we have when it comes to policy? Oh, well, landscape code is a really interesting.

[72:18] It all came from the whole juniper discussion around the whole jump, the Juniper campaign. Should we go out there and rip junipers out? Well, maybe maybe not. Is that really what we should be doing. Is that really the risk that we ought to be addressing? So that's going to be the 1st part of it. And then it was for wait a minute. If we're going to talk about wildfire in the landscape, why don't we talk about water use? And then how do we think about climate prevention landscaping, not just putting in rock or pea, gravel or crutch granite. What does it mean to increase heat by rock? And so those are all the kind of things that we want to integrate into the conversation. So we're making smart choices when we make code changes and we will get into tree canopy as well, yes. Well, yes, yes and no. I mean, we have a tree protection ordinance. The thing that's going to come out of that is, how do we address tree protection on private property. That's been a really tough one, because I will tell you this community is a bit divided on whether or not the city should regulate whether people can or can't or should or should not be regulated on taking down trees and placing trees on their own property.

[73:24] Cool as we're leaning into some cultural change. It's been really important to cool boulder things like we, we attack it from one side. But there's a cultural change. So we can do of like a reminder, 80% of our tree canopies on private property. And this benefits everybody. So how do we think about that and and try to push the needle on the cultural norms and through things like pool folder, and then also like on ethnicity. And we have a tree protection plan, but having, like a minimum penalty requirements, kind of deal. Would that be a few years from now? If you're building, you have to plant

[74:06] because, like like. I cannot have solar on my roof. For example, right? Like I try to like get panels. My house is pretty shaded, which is nice. But it's like I will have to go alternative, you know, like to get panels like the the guy that came to do the quotes like, when would you treat, that is, Colby was one of the 1st cities in the country to have a tree protection ordinance in relation to solar, because we did not want to put people around this place of saying, Well. I want solar but my neighbor has a tree that shades my roof, so I want them to cut it down, or vice versa. Right? I don't want that person wants solar, I'm not. And so how do you do what the compatibility issues? So the tree production ordinance is intended to address that. And we and one of the great things about living in gold is, we're right. Next to all these wide open planes that are incredible for putting solar panels on.

[75:06] except they're incompatible uses when when it's open space. But that's why I mean we it was, in fact, and sorry we're going down a totally different path. But it's 1 of the reasons that we created the Solar Garden legislation that was passed to stay. Well, it was for that very reason I was having to address all these variances that that builders were asking for, because we have really aggressive targets with respect to renewables like well, you, you want me to cut down trees, to put solar on the roof, to meet a certain level of requirement, or what like. Oh, no, that's not really what we want. So like, we should have access to solar that is connected to your meter, but just happens to be in a different location. So we passed that. And it's became the model for every state in the country incredibly beneficial, because one of my 1st ideas, I think honestly, when I was applying to the board. So I was like like the the solar program that we, the solar grants that we have for building solar. And I was like, well, but we also live in an urban forest right? Like we have far too many trees to make it consistently applicable. What if we just did like light poles, but for solar panels, which not a terrible idea, but also not the most efficient use of space? Right? Because there is all of this unused open lane space

[76:23] that people aren't walking their dogs in. I did just learn also parking lots. I did just learn that the I was at a community event. There's another thing that branches off. This is, I get invited into community spaces that may or may not get a city invite. Often I learned from someone that some of the newer solar panel technology is actually kind of opaque unless a significant amount of light through. I didn't know that. And they were talking about like Jack's Solar Garden, which is awesome. He went out there. He's an engineer. He looked at it. He's like, well, this is great, but also like our solar panel, technology is actually advancing even further beyond this, since we donated some of those types of solar panels. I don't know what's come with that, but they donated some of those types of solar panels to Jack

[77:08] so they could continue doing that research with a newer advanced technology. I actually have not heard that that came out of that cohere event that I went to. But yeah, yeah, and also side note, those committee events. They get really excited when a city person shows up and sees the city and is engaged. So that's really but yeah, that's that was interesting news to me about solar. And then it went. The conversation went down the track. Somebody being like, so can we make trellises out of solar panels. And yeah, all these things ability integrated solar is like, we're a little bit behind in this country. But we actually have some firms here. Lumos is one. In fact, it's here in Boulder that does that kind of really really creative use of solar in other cities. Right? Well, cause if we're gonna stand by having minimum parking requirements. You might as well make shaded parking and use it as solar space, because there is no point in not doing that.

[78:08] Put down the shit thing. I happy to take any more questions, but I figured I'd give her a little final point. It's like just this is kind of long and rambling, and I appreciate you all sticking with me. But if I could have you all take one key thing away, it really is. That connection is everything. Everything moves at the speed of trust, and we've been really fortunate to have the structure of cool boulder, for just, you know, a little over 2 some years now, and it's the connections that have come of it have really been so amazing to see. And you know, nothing's gonna stop those. No, you know, no federal level politics, no local politics. Community level stuff is gonna keep moving and tap into those connections and be part of those connections. This gives us so much opportunity to make such a huge difference, and it's been completely and utterly observable via what has happened through Pool builder and the stuff our team has been able to do.

[79:07] So I'm just very grateful to have this structure in place. And it's gonna morph and change based on. You know how we work with the community and what we hear. But it's it's a really awesome thing to be able to be part of, and I'm really excited to see it continue to grow so you'll probably get to hear me talk at you for an hour again. So thanks thanks for listening. If you have any. Follow up questions, please. It's very interesting presentation. I look forward to the next one. I have a small tangent on this topic connection. But you guys, probably it's not within your purview. But I'm just gonna plant some seeds. I think it would be very cool. The city sponsored an in person coworking space. We're just very recent of like bringing together cities of community partners. So throughout their building, I don't know who's in charge of doing that anyone knows. Tell me I've been for this reason because I do think things happen when you get pulled together.

[80:07] and that especially right now in this virtual world that, like physically bringing partners and stuff in a shared space is really powerful. So you guys, you know, talk to whoever's in charge of that? I do. I mean, there's a huge community interface piece of Alpine balsam. I don't think that it's been contemplated for like a Co. Working space, but that's an interesting. That is where we will be housed. Yes, it is where most of the city staff, this this building will stay here. But our department, and the good number of departments that interface with the public are all going to move up there and be co-located together. So it's been

[81:03] under design now for a while, but both in terms of the physical form of the building. But how it should be used. And so there's so much discussion about interface with the community should be that hub like the impact tub we were just at the urban Sustainability Directors network annual meeting of that Espn. But a couple of people I've talked to have talked about how one mechanism for hours. To be successful is doing like coffee hours, or you know, office hours where they were just there. And that, I think, is just a really cool mechanism to be like, I'm just going to be here. Show up, please. Just like put a coffee shop in the building and just have, like

[82:08] rotating staff member, who just like have an hour that they just like sit in the public. And like, there's just like, if you want to talk to city staff, it's like, there's a person there. What's the online basically version of that we do. We? We've tried a number of times, so we do. Quarterly office hours for our department and just kind of non scripted. We don't do a presentation like we're able to talk about. Yeah, we do it just in that room over there that our staff team doesn't. Even

[83:02] if it's time I did a trivia question, and I'm like, name 3 things on the floor that we're in there, and it was like crazy. Do you know the number of news newsletters I get in my inbox. I am not reading every single one of those. Are you kidding? I think. I heard today. I just did like a some simplifying language training. And I think the number is here at 7 seconds. Per Newsletter. Basically, I'm at the point where I'm really stoked. I'll be out somewhere. So I was like, oh, I love cool Boulder, I'm like, Oh, you know. I think I'll subscribe, maybe. But

[84:03] will subscribe you involuntarily, link, because but I signed up again. So we'll see 15,000 emails. Don't expect me to know what I'm signed up to 15,000. Yes, 15,000. I am deeply embarrassed. I misquoted. Earlier. We're talking about non functional terms. It wasn't 51. It was Senate Bill 5 51 was incentives and rebates for heat pumps and renewables. Okay? And it does describe, like, your question about defining our functional turf. Okay? But you have to say, what is functional turf. And then the definition of non-functional is anything that is not functional. Turf is grass that is not used for recreation or community activities, such as grassing Medians, parking lots, or alongside or along roadsides. Significant water

[85:19] Chatgpt. Thank you all. Thank you. What are y'all's names? By the way, I know your last name. Okay, all 3 groups. could you? Oh, really, it's a lot of syllables. Thank you both seriously. Thank you guys.

[86:00] And I appreciate you bringing up the time of other cities, because we've definitely taken a stab at a replication guide and haven't had a ton of luck yet. But it's 1 of those things that really stands out to me, that I have always. This has been one of my things that I've wanted to do. As as long as I've been on this board is like looking to how we can be both a leader and not just in like what we do, but like. not not just terms of being like on the front edge of things, but also in terms of being able to lead people to follow us. And so how like, how to how to turn everything into like. Take what we, the lessons that we have learned, and you know what whatever is applicable in the scenario, and turn that into generic language, and steps, guidelines and those kinds of things that even if they aren't going to be like, this is exactly how you do your thing. It's like, we'll take 20% off your plate and getting this kind of thing started, and that might be enough to get

[87:00] several dozen cities to like follow along, modifying it would be really helpful. There is a cool Chicago, and they started in the same place we did, which was heat mapping. That's great. So a little bit of that has happened, and I think that was what we sort of said was like a great 1st step and a super applicable to them because big city so it technically started. I don't know how far it lasted. Yeah. And and you saw in one of those slides the accelerator that you met, and you mentioned it in your comments. And that's very intentional. So part of the challenge. Yeah, I would say challenge. But it's it's a welcome one is really helping all cities, large and small, recognize that nature-based solutions should be a part of their core climate work, not because it's we have to change that mindset that we just need to change light bulbs right? As long as we change enough light bulbs we'll deal with the climate crisis. So how we really think about resilience and really pulling carbon down the atmosphere, the role that our natural surroundings

[88:01] have in this in the whole ecosystem of work once we're there, then what does that mean in terms of the work that you do? And that's where the accelerator has been only helpful in the larger cities. But now, if you look, you will see that a good number of cities, more and more every day, are starting to integrate nature, based solutions into their work. Hard part is is, if you're limited on number of staff that are already doing other things like energy efficiency, like, where do I make space for this. This kind of starts to bleed over into other departments territory in terms of parks or open space, or whatever. So we're just maturing that model a little bit. But I would say that a good number of communities are following suit, and we have a really good model to export. That's great. That's great. And a big thing that's interesting is kind of a I guess when we think about flipping things, I'm working a lot more on the green stormwater structure. Much of what we are considering. Benefits of nature based solutions are what they consider co-benefits, and their mandate is water quality. So they do their they do water quality work as they have to as they should. And a lot of what we're promoting is co-beneficial, and we're trying to approach it from just 2 2 different ends and meet in the middle so they can come up with a way to work together.

[89:14] When do you guys think you'll be ready to like, do a workshop, or like kind of present all this information to other cities. And we've got a lot of information. We did a presentation through Italy to other cities, and others, too. Yeah. that's sort of happened ad hoc. In some ways. Have you checked up the the company? Second nature. Do you know that I don't yet? It's a company I worked with that is green infrastructure work for cities. Nice resource? Yeah, at 1 point. But I don't know if you saw it. One of my favorite makes such sense. The founder lives in in a cruise. But okay, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. appreciate it.

[90:01] It's been an interesting adventure this far. And it's a it's a welcome challenge. I think it's a good way to put it. Good morning. Okay? Are we feeling. and any other discussion that I have on this topic? Are we feeling settled for the moment? Thank you again so much for coming in and talking to us about it. Super informative, super, interesting. So shall we move on to our second or last item, just checking in on our multi board meeting that we're hosting in it 2 week week and a half week a week. So yeah, I send all the emails invitations. Apart from most of the cities there'll be decent turnout. I need to send you the list. but I've heard from, like, you know, a couple of people from Long one while, you know, in the little town, Westminster and other.

[91:01] I wanna say that even coming. So I think we'll have a good turn now. And yeah, I'll send you the updated list of the other people for a reminder. It's just gonna tomorrow. Yeah, I said 2 last week. But so the people who wouldn't answer yet. Right? I should just bump them a little more. And yeah, the main topic will be water. We have 2 speakers. And yeah, I think it'll just be like a nice. networking slash information event. And hopefully they'll like talk like what you are. what you presented to us. It is like people from different boards. Maybe some staff can come to these events. We can like find some synergy between the different communities and what you present maybe inspires some people from these boards to read that back to their leaders, their staff not gonna start like things rolling in their own communities. It's not like the ultimate goal. Here

[92:01] have a similar look, but insane. The question that I have for the board is, 1st of all, obviously, logistics in terms of just Rsvp, so we know how to order food just as a reminder. We'll be hosting it at the Junkyard Social Club out on East pearl great location. It's gonna be super fun. But I'd love to just get a sense from the board of how you'd like the flow of that evening to go in terms of the you are technically the hosts. How you'd like to handle kind of the opening remarks or welcome if you want to be a master of ceremonies at in any way kind of introducing doing introductions on a set agenda that we set out to folks so a little bit about logistics, and what you, what support you need would be super helpful. What you would need from me, what you need from heather I was just hoping to to start a little conversation. So we can get that track down of the next week.

[93:00] Absolutely. Yeah. I've been interested in agenda. and I think, like. yeah, the main item of the agenda will be the 2 talks. So. I should. We should check like, how long does those should be, I'm guessing like 20 min. That's what I told them. Yeah, 20 min, yeah, maybe 10 min for questions. So then we have about an hour there in talks, and then we have maybe, like a half an hour event for networking. I like, I think you suggested by speed dating, or something like switching every 2 min, and, like everybody, has a chance to talk to everybody. I don't know what the the place looks like, so I don't know how we could put that together. But I like that idea. Yeah, it's pretty big. And then like, just. But people will say it in front of each other, and then just switch scenes like. oh, because it probably be set up for chairs like, I don't know. Will it just be chairs, and there will be like a screen. Well, yeah, so. And I don't. We have the back room, the back room. So I mean, it's large, ish?

[94:14] My guess is that there'll be big tables about the size of this, probably. Yeah, there'll be some big tables. So not really an opportunity to do like a bunch of chairs in the middle. It would be like some quick shoving tables aside and trying to set up a ring of so I would. I would maybe suggest that probably is going to be a little bit tricky, that that seems logistically difficult. And so if if you want to make it work, I'm sure it could be doable, but I mean there's another way to do it. I I'm just curious. What you're aiming for is the ability for everybody to do a little share out of a thing or hear something, because there's always like kind of the ignite way to do something. There's a little low stage upfront, too, so you can see everybody you get 2 min, or I don't know. Just brainstorming

[95:03] classroom days is that when they call it inner and outer circle, where you have 2 circles, one group of people standing in the middle facing out. I mean, we could do that because we have the chairs and stuff we could do that. I think that will be cause, I think, like with the event in superior people were broken into tables, so there wasn't a chance to like, really interact with everybody and know what everybody is doing and who is everybody and what they're working on. And when improve, it was more like just a big table, and we were just kind of all sitting kind of like patient. But like, so it's even more difficult. So we'll like an opportunity for everybody to kinda even if it's 2 min, you know, and informal way to kind of rotate and kind of exchange business cards, or get to know people what they're working on and make those connections. And maybe, like 2 people who are interested in a specific topic, they could meet. And they can like continue the conversation afterwards. So yeah, like, if we could do 2 circles, I think that would be ideal. I I think 2 circles is a great idea. But if if you're looking to get

[96:10] across group interaction. you're not gonna be able to do every permutation of 2 people interacting like that's just not logistically feasible unless you want to like. Have a list of every single person instead of like interaction. Brackets like that's not gonna happen. So having some kind of like small presentation. This is what I'm interested in. This is what I want to be working on. And then a sort of like like 10, like 1020 min for for brief brief presentations, brief shadows for what people are working on, and then like free form. like free for all intermingling, I think, would be more effective for that kind of finding people who want to work on the same things and talk about the same things, because if it's just that like inner outer circle, you're gonna have everyone in the inner circle isn't gonna get to talk to each other

[97:02] right? So it's it's just gonna be like everyone on the inner circle gets talk to everyone in the outer circle. But that's not intercircle. right? Like it's it's it's it's a great way to do like getting to know each other in an environment like a classroom where you're going to be spending a lot of time together, anyways. And so it's just like icebreakers with some of the people right? But it's I don't think it's gonna be the best way to do it. Like. get everyone talking to the people that they want to share interests with. I'm only gonna chime in only because we've done a bunch of events at junkyard specifically, and a thing that worked really well at an event I was just physically there for was that we had they? They call them like 5 people to be like sort of group leaders on specific topics. And I raised my hand. I was like, I want to talk to a group about what a resilient community looks like I will be in that corner, and everyone who wanted to talk to me about that which was like the whole group which was awesome like should win, and sat on the comfy chairs in the corner, and then and then it. After 10 min we flopped it like there were 5 more groups, and we flopped around. And that worked really well, specifically in junkyard space. I don't know if that serves you at all. But that's something that

[98:12] just worked there. Yeah. the other option. Just thinking about that group and that 1st meeting that we could do. I I that's an interesting idea. We could do that I feel like they would. You wouldn't necessarily have people raising their hands who might have to create them in advance. But we could, rather than have the group decide what topic they want to talk about. We could just say, Look, we're just gonna break into whatever 6 tables and give them 3 prompts. It really is a connection. Space, right? I think that's the whole point. And the prompts are not like really deep dives. It's more like, who are you where you're from and in your community like, what are you most excited about? In your community? What stands in your way? I don't know. I don't know what the prompts are, and then, just like, manage the flow and the conversation at the tables, and do something that way. I don't know.

[99:07] I like that idea. I think any more like talks after. Now, talking small group is definitely the way to go. Like to switch the tables, at least like, do a little. Yeah, that's what he said. 5, 10 min and then swap, and then also just have some open networking. Yeah, it's not like you'd be locked to a table, but you sit down at one. Well, that's just a bad. That's a bad way to set up an event made for networking. so it would have been nice, for example, that like to be able to switch tables and be like, okay, I'll introduce myself, talk for a little bit, or at least listen and then go to another table and kind of yeah, or have like that, make my way. Landscaping table or water could do that.

[100:00] It's either one of those are good. See? I'm glad I raised this question because I don't want to. I want to try to figure this out when we show. But like, is there like? Are you starting it off and introducing the speaker? If I do that. yeah, I guess I can take. I can take care of that like I'll introduce I guess I'll reintroduce a group of people, and we will. What the meetings, you know. Talk about the meeting we we've had this year and kind of how we I've established a mission and the vision for the group. And then, yeah, let me just go ahead and introduce the speakers and get started. Look really good for me like doing this product. Yeah, remind me, remind me what day of the week it is Wednesday. and then probably someone that's I will be able to be there for the beginning of it. But I will not be able to say for the whole thing, so I'm happy to

[101:05] take part in like the kickoff is like helping to take off the event. You have done more work on setting it up, but I'm happy to do like a hey? Welcome to Boulder. Thank you so much for coming to the event. Kind of thing, and then let you take care of? Why don't you do the welcome as a chair? And then I can take over and talk about like the just the group and a little bit of background, because it will be people who are new mentioned. You know what we have done, where we are. How we have established, you know, some mission for it, and then we can start with the with the talk and and would you probably arrive early? I'm guessing so we can set up the space? Do they give it to the city for free? Or do we have we have a budget nice? I also think we should have a plan based who's ordering, and I would be happy to help with that if you could help with that that'd be awesome. We were just talking about that before the meeting, like, what? What we want?

[102:05] Yeah, let's talk. After the meeting great recently, I recently went through all of the restaurants in boulder and what their plant based options are. So every single restaurant, just every single restaurant. They have really good options. Yeah, logistics really, quickly. Do you know if I'm assuming the speakers will have presentations. Do you happen to know what kind of tech junkyard Social has in that back room? I know they have. They have a they have a screen, but you know, when you walk in, it's on the garage door. So if you want people facing the front, they have a microphone and all the audio stuff that you need. But you'll want to bring our big screen and projector if you want people facing to the back. Yeah. which are fine.

[103:02] and our screen just fits on that stage. If you stack some books under one side, is there a chance to have like a virtual thing. I mean, I I did get a couple of people asking if there will be a virtual, and I'm like, I don't think so, because I I figured it wouldn't be the they wouldn't have the tech for that. We do, and I don't know how good it I don't know how, if it's high enough quality to pick up the sound well in that space? But we do have a portable kind of desktop webcam with a speaker. We can try it. I I can't guarantee that'll be perfect. Yeah, I mean, we can try that. I guess I don't. Can I make a suggestion that maybe my my preference would be to not try to manage that. It's not going to be satisfactory, I don't think, and then they're not going to be able to do any of the engagement pieces just for the presentations. We could try to record the presentations. It would be worth recording the presentations, but

[104:07] those kind of mixed virtual things work just fine for a meeting like this, where it's a small group we're like in a room together. But like having tried to participate in some events from a virtual like. It's fine to just sit there and watch the presentations. But you cannot interact in any kind of meaningful way, and it sounds like a hassle to set up. So. oh, yeah, yeah, I'm okay with that, I think, doing it. As I was saying, though, like, oh, it might discourage people from not thinking. yeah, yeah. the person of. okay. So yeah. if my events thing, this is early gets done early, I'm gonna try to make it. Okay.

[105:00] yeah. Feeling ready to run this next week. Feeling excited. do we have name tags? Yes, yeah, that's that's great. Yeah. Would you want to do this will be differently. Maybe people are speaking to you. Yes. yeah, you can send people a calendar invite. Yeah. they don't. That's a good one. Yeah. sweet. 5 million people little bit. Okay. So I guess my to do list will be to send you the Rsvp.

[106:03] Send a calendar reminder along with the agenda that we just discussed as a reminder to people and encourage like. people are on the fence still. Okay, yeah. So it's been in whether or not. If you just want to do a run a show, it's totally up to you all, just in terms of opening remarks you want people to like, do like, stand up and introduce yourself, and you name, and where you're from, probably opening remarks. There may be new people there that hadn't been a little bit of a history 3rd meeting, and this is the intention of the group. But that's all. That's all. You. So yeah, that's fine. Okay? Or you whatever I mean. I'm not one who has the experience, and I don't know anything about. I think more than 10 more than 10 is a good goal. At least there was like 40 Ish. At the 1st it looks less. It's like, maybe there is, or something. Okay. So I don't know. I. So let's hope for not further decreasing numbers.

[107:07] All the formats different, a little bit, too, because we have a topic and presenters. And so and the the second one was like, I think they let us know, like a week in advance, or something like that. So it's like, So for this one. yeah, hopefully, it's kind of like the 1st one. Yeah. surprises. If you want. We had. we have a couple. We have a couple. What kind of prizes do you guys get we just gave a couple out at our departmental retreat a really cool board game called daybreak. It's a climate change board game. It's a surprisingly vibrant genre of board game. It's fun. I've not played that one in particular, but they're like the genre of like climate change. Board game is like a vibrant growing, the maker of pandemic. If you ever played that, some people yeah.

[108:08] just saying out loud Council Calendar is included under the calendar check. I forgot to call it out separately on the agenda. Okay. like photosynthesis, like, there's a lot of like environmental, some really good. So at the beginning, should we do like a 15 min for eating like, because events such at 6, right? So people will wrap around 6. We do 1520 min for eating, or should we just go straight into like people to arrive? Yeah, it's like 10. The the way that I think a good event goes is you give like 10 to 15 min. It's like mingling at the beginning. And then you do like next opening remarks and eating and presentations. And then you go into your socialization.

[109:06] So yeah, like, start doing remarks at like 6, 1615, don't set that as a hard line, but as a like. yeah. And then you don't have to have everyone there to start definitely. Give some some like, it's not. We start at 6 PM. On the dock. That's and definitely time that speak. I don't know these speakers, but people just tend to talk. Well, Russ, I don't think well, because he's got another event. That night we had a speaker from the utilities in HUTT. Blank. Okay.

[110:00] okay. And if there's any like opening remarks with respect to like, if we need a table to welcome people. I think people can get drinks. There's a bar. Oh, my goodness, what we're gonna do go ahead and grab some food. All that stuff. I'm happy to jump in and do whatever you need. Cool. Let's how the event next to an open bar event, and thought we had an open bar that right back in cancel upcoming. Yeah, sorry. That's my queue, yeah, for sure. So see a good number of things. I want to just flag for you that we have a pretty full agenda at your December meeting. I think we are coming back for the roadmap discussion. Looking at you. We have the roadmap on December. Okay, it's fine if if we don't. But we do want to bring back that building roadmap discussion

[111:17] for the next steps. But most importantly, want to be giving you all an update on the climate Action Plan update. We'll be going to Council December 15, th and we'll make sure that we come to you and talk about the structure format. I gave you a brief update a couple of months ago that it's not a big substantive change. It really is structural. Some format, some new goals around resilience and equity. Wanna talk a little bit more about the resilience elements. But our session in December is really to check in with council on. Is this the structure and layout? Are there pieces that you think need to be incorporated? Before we start working towards finalizing that document. So that's really where we're at. But I'd like to talk to board about that and getting input that you have in advance. So that's December. If you look at the

[112:08] agenda. So then our our council meeting is December 19.th there is the landscape updates, while fire hardening piece. It's going to be on December 12.th But, as I mentioned a little bit ago, I've already pinged the team to get on your calendar to talk about any recommendations that are going to be made coming out of that. The the landscape code ordinance is gonna happen next year. So this is just kind of a tee up to talk about what the landscape ordinance contains. Let council talk about. Hmm! What? What do we really want to accomplish with this update, and then to get on your calendar to make sure that we're starting to address of all the parts and pieces are going to be important to you, so that one you'll see coming to you the other things that I just wanted to flag as potentials. If you look at the anticipated upcoming council items in the last page in q. 1, we will have a manufactured home strategy that obviously links to our

[113:10] our building roadmap. And then I mentioned before that you may have an interest in the amps update. So just thinking about parking issues, if that's something that the Board would like to see, like to get that direction, so I can get that on your calendar as well. And then I also thought it'd be really helpful. We do have a racial equity update being planned because that's such a key part of what we do as a city, and how it really integrates into a lot of our programming and policies. I wanted to throw that out there to see if the Board had an interest in getting an update on our racial equity work. Yeah, I think I think both of those would be great to hear some more about. I think I think my very 1st meeting with the was was an amps, was about. Amps was, yeah, okay? But yeah, no, it would be great to hear about both of those

[114:01] in whatever capacity is applicable to us. And then, of course, any of the other items that you see on there, if you express interest and the board would like to see an update. Yeah, I'm looking at it. Sorry I don't know when where, but I am curious, like the it's new building. No, yeah, like sustainability plans. For like it was amazing taking down. I just haven't heard much about what will be going up. and it's not good. and I'm not sure if the like staff dealing with them are overlapping at all, but like amps and vision 0, I think, would would like align fairly well and do like a like a paired update. But I don't know how much staff overlap is between the 2 projects. so I don't know how feasible that would be. Not a lot. But that's okay, just a matter.

[115:06] I think that there's the those are connected and important towards reducing driving mileage in the city. Okay? Great. We just talked about the anticipated upcoming items, and there is interest in seeing a presentation on you will get one on our manufactured home strategy and update on the building roadmap. There was just interest in an amps update in the vision, 0 racial equity more broadly. And then Alpine balsam. Just the plans for the kind of yeah, the form and function of the building. So we have a lot to share on that. It's pretty great. Yeah. I figured I just had no idea. Plus, you know, you gotta get that Co working space in there when

[116:00] we come into the landscape. Is that also coming up? Yeah. So I mentioned, just as you're watching walking out. December 12th is the 1st discussion with Council, but it's really a presentation with them about what the landscaping ordinance is about how they're thinking about using it as wildfire opportunity. And then I've already pinged that group to be prepared to come to the board as I start formulating specific information. and in December you must. I think my last meeting would be February. So this is my last, whatever that your last meeting is my last meeting as well. She's got some data point on it always.

[117:09] So. Yep, Brooke, you're the only one whose term is in June. Sorry I'm just pulling up the details. Looks like the higher the recruitment process will be done in February, so I would assume either February or March will be your next meeting. Alright. What's the missing? Are you missing? Is there some sort of policy that to this so many meetings? It's it's a good question. So we can resend out your charter. Typically, yeah, happy, happy to. And so typically it's you're provided to unexcused absences. But excuse me just to let the board chair, or let the rest of your colleagues know that you're not able to make it the good thing is

[118:07] so obviously, it's not a hard and firm thing when it it is really helpful when you all are. I mean, obviously, decisions like approving minutes is something you need to do with the quorum, but generally with a 5 Member Board twins. There's something in the I was like. Are you kidding me? What are the odds. The odds seem really low. They're both identical, boys. Oh, my goodness! Again, the odds seem really low. Yeah. I brought her some food and she looked. Is she doing it? Yeah, I was like, Are you sure you just had 2 babies great, anyway? So watch out something about this board, anyway? Hopefully. I won't be gone too long.

[119:07] But we didn't. Mid-march. It's a pretty good time here to be point is that weird? We'll see hopefully. twins unpredictable, apparently, though. let's see. alright are are we? Are we feeling feeling satisfied for meeting and anything else bring forward before we wrap up for the night? No feeling good, and I guess I will make motion to adjourn for the evening. So good, cool all those in favor. that being unanimous, that will conclude. Thank you very much.