September 3, 2025 — Environmental Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:15] I don't see her on right now, so… I'm not sure why the pill is stuck. Because why wouldn't it be? That would be our first meeting ever in a half. Oh, let's do that for now. It's all you? Oh, call the meeting to order. I second that. Great. Could you review the meeting rules, please, Heather? I sure will.

[1:03] Welcome, everybody, to the September 3rd EAB meeting. The City has engaged with community members. to co-create a vision for productive, meaningful, and inclusive conversations. This vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members, staff, and council, as well as democracy for people of all ages, identities, lived experiences, and political perspectives. For more information about this vision and the community engagement process, please visit that website seen on your screen, boulderColorado.gov forward slash productive hyphen atmospheres, and the Boulder Revised Code section 16B. The City will enforce the rules of decorum found in the Boulder Revised Code, Section 16B, including 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. No attendee shall disrupt, disturb, or otherwise impede the orderly conduct of any council meeting or board meeting in a manner that obstructs the business of the meeting. This also includes failing to obey any lawful order of the presiding officer to leave the meeting or refrain from addressing the council or board.

[2:20] All remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person. Obscenity, other epithets based on race, gender, or religion, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the meeting will not be tolerated. Thank you. Motion to approve the minutes from last meeting. To vote? Great. Is there any… we have any guests? No one on right now, no. Okay, great. Well, maybe they'll pop in later.

[3:03] alright. Over to you. All right. Thank you. For the record, Jonathan with Climate Initiatives, good to see you tonight, board members. I'm gonna, avoid my very long-winded introduction tee-up to tonight's topic. I'm just gonna just really appreciate our guests for being here. I'll let them introduce themselves, but it's really exciting, I think, to have this topic in front of the board. We talked a lot about The constellation of policies and regulations, and how they really advance our environmental objectives. And the comp plan always rises to the top as really that umbrella body of policy that is really important. Obviously, it's a longer-term process to update, and so we've been in the midst of the update now for a little while, and I'm just really grateful to my colleagues who are here tonight to walk through where we are in the process, in terms of the update, and then specifically

[4:02] We talked together about what were the type of questions that we thought would be, really important to ask and discuss with the board tonight, and so they're very central to the Charter and the role of the EAB. We'll get to those as we go, but obviously it's an opportunity to really think about where we've been. What are the policies that are not necessarily reflective of where we are today and where we need to go, and how can we incorporate those moving forward? And also really to think about, are there specific, types of policies that the board would really like to see that align with some of the stressors and some of the areas of of concern that the board seems, pertinent as we move forward, I would say, over the next decade or more. So we'll come back to the questions after the presentation, but we have an excellent presentation for you tonight. One thing I wanted to say up front, and this could probably wait until we get into matters, but hopefully you had a chance to look at the materials in advance. I know that there was a lot, but part of that was really

[5:12] a reflection of, I think, my mea culpa from last month's conversation, that we didn't give the board a whole lot of time to really process the, I think, dense information we were bringing to you on the Healthy Buildings Roadmap. Obviously, we had talked to you before, but I'd like to avoid that. I don't think that that was necessarily fair to you all to kind of spring that on you and ask you those kind of questions. So, we're going to do better to make sure that we're getting those materials to you in advance, including the kind of questions, that way you can be thinking about how to formulate your input And we can capture that in the most effective way. So I just wanted to make sure I… I acknowledged that that was a little bit of a failing on our part at the last meeting. We tried to do a good job of that, and we didn't do so good. So, anyway, there's the mea culpa.

[6:02] So, with that, I think I… Chris, I'm going to turn this over to you? Yeah, great. You can kick this off, and then, when we're done with the presentation, what I would suggest, if the board is amenable. To maybe see if there are any clarifying questions that you have about the presentation, specifically anything that came up for you, and then we can dive into the three questions that we crafted for you all. Sound okay? Yeah, great. Thanks for setting that context, Jonathan. I'll start by introducing myself. My name is Chris Ranglos. I'm a planner on our comprehensive planning team. Thank you all for having us. Jonathan, thanks for bringing us along to the Environmental Advisory Board, and thank you, the board members, for having us. This is a really important conversation, a really important topic, being the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan update, this is something that only happens every 10 years. We do have a midterm update, although the amount that can be changed within the comprehensive plan at that sort of midterm 5-year update is significantly

[7:05] different than what we can potentially change in the 10-year update. So, really, everything is on the table at this point. We do that 10-year update, really, to ensure that we're developing policy and a land use approach that reflects the community's current conditions and desires and hopes for the future. I'm gonna introduce two of our staff members here with me tonight, Tucker Horsch. Tucker is going to take on a little bit of the slides in here. He's our planning Tech has done a really great job on this project, helping us, in a multitude of ways, and Zia, actually just started with us a few months ago. She's our trainee right now, and has an Educational experience and environmental policy, and so super excited to have her, along on the team. So, I'll start here. what is a comprehensive plan? And I'll fully acknowledge there may be people on the board who are very familiar with the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. This might be your first time hearing about a comprehensive plan, and so…

[8:03] Just wanted to start by, sort of describing that this is really an aspirational plan. It's a visionary document that sets the future course for Boulder, over the next 20 years. It establishes our long-term vision. The goals, and ultimately guides how the community changes over time. That this three little icons that you see here on the bottom of the screen is really meant to depict, sort of. altitude of which this plan resides amongst other municipal tools, regular… regulatory tools that we have. And so, the comprehensive plan, we're looking at the entire Boulder Valley. It's actually not just the city of Boulder, it's the entire Boulder Valley, unincorporated, Boulder County, but we're really at the airplane. We're cruising at altitude in the airplane, looking down, establishing what we think Boulder should really strive for over the next 20 years. We have other regulatory items, planning documents, tools at our disposal, sub-community and area plans being one of those, and that's sort of the hot air balloon altitude, about 10,000 feet in the air. That's sort of the detail that we're looking at when we develop these plans. And then there's the super specific stuff, right? So our zoning code and municipal code, and that's really kind of the ground level

[9:14] Regulations that we have. So, where does the Boulder Valley Comp Plan fit within the larger planning context? I'm sure all our EAB members are very well aware that we have a lot of plans, and a lot of strategies, and a lot of tools, and a lot of regulations in Boulder, right? And so. what this diagram is really meaning to depict here is the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan is in many ways kind of sandwiched in between all of those things, and touches all of those things in one way or another. So. We have our Sustainability, Equity, and Resilience Framework. These are the seven goal areas of the organization. The Boulder Valley Comp Plan is influenced by these goal areas. And then there's a whole slew, right, of the citywide strategic plan that's informed by the Boulder Valley Comp Plan. We have our annual budget, both the operating and capital department plans and various strategies, subcommittee and area plans, and these are all things that are being informed by the policy and the overall vision that we have set in the Boulder Valley Comp Plan.

[10:12] So you can see there's a lot of implications, right? A lot of trickle-down effects to ultimately what this plan describes. Just want to really briefly kind of talk about the role of boards and commissions, as part of this comprehensive plan update. I will mention, there are four adopting bodies. the City Council, City Planning Board, County Planning Commission, and the Board of County Commissioners. So, so we have to get four votes at the end of the day to get this plan approved. And again, the reason why the county is included in this is because Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan does also include the unincorporated areas of Boulder County. All of our other advisory boards, so EAB being one of those, it's non-voting, board, but certainly engaging this board and others to seek as much input as we can so that, hopefully a lot of those recommendations are ultimately implemented into the plan.

[11:06] Like I mentioned, this is our staff in identifying and shaping changes to the relevant policies to inform our next steps, and we also encourage to offer recommendations to support, both to the Planning Board and City Council during the adoption process. quick timeline, just to orientate everybody where we're at, where we've been, and where we're headed. The yellow box here is kind of where we're at right now, and ultimately what we're doing is we're working through some pretty big policy choices. And refining our overall approach to managing land use in the Boulder Valley. Tucker's gonna touch on what that approach looks like at a pretty high level here in a minute. But that's kind of where we're at. We're in that policy options, preferred direction, concepts for change, a lot of iteration is happening right now. Back in 2024 is when we kicked the project off. October 19th was the actual date of our community kickoff. Some of you may have been at that kickoff. But the work in 2024, October through December, was largely 3 or 4 months of us really understanding the current or existing conditions in the Boulder Valley.

[12:14] A lot's changed over the last 10 years. We had a global pandemic halfway through, and so we spent a lot of time really kind of digging into those existing conditions and understanding what's really going on in Boulder. As I get towards the end of the presentation, there's a link to the project website. If you haven't had the opportunity to log in to that project website, I would encourage you to do so. There's an existing condition, it's called the Boulder Today tab. Where there is just a litany of really, really good information and detail around that. It… starting at the beginning of this year, sort of through winter and spring through April, we were doing a lot of community engagement, really trying to understand what that vision is for the community, and what the values are that we should really develop the rest of the plan around. Tucker's gonna share that vision and values with you all, and like I mentioned, now we're kind of in that point of developing concepts for change and doing some preliminary analysis around some of these options that we have before us.

[13:10] 2026? January through March is when we'll be really pencils… hard at work developing the draft plan, refining all of our policies. and land use approach, we will be coming back to the Environmental Advisory Board and all of our other advisory boards at that point in the process as well, so that you all have an opportunity to see the draft plan and the policies that are associated with it, and give us feedback before we make any sort of final revisions. And take the plan to, our decision-making bodies in June and July. Real quick on community engagement, I struggled with this slide a little bit, because I could tell you so much about engagement and everything we're hearing, all of the feedback that we've collected, but in an attempt to really kind of summarize, we have been doing a ton of community engagement, and not just a lot, but we're really trying to make this the most inclusive

[14:03] community engagement process that's associated with the planning process in Boulder that we've ever really done, and I think that we're hitting those marks. But we've had over 5,000 community comments, really over the past 9 months. We've had 41 engagement opportunities. 6 community-led conversations, three community assembly meetings, there'll be a fourth one this weekend, and then we've been engaging with a lot of our partner agencies to inform them of the update and solicit their feedback as well. Now, I do encourage you, similar to the existing conditions that we put together, we did include a City Council packet. We were at City Council last Thursday presenting a lot of this information, and that packet has an attachment, Attachment B, which is our community engagement summary, so at every single event we've done, what we did, what questions that were asked, and what those sort of key themes were from the community is happy if you'd like to take a look.

[15:01] Okay, with that, I'm going to pass it over to Tucker. Tucker's going to run us through, sort of, what we've been hearing from our community, how the vision has taken shape, what the areas of focus are that are driving this, and then he'll dive into our land use approach and overall policy approach. Thank you, Chris. Yeah, let's move back to that. that vision. So, through the spring, we came up with our vision, with community feedback and kind of a collective of what we've been hearing, since the beginning of the update. So our community works together to ensure everyone belongs, to create opportunities for all, and to sustain the health of the Boulder Valley for future generations. So, this is the guiding statement, basically, for the update, and then you'll see the SARE framework goals are, Integrated into the update as well. Yeah, as our goals. And then our areas of focus are what truly came from the community engagement, and what we are… Focusing our policy updates and our land use framework changes on. So we have our inclusive local economy, safety, housing choice and opportunity, travel options, climate action, food systems, multi-generational, multicultural communities. So these really rose to the top of the issues that the community really wants us to address in this plan update at this moment in time.

[16:16] So for the policy updates, within all the engagement framework, we've also come to understand we need to make this update a lot more clear. Currently, the policies today are kind of… there's a lot of redundancy in the conflicts between the policies. For example, like, there's over 200 policies today, and we're really trying to cut that down so that each policy is a lot more impactful and a lot more useful for decision makers and for staff to actually make decisions with. And so, with that, making it more simple, making it easier to read. And then also resilient, so keeping it at an appropriate level of detail to guide decisions, as conditions change over time, since it's a 10-year plan.

[17:01] And then similarly with land use, Trying to simplify it a little bit, so we find that right now it is similarly redundant, and there's some conflicts between certain land uses, and it can be hard for decision makers and staff to use when making decisions about development review. And, so kind of having broader strokes with the land use map today, this area… there's currently 26 categories, and we've been able to start cutting that down to about 13 at the moment, so just really a lot simpler, a lot easier to read, and, broader strokes across the city, so that There's a lot more flexibility down the line, so an adaptable banks approach. Here you can see the, kind of, what we've presented to Council the last few weeks, So we have these overarching classes of neighborhoods, hubs, networks, and institutions, and these will help kind of categorize the different land use, options. So we have a lot less now, so only 13, and they're… now that they're in these categories, it can help, kind of apply these at a larger scale.

[18:11] Across the city. And I think with that, I'll pass it back to Chris. So, we'll conclude here, just wanting to point out some upcoming milestones and key moments for the rest of the year and into 2026. Next week, actually, on Tuesday, September 9th, we will be hosting a community workshop at Casey Middle School. This is going to be a pretty fun and unique exercise. we're gonna be throwing maps out on the table and asking the community to help us ultimately draw land use and where the recommendations should go on the map, so… hopefully that's a bit of an opportunity for the community to iterate with us and actually do some of the work with us, rather than us just taking feedback and doing the work. So I think that'll be a unique opportunity, and would encourage all of you to please attend and help us get the word out.

[19:00] We will be doing a statistically balanced survey as part of this project, September 15th, so just a couple of weeks here is when that will be kicking off. It'll run through October 17th. And we will have an online companion questionnaire as well, so that if you're not one of the folks who get selected for the Statistically valid survey, you can still provide your feedback. December 11th is our next big milestone with City Council. We'll be bringing recommendations on major policy and land use changes. This isn't the recommended plan that we'll be bringing forward, but recommendations on some of those big, major policy shifts or land use changes. In 2026, we anticipate releasing the public draft plan, and that's also when we anticipate our second round of engagement with all of our advisory boards, EAB being one of those. In May, we will release the final draft plan, and then in June and July is when we'll initiate the adoption process with the four decision-making bodies.

[20:01] So, just wanted to throw the project website up here. I've mentioned it a few different times. Abolterfeature.org. Again, would encourage everybody to visit the website and just kind of poke around. There's a lot of information on there. As I mentioned, you can view our current conditions, snapshots, it's a story map, so it's pretty user-friendly, called Boulder Today. We have a Boulder Tomorrow tab as well, where you hear a little bit more about the vision and the goals that we've heard from the community. This is also a good spot to just stay up to date and learn more about community events that may be coming up. You can sign up for the newsletter or send us a comment. We have a form stack submission, if you'd like to submit a comment to us, or you can certainly email our project email address, which is listed there on this slide. So, I'll conclude. As Jonathan had mentioned, we sort of have three questions that we thought this board would be good to help us grapple with. I'm not going to take the time to read through each one of those right now. Maybe we can pause and just take some questions, if you have any, and then we can pop this slide back up and organize the conversation around these three questions.

[21:08] missions of the presentation to start. Yes, I do, appreciate the summary. overview of this. One question is if we could flip, oh, okay. I'll pull it back up. Okay, I think the slide that had, like, you know, the five or six priorities. That we're, highlighted there with the different icons. I basically wanted to know, where did those come from? Were those from, like, previous comprehensive plan updated? Were they part of the community feedback, of the community engagement? Like, how did those kind of, like, percolate to the surface? Are you talking about the areas of focus here? These… Yeah. Yeah, or one of the other ones, like the top,

[22:08] Yeah, this one, and then those, yeah. Sure. So, I'll start here with the goals. These goals are actually identified and described within the City's Sustainability, Equity, and Resilience Framework. All of the feedback that we have been hearing from the community is pretty strongly aligned with each of these goal areas. You may recall I pulled the, diagram back up, you can see the sustainability, equity, and resilience Framework. We call this the umbrella diagram. You can kind of see why, but the umbrella underneath all of this really is those seven goal areas of sustainability, equity, and resilience. So… so that's… at the highest, most basic level for the entire organization, what we strive for is ensuring that we're providing those seven services and goal areas to the community. Underneath that, within the Boulder Valley Comp Plan, though.

[23:00] What we have been hearing most from the community are issues and topics around these areas. So these are specific to the Boulder Valley Comp Plan. Some of these are very similar to the focus areas that we had in 2015. Some of them have shifted a little bit. Housing Choice and Opportunity has, for a long time, been a topic of focus for the City of Boulder. But… as an example, a newer one that we haven't heard as much about, that we are this time around, is multi-generational and multicultural community. There seems to be a sort of a missing… opportunity for social connection. People feel like, I think, coming out of the pandemic, that those opportunities may not exist as much as they used to, and so that's just an example of some different types of dialogue that we've been hearing in 2025 compared to 2015. Yeah, these ones are going to be specific to this year's update. Okay, and then the… If you could go back to the umbrella one, sorry.

[24:02] So the Sustainability, Equity, and Resilience Framework, where did that, just curious where that came from. Jonathan, you might have a little bit more context than I do, but this, I want to say, came out 10, 12 years ago. sort of a prelude to the 2015 Boulder Valley Comp Plan. It did, and so this was a multi-year effort to really orient and to think about how… so in this diagram, we realized that there needed to be this guiding framework that sits up above. So what… How does everything kind of speak, up to those kind of goal areas? And so that… the SARE framework, was created. Not… maybe not… maybe it has been that long, gosh, I don't know. It was… it was a couple of years, that the city went through a process. publicly with City Council, and mostly internally, to think about how we orient our own plans to roll up into this space, and so now, every memo, everything that goes to Council, any policy, any program is really oriented in a way, and our budget, too, to show how it connects to one of these seven areas within the framework.

[25:11] And so that wasn't necessarily your question. Your question was how it was created, and it really was, I think, a pretty robust conversation, both community-wide and internally, to say. what are the things that we care about most deeply as community? And then a follow-up question. So, how do you then… so it looks like there was extensive community outreach, a lot of engagement, a lot of responses. How do you then determine How much of that community feedback is then incorporated into the plan? I think the short answer is as much as we can. we can't incorporate every single idea that a community member comes up with, right? But we certainly do, and it's in our best interest and best effort to develop a plan that really speaks to the community. I don't view this as our plan, I view this as a people's plan, the community's plan, and so

[26:07] We do ultimately try and reflect as much community feedback that we can into the outcomes of the plan and the plan itself. I will say, though, it's an art, not so much a science. We have a lot of… Data around how many people we've been engaging with, who we've been engaging with, how many events. We pull key themes from all of those various engagement opportunities that we have, and then start to apply those to our thinking around policy choices, modification of policies, or ultimately in the development of the land use framework and approach. You know, I can give you an example, like, for the land use framework, our… a big goal for us is to be able to provide more flexibility through these land use designations, and trim that 26 designations down to 13. That's actually reflective of a lot of the feedback that we've been hearing from the community about wanting to provide more flexibility and more options for different types of uses throughout the community.

[27:02] Than what we've been getting, really, for the last 10 years, and I would argue even further back, maybe 20, 30 years. So if you took, like, the community feedback engagement responses. and then you look at the plan, you would see that there's a… they're accurately, appropriately reflected. Yeah, and that's part of our job, too, is to close the information loop, is what we like to say. So, you know, we'll… we'll develop some kind of packet or an attachment to the memo. That we put together for the adoption hearings, where it is very clear, here is where community feedback has directly impacted the policies or the choices that have come into the comprehensive plan. Thank you. No. Any other questions, just on… presentation. You scroll through the next screen. To be, afternoon. The next. Yeah, so I'm curious, yeah, this one. I don't see anything about…

[28:10] Is there a thought about, like, maybe health and safety? Yeah. Do I see it on the previous one? Helping socially thriving. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. I think, you know, I would say there are elements of health infused in all of these focus areas. These are all very interrelated in one way or another. They're not isolated areas of focus. And so, you know, I would say that health and the overall notion of health as a focus area is really kind of infusing itself through the food systems. We've been hearing a lot about people needing better access to healthier foods. I think a multicultural, multi-generational community has positive health impacts. Providing additional travel options throughout the community has pretty obvious health impacts.

[29:02] And then safety, certainly, is another one. So that's a good example. There are a ton of topics out there that we could be dissecting and looking at. We do, at some point, need to focus the priorities just a little bit, but within those priorities, I would say that it's a common theme that we've been grappling with, of just sort of how they all interrelate, whatever sort of subtopics they do touch. Because what I see a lot in the sitting debates on availability of mental health support, right? And for me, that's it. You might be missing out here. Sure. But I can see your point about it underline almost everything out there. And just because it's not a focus area, I would say, doesn't mean that there won't be policy that does speak to mental health in the actual comprehensive plan. But that's great feedback that, I'll have to take back to the rest of the team. Chris, if I'm not mistaken, the… the current comp plan, so instead of safety, I think it… it speaks to community well-being and safety. Yeah. And then health, is kind of a sub-bullet of that, kind of a community health element, so…

[30:12] I think that's an interesting reflection of how the title maybe doesn't fully capture what's intended to be in that area. Cool. Maybe we can move on to the three questions? Sure, yeah. And then… It probably makes sense to do one at a time. I'm guessing the first one will have the most feedback, and then for us, like, if one person brings up Fire, or whatever. That we can kind of do it by topic by topic. So we're not totally all over the place. Does that work for you guys? Yeah, I think that that's totally fine, and maybe what I would also say is, Before we get into it, I'm just gonna use my privilege here and just really give high praise to the comp planning team. They have done a tremendous amount of work in this space, and it's a Herculean task, because you might imagine everybody kind of… it's, like, creates its own orbit, quite frankly, that everybody's hopes and dreams kind of come into, oh, we'll just put that in the comp plan.

[31:15] the comp plan will solve that thing. And so, I'm just reflecting on the question about what's in, and how do you decide what's in, and it's a real challenge, and so… Normally we'd say try to orient your, your comments and feedback, But honestly, don't worry about grain size or altitude. Any kind of feedback you have, I think, is really important, and I know that the team has done a really good job of knowing how to filter between outcomes and outputs and long-term goals and policies. So, whatever I think, maybe I shouldn't offer this up, but it seems to me that the team is really, really adept at knowing how to sift and filter to say, if this is the outcome that you're seeking, here's what that would look like in a particular policy in the comp plan. And so I would say it's all fair game.

[32:09] And, maybe a question for you, how you'd like to handle… Alex did provide her feedback in writing, I know they didn't have that, so I'm happy to… either read those, if we want to read those into the record, I think it's fine either way, since it's just feedback, it's not required. Okay, yeah, maybe you can… Definitely forward it to them, so they just… and then we can add it in where it makes sense. And so maybe I give you… sorry, I'm talking so much, but orient you towards, why these three questions One was just to do a little grounding, and so you were familiar with how the comp plan works, so a little forcing of taking a look at the existing plan, mostly from the perspective of, does it accurately reflect the things that we think are important today? Then the second, I think, is a really important question as we talk about trade-offs and best and highest use of land use policies. That's something that we always get into this kind of values debate of,

[33:10] agriculture versus housing. You know, there are so many trade-offs that we could talk about, and we have talked about as a board, and so I felt it was important for you all to just name some of those tensions that you see existing, so we can anticipate some of those and have a well-thought-out way to address those as it comes up in the comp plan. And the third, I think, is going to be a little bit harder of a question, but in It really is to reflect that. we see policies often, leave out certain portions, or major portions of our community, or create harm or difficulties for certain parts of our community. And certainly. The one thing that we didn't talk about is the other guiding document that wasn't in place during the last update is, our racial equity plan.

[34:00] Which really is the orientation about how we think about equity in a very, very deliberate way, and so this will be the first time that the Comp Plan is really bringing that in in a really mindful way, and so wanted to have a question that was getting your thoughts on that space, too. So, with that in mind, I didn't need to say all those words, but I did. So feel free, if you want to jump in, however I can help with the questions. If you have questions about the question, or if you get stuck, I'd say it's all fair game, and… Right? Ready to roll? You want to kick us off? Sure. Kind of just go back and forth? Yeah, I guess for the first question… What comes to mind is, Is the wildfire risk, you know, as, as, you know, within the, Oh, the, Wildfire Area Protection. Yeah, Hui area. So… and are there certain,

[35:09] certain dwellings, I guess, that are at higher risk. That are also kind of, you know, kind of, economically disadvantaged, that could be, you know. Reviewed in that kind of… Plays into the environmental justice, you know, perspective. That's the only thing that I could think of, other than… the resilience, like, against floods, and I know that there's been efforts to Identify, similarly. How, economically disadvantaged, areas are disproportionately have higher risk, or there's… there's more damage to… impact to the… to the individuals in those areas are disproportionately higher than some of the other areas, so kind of flipping the, The priority on, investment in infrastructure to, you know, protect those areas against,

[36:07] Against flooding, that would be my initial… Thoughts around that on… on the first one? I don't really… I can't really speak to some of the other areas, because I'm just not familiar. And I'll… well and wildfires, I'll read, Alice, who's on here, she… Add a note on that, so for the record, wildfire preparation mitigation for urban areas, not just natural ecosystems, and the current plan describes wildfire practices to guard against the danger of fire in developments adjacent to natural lands and consistent with forest and grassland ecosystem management principles and practices. So, the Marshall Fire demonstrated that wildfire risks go beyond natural landscapes, and she'd like to see additional framework for urban areas. And secondly, additional descriptions and development of emergency response communication evacuation. For example, our

[37:02] public institutions, businesses required to have documented evacuation plans for schools, hospitals, libraries, etc. And then, are there specific acknowledgements or recommendations for different dwelling types? So, single-family homes, apartments, etc? And you'll get that in writing, too. All the people listening out there. And then I'll add some notes of myself on wildfire. I thought that the plan went into a little bit more detail when it came to flood mitigation. Probably for the reasons we all know. So, kind of doing a similar thing, but for… for wildfires, and I know we're adding all this wildfire. building code stuff, so I don't know, like. The 30,000, but vision needs mentioned somehow to incorporate those new standards we have. And then similar to what… Alex said, it's like…

[38:03] Including some more around the community preparedness. And then to your point. I also had one that kind of tied in the equity of… I know, like, there's these $2,000 you can get for wildfire stuff right now. I got an email about it. I keep meaning to do that, but, like. I assume that that money is limited, and so, like… maybe it should just be going to, you know, mobile home communities and people who really need it, versus, like, yes, do I want that $2,000? That sounds great, but, like, I'd rather have it go to people more on a, like, aggressive scale or something. Do you have any wildfire while we're on that? No, I think what Alex said was just captured quite a bit pretty well, so, hey. I think Alex raises it, the indoor environment.

[39:01] So, maybe it should taste pretty useful. Air quality! The current plan is focused on limiting emissions, but indoor air quality isn't the same, which I also plus one her point there. So, especially for public places, libraries, schools, hospitals. with high AAQIDs. And a lot of homes not having AC, what are best practices for indoor air quality? Sorry, could I just… on that piece, I wanted to maybe draw, a little bit of a thread to the other conversations that the board has had, not just under quality, but you've all heard and talked a lot about, Chronic and extreme heat. And, it seems like that was also an area that you've expressed interest in making sure is being brought forward, whether it be in a specific policy, so I just wanted to name that as a good connection. Yeah, and I think that really goes to the third question, too, about just people who don't have access to air conditioning.

[40:09] People who don't have access to… indoors, you know, people who are on house in the hot days. I don't know how that fits, again, into the comp plan and all the different layers, but… I was very excited to see the focus area of food systems. And, from an environmental perspective, I do think it's important to kind of make that link of our food systems and food emissions and, kind of spelling that out a little bit more than is in the plan, not just talking about, like, local and sustainable, which is obviously super important. So things like plant-forward diets, I think

[41:00] tying… That together for the community, that's really important. It's the second highest source of our emissions comes from our food systems, and globally, 25% of our emissions come from The land use aspect of it, and things like that. So, I thought that could also be tied into environmental purchasing policy, which was mentioned. So that's, I think, more like purchasing stuff, but I think that could be the city purchasing food, and… Kind of noting which kind of foods have less emissions. From an environmental perspective. And then also in the Section 512 and Sustainable Business Practices, working with restaurants and businesses that are big food providers, similar to how we have PACE that helps with, like, energy and composting stuff, I think they could help with, like, how do you create a menu that is sustainable. environmental perspective. And then the last food system… and I don't know if this goes in food systems or energy, but…

[42:05] And I don't know how this works with agribute. I hate this word. So are both. What? Agrobotic. Obviously, we have Jack's Solar Garden, but, like, I don't know, can that happen everywhere, and are we… not only can it, but, like. encouraging if… If there's solar being built, you know, can we get… Stop. Also, whole pollinator habitats and stuff could be a really good Century. Is this, like, too specific? Or is this comp plan? No, I think this is great. we fully acknowledge this is the first time to EAD, right? And so, like Jonathan mentioned, I wouldn't worry so much about altitude right now. I think that anything is really kind of fair game, and we are pretty good at taking feedback like this, and finding ways to weave it into kind of where we're at in the process, so… Glad I don't have your job. How big is your team?

[43:12] These are team guys. Like, 10, 12 people? Wow. They're all wicked smart. It seems like Japan is… I'll keep… I'll keep going. On the energy part, at one point it talked about the city… I didn't write down the section, sorry… consider revisions to support on-site energy generation, including solar and wind, geothermal, I don't know what's possible, but, like. Central Area 3, and, like, things like that, I think. I was letting it be possible. Including it could be helpful. she had something with energy. Yeah, Alex… wanted stronger language around renewable energy in the Comprehensive plan.

[44:04] So she cited example section 4.04, and just kind of saying it was a bit vague, and… She knows land use regulations make solar and wind farms complicated, but is this a chance to try to move in that direction of change that provides renewable energy generation and energy diversity? Also could be under Section 4.06. So I think that's kind of similar, maybe, to what I was saying. Okay, this is a bit of a wild card here, but I would just want to throw it out here. there's a lot about transportation and things like that. As it's tied to environment, I know that, like, larger vehicles are, like, hurting roads more and kind of more in wear and tear and things like that, also bigger emissions.

[45:00] Love to see some sort of, like, SUV big truck tax, except for people who need it for work. I know that's a real wild card, but I think… I think it also is really tied into the safety fact. I mean, I would wonder if we looked at all of our, like. vehicle tax, they were just ridiculous. I don't know. I would guess a lot. Anybody else? Keep going. We really went into it here. Oh, this is… you guys might be doing this already, but the whole… For question two, You know, some… All the, like. Having a lot of regulations kind of slows people down in terms of getting the permits, but, like, things like, Prioritizing transit-oriented development, which I talked a lot about in the plan.

[46:02] Are there, like, fast-track permitting, so if everyone… this might exist already, I just didn't read the… Smaller plans, but… You know, if everyone does all the things, and… dense, near transit, with all the environmental bells and whistles, like, can they just, like, get a permit the next day, or whatever, and kind of make that incentive? To help people speed up. So long as it's sustainable. We're trying to keep these all related to the environment. What else here? Oh, you kind of alluded to this, but… I feel like with climate change, like, things are changing so fast, like, how do… how do you build for flexibility in that? And so, I just plus one to what you said around that. I think specifically, like, God forbid if, like. the whole new one's burned out or something. Like, are we gonna have to rebuild that?

[47:04] how it is, or is there gonna… or can we say, like, you know, mid-com plan, like, no, we want to make it more like a holiday neighborhood, obviously people own their land and stuff, but… I don't know how to plan for that, but just, like, if there were some off-chance, huge disaster that we totally could rethink an area, like, is that possible? Talked about that. I think it's worth, in terms of environmental justice, Adding a place, like. and I guess this might not be the place, but, like, targets around… You know, tree canopy and, like, these things that can be included. in underserved neighborhoods, and, like, parks, access to greenery, things like that. I might… we might have that already. I don't know.

[48:06] And then… I think this was talked about as, like, high biodiversity areas and wildlife corridors, but I didn't… maybe I just missed it. I didn't see a map that had, like, wildlife corridors that connect different habitats together. I think I have seen one at some point, maybe? You have? Okay, so, like, should that be included in the comp plan? like, the biodiversity habitats that connect different parts of the city, and how, like, I don't know how that should be used when it comes to, like. Land use and… and building, but it seems… It should go. I put that to the experts. I guess just kind of… Attempting to make sure the quarters exist that connect those habitats. From a water perspective, Let me just make sure she… I found that language…

[49:11] a little vague. It says, new development and redevelopment designs to conserve water will be encouraged, so I was like. What is… Sounds like… maybe adding a little bit more teeth to kind of really encouraging people to conserve water. Whether that's, again, around, like. Printing stuff, or different… for requirements. So, like… You know, if there's a new development, do they have to have a water plan, and… I think specifically around landscaping. I know that we're doing work on that, so should that be called out by Level 2? Not sure. the same… I mean, I guess it's all kind of vague in person, but again, the soil carbon sequestration part, I found that to be, like, a little bit weak language.

[50:05] Maybe people at the city know. what that means. Tightening that up about Jamaican word. Sorry. No, go ahead. Just a quick response on that. I think it's totally fair, and it's just always a good reminder that when the last comp plan was created, there were… we had not matured our thinking on a lot of things. Obviously, when it comes to wildfire, yes, we've experienced some wildfires, but they weren't necessarily right in our urban interface, so obviously that's a key priority. Thinking about things like resilience more broadly, the role that CCR carbon capture and removal plays, the role that sequestration can play, the use of our urban lands, and thinking about desertification. So these are all topics. I think, that have really surfaced. And emerged in the last decade, and that is really the intention with that second question, to say, you know, or excuse me,

[51:03] more 1 and 2 kind of combined, like, what are you experiencing now that we weren't in the last update? Right. Yeah, so there's a lot more research on that. Same with the pollinator work that the city's been doing. Yes. I think in section 5.07 talked about industry clusters. I thought it was cool. There's a lot of stuff I didn't know, so it was… thinking about, but kind of making that broader, talk about clean tech, that could also include ag and climate. term. So… And then Alex also said, Electric Assisted Mobility. So to your last point, since it was last published, electric cars, bikes, and scooters are much more prevalent, and the updated plan, best incorporate, how we use these in our cityscape. For example, allocated space and utilities for charging stations during new construction, how to incorporate these modes of transportation on our multi-use trails.

[52:12] And then her, last point on question one was there's little discussion about our unhoused population and shelters as living spaces. She'd like the updated plan to keep this community in mind, especially as we move to increasing hotter summers with greater wildfire and flooding risk. Yeah, so to add to that, for me, addressing the unhoused population. And the options. And I understand that this is a plan, so maybe at least a 30,000. Great view on that, on perspective, but also… I do think, so… Mental health perspective would be great. And I, to be honest, I skimmed through the plan, and now that I look back and think about your email, I should have clicked on the bolder Future link, which I didn't.

[53:07] That's still time. I'm still time. I'm on my wall. Okay, oh, and then, yeah, and then the, I do think in the past 10 years, the whole, electrification of transportation has been big. And, so to address that. And, not just electric cars, but electric bikes. It'll be interesting to see how all that is addressed on our bike trails, and… Yeah, I'm slowly seeing signs. On bike trails, it says, you know. e-bikes allowed, or, you know, like, on continuity trail. So I'll be interested to see how that works. But, in addition to that, with your point about the dollars being available to help with quantify mitigation.

[54:02] I would love to see some dollars being available for more people to get bikes. I know the state does that, right? But even, like, going down into, like, the sort of slightly as a population of, like, you know, electric bikes were… Take so many cars off the road. We can fund it with my SUV tax. That's fine, we paid for it. My department paid the last two years, and we spent over a million dollars in e-bike incentives, and obviously this year was a little difficult, and so… we talk about what are the funding mechanisms for these types of things, and including, I will just say, that that $1.5 million out of our climate fund goes to wildfire mitigation that pays for those, all of that work that goes on at the local level, but I think your point is… I read on, which is there needs to be strong funding mechanisms and incentives for the behaviors that we want to encourage. Don't even get me started on the most…

[55:01] least popular policy, probably, in the whole world, that I think we should do. that will never happen is meat tax. No, even, even worse. It would never, ever, ever happen anywhere, but you know what? Let it be on the record. If you think about it, it is so much more exciting. I was waiting, like, 5 minutes. It's so much more expensive than just the ham beans. I'm sure there's lots of refrigeration, but… I say… I say it joking, but I wouldn't be upset. One of the things I've just… that I know my team has been thinking about is how do you think about the outcome that you're seeking, and what are the policies that you could put in place, and I just wanted to think about your really excellent recognition around advancements in electrification, if that's the direction we want to go, what are the policies that both incentivize and encourage, but also

[56:08] Think about the limitations on the other things, like there's been discussion about moratoria on, fossil fuel gas stations, locking in fossil fuel infrastructure, or requiring any gas station to have, fast charging. So things like that, I think, are really cool outcomes to be thinking about that could find their way into particular policy or requirements. Yeah. Just wanted to acknowledge that I think that's a really important body of work that you're all bringing up. I wish I had a book like that to read through, scrolling through a PD and physical hard. We have some extra copies, I think. There's some self-under. Internet. A joke. Okay. Do we want to move to question two, or do you guys have… Do you have clarifying? I can link my notes, too, since I just… Yeah, I mean, email us anything that you guys want to, and we'd be more than happy to take that in and sort of dissect it, but this has been really helpful, just the first question alone, there's a lot of different things that I think were taking away. Additional considerations.

[57:11] As we continue to follow up. What's the approach? A lot of what you guys are describing, I will say, is largely in line with what we've been hearing from the community. I mean, it was… for some reason, I was thinking about this when I was driving into work today, that… and you hit it right on the head, that, like, in 2015, so much of the conversation around resilience was around flood resilience, and it's interesting that now, what we're hearing from the community is the same thing. what are we going to do about wildfire resilience, right? And so that has really dominated the conversation as far as resilience goes this time around. So yeah, no, I think this is all really good feedback. The electrification, as well, is something that we've been hearing a lot of attention from the community, making sure that we pay attention to how that has evolved over the last 10 years, continuing to evolve.

[58:00] We can't let the whole flood risk, but we kind of have to. both of them together, like… That was my… that was my thought coming in. It was, man, it was… flood in 2014, and now it's wildfire. There's going to be a flood now. So it's how do we build that resilience across all disasters that our community could potentially… What else is there? Wildfire? Climate-driven, issues we talk about in both shocks and stresses. So shocks are things like, a fire or a flood, extreme heat, and then there are those underlying kind of chronic stresses, which is commutable diseases. So we have water in… in… coming earlier, coming later, in larger quantities, so how do we manage that? We have water standing in places that we didn't previously, more extreme heat, so now we have more waterborne mosquitoes or other communicable diseases. So how do we think about those issues?

[59:00] And then there are these kind of underlying fabric things that happen, so we have a… a fire, and then we have extreme rainfall, and now we have, a lot of debris flowing into our waterways, and going into our infrastructure. So how do our… how do we think about our infrastructure needs, to address some of the change conditions that we have? We also presented this to Council last week. Our ongoing evaluation in terms of heat management is, I think, a really important one, and you heard about this at your last meeting when we start talking about, here's where we are right now, our built environment. Was designed, and our policies were designed for a particular climate that we have moved out of. And so, we are now, like, Pueblo, and moving towards, like, Albuquerque. So, thinking things like reflective roofs, thinking about how we, use asphalt. What… when do we hit that point where we say, we need to look at alternatives to the way we pave our roads, because we're going to have to maintain them differently because of days of heat? Sorry, I'm on a little rant here, but I think that's just such an interesting dynamic that here's where we were in 2015, we just experienced the most catastrophic flood event we'd ever had.

[60:18] we did all of this great work to really strengthen our infrastructure, build community resilience towards floods, and now we're on to a new type of climate-driven disaster. So how do we orient around those kinds of things? And I think heat is going to be the next big one. Yeah. It'd be also interesting… I don't know how… Like, that's tied to so many other things, like soil, and food systems, and food security, it's like. You talked about, kind of. simplifying, but, like, how do you… I think Minneapolis did a good job of, like, looked at their page. You can, like, click, and it's like, here are the related topics. Like, I kind of liked That setup could go to, like.

[61:02] you know, whatever, food systems, you're also brought to, like, climate resilience, so you kind of see how they're connected. And that's actually exactly how we're kind of thinking about… we've been looking at Minneapolis as a framework for how we might reorganize the policies. I think the comp plan's going to look a lot different than it does right now, right? A lot of the same policies will be tweaked or carried forward. There's gonna be some new policies, but the way in which the information is presented is a goal of ours to shift, and Minneapolis is an example, so that if you really do want to learn all about food policy, then you're directed in that way. So hopefully that… That's great. …is an outcome that we can get on. Should you do question 2? Go for it. I'm not as organized as you are. I didn't review the comprehensive plan, but what's coming to mind? Hopefully this is relevant, is, with, with housing. That… would that include, kind of, like, the requirements to, to… when you're…

[62:04] You know, demoing a house that, you know, you take the different, Yep. different material types, and then make sure that they're going to different, you know, being repurposed, you know, the deconstructured… the deconstruction, yeah. I don't know if that's part of the, the housing element within a comprehensive plan framework. Also, with new housing, I don't know if there's any, requirements for, like, low-carbon materials, steel, or… Cement. That's kind of on the radar. And then… Regarding transportation, my goals to electrify. Oh, also with housing, I guess, is, is, you know, like. Encouraging heat pumps or access to clean energy, and then that kind of… connects with the social equity aspect of, you know, are there elements where you have multi-family residential units where they have access to.

[63:05] Yeah, renewable energy, solar energy there. I think economic vitality and linking it to, like, clean tech, I guess that's already mentioned, so I would second that. and I think that's all I have for the two. Are you gonna talk about, some men's coming. Too boulder. And the economic vitality portion of it. So yeah, good question. We've been grappling with that a little bit as a team, really in the context of where does that conversation live? Is it within the comprehensive plan? Is there a policy that specifically calls out Sundance? I don't know. This is a 20-year plan that does get updated every 10 years, and I think our contract with Sundances over the next 10 years or so. But I think there could be some policies or refinement of policies that help shape the overall economic impact and who's benefiting from

[64:09] the economy. Inclusive local economy is one of our focus areas, and so when we have big events that bring economy to Boulder, such as Sundance, I do think that within the comprehensive plan, that there is room for us to point towards who's really benefiting from those economic activities. calling Sundance out specifically and developing a policy around that. I'm not quite sure what that policy would totally get at or say, or whether it would be appropriate to call something so specific out in the comprehensive plan. But like I mentioned, you know, I think the concern probably is, is really who's benefiting from the global impact, economic impact, and I know that those conversations are happening throughout the city organization, more broadly. But as far as how it will ultimately impact the comp plan, I do think that's one example where we may pull it back up just a little bit higher. Because the way I look at it, similar to, like, the business hubs, right? The reason you're bringing business hubs into, you know, into Boulder for the economic vitality of the community.

[65:11] I think I read somewhere that was, like, a biotech hub being planned, or was… was designed, or… right? You know, so there's, you know, so… Those are sort of symbols to the outside world, right? This is what you can do with, you know, these business communities coming here. Similarly, with, like, Sundance, I think it's a great option for us to say, it's great for the economy, but also, how do you Have a sustainable… sustainable large group, like, environmentally sustainable large group of people coming in. I think you did a presentation once where we had those cups, you know, and, you know, the cups that you… we use, and there's a machine, and then you drop the cup in, you know, like a box, you know. So, like, I… I was at,

[66:01] red rocks, and we got beer in the cup, and we walked around looking for the box to put it. We couldn't find it. Well, we couldn't find it, but they gave it to us in that, right? I was like, this is cool. And then, yeah, this weekend we were at Fiddler's Green Amphitheater. They have them, and they have… and you can return them then. And there are people standing right next to the trash can. We put in the wrong trash can if you get up and put it at the right front, right? So… so things like that, I think, would… you know, you're bringing in, I don't know how many thousands of people, so… We're not calling Sundance out, but it's really calling out business hours, we call out, you know, large… you know, we have Boulder Boulder, we have the 4th of July events at Palsa Field, or is coming, whichever band is coming, and then Sundance, it's… You bring up a good point, actually, that sparked an idea, is you may not have to… you may not want to call out this specific event, but you could talk about different types of

[67:03] I don't know, sectors or industries, and… how is participation from an economic perspective, how… is that socially equitable? Are there individuals that are… so when Sundance comes here. How are we gonna get, you know, a broader kind of involvement from different, at different socioeconomic profiles, to participate in that. Is that something? And think about it, it's great because books come in, they bring in their dollars, they spend their dollars here, and then they leave. Right? And so, like, how do we make sure that those dollars trickle down? And I'm sure it's gonna be a huge impact. I'm all for it. It's what companies that… It's not gonna be great, but I'm all for it. And, you know, it's like, you're not… you're not increasing the… Population of older adults are up with that stable community.

[68:04] Mittens. Yeah. How do we manage that in an environmentally sustain stuff? what I hear you saying, and I just want to make sure I have this right, there are two pieces to this. One is. Boulder is going to continue to draw large events, and there are impacts to those events. So how do we mitigate the impacts? How do we think about the policy and regulation that starts to identify, thou shalt do these things when you have an event in Boulder? And then there's the piece about who benefits from these events, and how do we make sure that we are equitable in that regard. And I raise that because a lot of the discussion currently underway with respect to Sundance, in terms of code changes, is making sure that there's consistency across the board when people come into town. What can you rent out? Can you rent your basement? Can you rent a room? How do we create consistency and make sure that people are in a safe location? So I think there's a lot of discussion about how to

[69:15] balance the need and the benefits. So I just want to make sure I have that right, that there's two pieces. And on the impacts piece, there is a lot of discussion going on about not just how do we mitigate the impact of bringing 100,000 people in January, and not… they're not all in one place. They're not all going to Folsom Field. They're here, moving around constantly in different venues. How do we create the new standard for how a community manages those impacts, and you export the learning and say, this is how a big event should be held? So, that's a lot of discussions, Colleen. I mean, thinking of it from, like, a… I go. tactical kind of perspective, like, you think, okay, people are gonna be spending money on hotels, or Airbnbs, restaurants, gonna be buying, you know, retail, you know, entertainment, things like that, and so…

[70:12] Are there opportunities, you know, for catering? You know, would you want to have, like, a minority or women-owned business kind of, like, threshold for catering businesses, or do you want to have, like, training programs so you can get the staff levels to the need for this huge infusion? You know, is that something that could be… We focused on, say, hey, you know, if you… or unemployed, you know, there's a huge, you know, maybe it's temporary, but, you know, could we… could you train individuals, and that could be a launch pad for them to get involved here, and then pivot off of that, you know, find employment elsewhere after the event. On the economic vitality, not… doesn't have to be tied to these events, but,

[71:06] you know, are there, like, car-free days that we… I don't… again, I don't know if this is the plan, but, like, Sunday's Broadway is closed, or whatever, somebody else can decide what street it is, to bring people closer to downtown. Wow, and I can just mentioning community. People are wanting community connection in the focus areas and stuff. So things that we can do that have all these different benefits, like reducing emissions, bringing people together, generally. I think that could be a cool thing. I think, like, San Francisco might do it, or there's… it's Pentagon. Actually, on that note, before I forget, I think that, this was included a lot when I read it, kind of alluding to all the different benefits, but I think there's, like, actual, like, the social value of projects or something. There's, like, actual language around this. That might be too…

[72:02] in the weeds for a community. I don't know if that should be included or not, but I like the idea of, like, talking about all the co-benefits, you know, each thing, so when you talk about economic vitality and closing the roads, for example, if, you know, that was a thing. You talk about the emissions reductions, but you also talk about the community engagement, like, all the different co-benefits. It's just a nice way to explain things to people. I'll put in the plug for the Neighborhood Block Party Fund. So we've had a block party in our neighborhood for the past 3 years, just having a couple weeks ago. It's been great, so the $600 stipend is nice. We do charge, you know, people to come, you know, but we have people bring, like. either a side dish or a dessert, and we got, like, 75 people, at our last one. We had a bouncy house for the kids, and so it was really nice. It was a nice way to, you know… Huh? It's,

[73:00] Glenwood, Grape, Hawthorne, and Vista from 19th to 23rd Street, so… It was great, so I was really glad that that's available, and anyway, we've been putting it to good use. Next question, too. Trade-offs. This… this is not gonna be news to you guys. There's trade-offs of climate regulations and building housing. I don't know. I feel torn, personally. I have no idea how you guys, like, how we should think about this, but I do think… even though I want, like, the highest of environmental standards, like, that comes with a huge cost to building. So, obviously, Plan talked about this a lot, but… Plus one, a transit-oriented development, It comes to building in certain areas with certain ways we can… Make that easier and reduce the cost, like…

[74:00] As much as I love all the bells and whistles, I also love having enough housing, for our community, so… Alex actually also talked about this. She said the intersection between environmental priorities is with almost all other community values. Potential trade-off examples can include a desire to have walkability in public transportation versus housing access and affordability, or installation of solar fields, versus land use designations. So… one thing I thought… I mean, you guys probably already knew this. So… but, like, how do we engage the developers in all the conversations, especially ones that are probably already maybe build more sustainably, like green builders, but, like, everyone, like. Have them really… She's like, can you sit down with a budget and say, like, okay, we'll get rid of the ventilated indoor bike parking if you do this affordable housing, or like, I don't know.

[75:04] How to make that more scalable, but… working really closely with them, as I mentioned already too, but… The other… Oh, trade-off. Wait, sorry, my notes are unclear. Oh, around social equity and environmental priorities. So, yeah, again, a lot of those costs come… to people who can afford them less when it comes to, kind of, a vulnerability in low-income communities. Just the cost of environmental upgrades, and then there's a whole, like, renter versus owner. Lots of issues there, and kind of really, maybe. How do we center and include renters in a plan that's more about, like, builders and land use? I can't remember if it was mentioned, maybe, like, once or something in the current plan. But making sure that, like, those climate…

[76:03] Resilience benefits can get to even to renters, it can… to people. I'll need the mouse. And then… that was already talked about. Oh. Similar with the Hyatt stuff, like… Sustainability perspective, sleeping up. out, which we can't totally build out, but building and more dense infill, things like that, already talks about this, you know, making… Exceptions. You can get an extra story if you do. Whatever, sustainability, green infrastructure thing. Parking minimums, that's something that… or Council's doing now, should that be included in the plan? And then… I don't know… How… this is actually a question. Obviously, Area 3… Not the rural one, but the other one. Yeah.

[77:04] That's a whole separate conversation, Chris, right? But that doesn't… we don't have to… Yes and no. More so on the yes and no. Yeah, no, it's very much of a separate process. I will say, though, that The current comprehensive plan sort of outlines what that process should look like. We've completed the first, I think, two steps of that process, so we've done our urban services analysis for Area 3 Planning Reserve. we will be bringing forward to December, or to City Council in December, what we're calling the Community Needs Assessment. So part of what's described in the back of the comp plan right now is, before we were to make a decision, or City Council would make a decision on potentially expanding services to the Planning Reserve, we need to identify what the community need is. So that's part of the question that we've been asking the community through the comprehensive planning process, is just really trying to understand and define what is that community need, so that then we can bring that forward to City Council in December, and make a decision about whether we should continue to explore options in the planning department.

[78:08] So, in some ways. the analysis behind it has happened precursor to the comp plan update. As part of the comp plan update, we're asking the community, what is the community need? Then we'll do some assessment and ask the decision makers whether that is enough of a community need for us to potentially expand that up to the reserve. But I imagine Basic… what's caused. Then say there was need, and it's like, okay, we're gonna develop it. comp plan as well, would kind of tailor… would design it, so… not design it, but, like, it would have to follow the principles in the plan, basically. So, as the plan talks about, like, 15-minute neighborhoods, or whatever, maybe don't call it that, whatever you call it. it would kind of follow those principles. It would. It very much would follow the principles. I mean, you're thinking in the exact way we I'd like to use the comprehensive plan. It guides an overall vision, really citywide, but in some areas, you know, specifically. I will say, though, that, you know, if we do receive direction to potentially look further into the planning reserve.

[79:11] My estimation is that… well, for one, that is many, many years down the road before we could actually see anything happen, but… one of the first implementation steps for us as a staff team would be to probably develop some community or an area plan specific for that area. So, like, yeah, certainly the comprehensive plan would guide the overall vision for the planning reserve, but that's one of those areas of town where we anticipate more change than other areas, and so we would go in and have a community conversation, really, about what the future of the reserve looks like. It's… On this second question, I wanted to give you a little bit, and this has been extremely helpful, and I really appreciate what you're all bringing forth, some really interesting stuff. it's an obvious one we think about when people consider higher and best use. It automatically creates a tension, so…

[80:07] Ag versus housing. Density versus green space, biodiversity and ecosystem preservation, or flood mitigation, ASOC. So, the reason that I felt it was important to ask this question is, moving forward, what are some of those additional emerging tensions that we're starting to see? Because as you develop policy around them, what has been fascinating, at least from my perspective, is that people on both sides of an argument, so whether it's density versus green space, they'll continue to weaponize sustainability and environment to argue their point, and so trying to get ahead of that a little bit, and so we can start being a little bit more intentional in thinking about the impacts of policy decisions. Where are those tensions going to exist? Doesn't mean that we can solve them, but it gives us a jumping-off place, I think, to start having community conversation to say.

[81:02] you can't have it all ways, all of the time. What are our values as a community, and how do we start to balance those things? And at least naming them. Because otherwise, like, the housing density issue you brought up continues to be this… a really, really tricky issue for people to talk about. And for staff, I think it's helpful to know that, to name it, and then be able to approach it in a way that's very pragmatic, to say, we have to make some trade-off decisions, and the policies need to support the direction that we want to go. So… But you're all hitting it. I just wanted to say that out loud. Yeah, that's… it's hard. I mean, I do think there's… to be the person who brings up the IPCC report, but, like, there's actually data, like, how do we point to existing data around debunking some of them. Some are myths, some are not, but, like, you know, there's data around the importance of density and kind of a lot of things that the plant does currently talk about to support a climate perspective, and so maybe trying to, like.

[82:14] use that. Not that that's, like, persuasive to people ever using data, but, I do think it's important. And then the other ones, you know, things like… yeah, I think ag is obviously a big one, but, like. things like agrovoltaics. How can we actually be able to, you know, like, increase our renewable energy generation while still, like, actually potentially taking better care of our soil and our land? I think where it gets a little tricky is this idea of, like, neighborhood character, which was mentioned in there, but that feels pretty vague to me, and where you could really, like, you know, I wrote down, like, a trade-off could be, like, transit-oriented development versus, like, neighborhood character.

[83:03] I'm sure people use that to be cool. just say they don't want something in an area. So… Taking out that language could be great, and solve some of those trade-offs. the ticket, and I'm sure there's other things I checked that, too, even this week. Anything that's a little bit wishy-washy, kind of hitting. There's a lot of, primarily, predominantly types of words. Yeah. A lot of our policies in that has made it a bit difficult, especially for, you know. our decision makers, but also some of our staff who use the comprehensive plan in reviewing development review projects. Right. Can I ask, real quick, IPPC, did I get that right? Oh, interesting panel on climate change. IPCC. IPCC. Did I get that right? It is. Yeah, okay, great. Sounds cool, I'm gonna look into it. And I can send you some of the research, that's being referenced. Council, had a similar question about how do we think about, density

[84:12] and land use, and it was really in respect to the Climate Action Plan, and the update that we're doing there, and how it will actually capture and reference land use, and so I'm happy to send you the response that I provided Council at that time, is how we think about it. That'd be awesome. Yeah, they have a lot of data, basically, on land use. private iPads. We love data. Great. Oh, another trade-off is… Looking at the WUI for BioResk, like… What does it look like to build new houses in areas that I know are risky? It's just something that's gonna come up. One of the things that I also heard you say, and I… again, I'm just kind of checking as we think about the feedback.

[85:05] multiple times is maximizing flexibility. You talked about rebuild, and could our regulations allow us to be more flexible in terms of what gets rebuilt? And so, to me, that's a connection to the role that form-based code perhaps plays, and when it's implemented. I think that's a really important one. We talk about things like our requirements for parking structures, but can we think about parking structures that are more modular? So. if you have a big parking garage, and people move away from owning cars who go to more TMCs, can you actually take a portion of that garage away, and then actually utilize it for housing or whatever else? Flexibility seems to be a theme that I at least heard from you, because it is such a long and kind of… I don't say stagnant in a negative way, but a plan that is kind of set for a good amount of time. Right.

[86:01] Yeah, I thought of that, too. It mentions somewhere about, like. we're, like, into innovation. Like, what does that mean? You know, like, that felt really vague, but, like, to me, innovation is, like, very quick-moving and iterative, and, yeah, so… and that could be another place that flexibility ties into our, like… Desire for being innovative. So, question, so we have the existing Portal Valley Comprehensive plan, right? And, to sell the same items field. Okay, so I guess it's Boulder County that's putting up Iris fields, you know? I think that I was like… And it's going for housing, like… do just someone look and say, well, this is what our comprehensive plan is trying to achieve, and hence we're going to go down this route or that route? Is that how the document tends to get used? Yes, at a pretty high level. The current land use designation on that property is public, which honestly is one of our more, if not the most limiting land use designations, so it's not really that flexible, really quite at all.

[87:12] But yeah, I mean, we would look across all parts of town, not just Iris ball fields, but really kind of understand what the land use should most appropriately be on that parcel. And we look at a lot of different things, and making that determination where the surrounding use is, what's the character of the neighborhood, what's the density in the surrounding area. I do know… as far as the county site goes, though, we do have a separate process called the community change request process, which is actually kind of a wild thing. Anybody in the… community, whether you live in Boulder or not, can propose a request for a revision. Whether it be a land use map change, whether it be a change to the service area boundary, or any kind of policy or text change within the comp plan. And so… Within the comp plan? Within the comp plan, yeah. And that only happens every 10 years during the… Oh, okay. No, I stand correct. It happens at every update, 5 years or 10 years.

[88:06] But we have received an application from the county, for a land use change request on the iris ball fields. what we do know is that they have it up for bid right now, that they're taking bids on the sale of the property. That's really kind of all we know. I think that they're supposed to close the bids in, like, 6 weeks or so. But what we will do as a staff team is we'll assess that land use change request for that property, and we're getting them for all sorts of properties throughout the community, not just the ball fields. But we'll assess that proposal that they submitted to us, along with all of our other proposals, and… We have a screening matrix that will be assessing all of these applications through, and then taking those recommendations forward to Planning Board and City Council in January. And that recommendation will not include a land use designation for that property. What it will include is a recommendation on which of these applications we should move forward and do more analysis around. Because we do… we'll get some requests that are…

[89:08] develop an area plan for the planning reserve, right? And that's not within the scope or the timeline that we feel like we could do a good job within the comprehensive plan update. So, ultimately, that January hearing will be, yes, these are worth exploring more, and then we would go in and do more detailed analysis on those applications, and then we would make a staff recommendation on what that land use should be as part of the adopted or the proposed Draft plan. That was a lot. It's kind of a complicated process. But certainly, you know, we're looking at the iris ball fields and a multitude of opportunity sites. I'm wondering if the decisions are driven by the comprehensive plan. Is that… Look, yeah, I mean, they are what can be allowed on that property, what the uses are that would be allowed, whether it be housing, whether it remains the ball fields, whether it becomes an entirely different use that we, the community ultimately envisions for the

[90:06] The property, the comprehensive plan would provide direction on that. Interesting to see what that turns out to be. Yeah. To move on to question 3? The only thing I could think of is, in terms of affordability, I would assume that's kind of connected to… Individuals that are employed, like, as firefighters, or police, or others. you know. Other individuals that, you know, would need… Housing within the community that they serve. and, I always kind of grapple a little bit with, like. The emphasis on, we need to make more affordable.

[91:00] So I'm like, it's never going to be affordable. There's just no way, you know, and I feel fine with calling that out. I'm like, it's based on market demand. I mean, you're gonna have to change your open space boundary, like, there's all… but that is what makes Boulder unique, and not everyone can… here, just like everyone can't live in New York City, so I'm fine with, like, saying, okay, you know, there's limits on what can be done, but we do want to have affordable housing for those individuals that need to be in the community overall. And then I like the client visit resilience and In equity, of making sure that That there's a… you know, they have a voice in how they are… Maybe not a voice, but consideration is made for those individuals, how they can be impacted disproportionately by wildfires or flooding or other, you know, climate hazards.

[92:03] Just making sure that they, That they're… They're, you know, we consider them in the… in the evaluation. To the point. Is there, like… I know we have a lot already, for affordable housing, like. Could it be, like, a lottery for a… You know, if you're a teacher or you're a firefighter, like, it's… Wonderful people we need. To ensure that they… I know that's complicated, they quit their job, whatever, I don't know how to work, but… I think there are separate categories, right? Oh, there are. For BHP. Yeah, yeah, okay, sorry. Yeah. Good. For me, what stands out in number 3 is, Activable access to nature, right? And I just feel like… Different communities used or approached nature in different ways.

[93:01] So, simple things like, you know. putting a bench close to a pond or a leg, where is… I think the predominant view in Boulder is no, absolutely no. But… There are communities where I prefer to just go sit on the benches and… can join me off the links on this. It's just those kind of, like, how different communities… use and axis nature. It's, I mean, that, that, I would love to see that, more of that. Here's another, potentially… Not everyone will like, but I do think… I think it'd be good to leave room for, I know it said somewhere in there, like, access to nature, you know, making… which I am very much for, but…

[94:02] potentially someday, like, charging people who don't live in Boulder County to use their open space, and that's a little stuff that's not gonna, like, say that in this plan, but, like, leaving the language broad enough. So that that could happen. I think it's a good idea, as we are tightening. I think there's a bit of that, right? And so the… County parks? State parks? Did the paper parking up on Flagstaff and stuff, but… Yeah, like, you know, if you're, if you're… yeah, yeah, right, right, that's where I've seen it, okay, you're right. But yeah, just, like, some sort of, like, how do we recoup money from forests and Logano area. I'd just be careful. I'd just worry if we had language that was, like, too inclusive, maybe we wouldn't be able to pass something like that. Yeah, this one's tricky. It's so important. And again, I said, like, making sure that money, like the 2K for fire stuff, that's all just going to people who need it most, and kind of really prioritizing that. I think there's one section, and I can't remember what it was.

[95:08] But it actually said, like, first we're gonna prioritize this, and then we're gonna prioritize this, and then this. It was, like, the one random place that did this, and I thought it was such a good idea of, like. Okay, if you're doing a flood… prone mitigation or something, you know, like, taking into account different types of communities and prioritizing, not just, like, the wealthiest communities or whatever. So for, like, stormwater or, like, park infrastructure or access to green space, like. Not that we're gonna, like, have much more new stuff like that, but, like, calling out in… In that, like, how you… How you approach it, basically, in terms of who gets conversation to Greenwood, that's for sure. I think we already do this, but, like.

[96:00] Affordable housing, you said, you know. 10%, and then transportation right to development. And then, a lot of work with the nature-based climate solutions teams around tree canopy. I think that's also already prioritizing this, but making sure, like. That's where a lot of our resources are going when it comes to planting new trees and caring for Different green infrastructure that exists or needs to exist. Just… Starting with the communities that mean it most. But I do think we are going to do a good job of that, but I don't think it's… I don't think any… or a… A lot of our nature-based climate solutions work That's new, I think, as it always… Included in here, so making sure that that stuff is mapped in here broadly is a good idea, too. I wish I had more ideas for that section. Well, I'm realizing that this is kind of an unfair question.

[97:02] But it also makes me think that it's… I'm glad that we asked it, because I think it's… when we come back and you have a little bit of a more refined, here's the set of policies and recommendations, it's a good test to say, do these recommendations kind of follow the principle of accessibility for all? Are there equity issues associated Are they built or designed in a way to really maximize the things that you're saying? So I think it's actually really good to kind of get a start at it, and then we can come back and maybe do a touchpoint on these kinds of questions when we're back in March. Is that right, Marge? Yeah, yeah, and that's… that's a really good point, I'm glad you bring it up. And one of the ways that we're approaching a lot of our thinking as we continue to develop and refine policy in the overall land use framework approach is we're asking ourselves the question, who's benefiting and who's being burdened by this choice, right? And so that's… Information that we'd be happy to bring back to this board. Certainly, we'll be including it with a lot of our other conversations with Council. We've received a lot of feedback around the same sort of concept, is being really critical and thinking about who really is benefiting.

[98:11] From these choices, and who may be burdened. Yes, thank John. I'll be honest, it's fun, it's a big job, it's a lot of conversation, but this is where we get to make the most amount of change in our community, and we have a lot of conversations with people who are really passionate about our community, and so… I'd rather be out working on big plans, thinking comp plan, big policy picture stuff, you know, than maybe developing a specific developer review project, so it's tough for me. Do you feel like the last… Do you… how long have you been in the city? I started halfway through the previous update in 2015. And have you seen the city shift based on the last update of the comp plan? Like, do you think it's working? Ugh.

[99:02] That might be a bit of an unfair question, too. Yeah, I mean, I do. I think there's been a lot of code updates and regulations that have been updated. A lot of the work that Jonathan's team has really pushed forward is outlined in the 2015 comp plan. Yeah. So I would say in particular around our climate resilience, that's probably where I think we've had the most amount of a push forward. But we're continuing to hear desires to push it even further, and that, like, now raises the time for local urgent action as it relates to these things, and so, We've done a lot. I don't think the job will ever be tough, quite frankly. there are challenges that, you know, to your point, we're always going to be facing. Providing affordable housing is, I think, going to be one of those concerns, so it will… find its way in almost every comp plan update that we do, I think, and we do our best to make as much progress as we can upon it. But the comp plan, I don't think, is the silver bullet in solving the community's housing.

[100:04] problems right now. Yeah. Did I miss it, or was there… was there a summary on the… of the previous plan? Is there, like, a summary page, a one-pager, two-pager? Just 175 patients. Okay, so my… like, I… when I was given the task, so I scheduled, like, today at 4pm, I'm gonna go, and I'm, like, scrolling up and down, looking for that aspect. That's a good point, though, I mean… It would be. Like, what you… slide would make a great one-pager, that one, with the… Yeah, isn't that how people use, like, AI now? You plug in the plan and say, summarize. Don't do that. You do bring up a good point, and I'll throw this out there, too, that,

[101:00] I don't remember maybe what you guys do, what the tool is called, where you can send a document, or a book, or anything into AI, and it'll assess, like, what grade level reading this is at. So anyways, the current comp plan's at 15 years old, I think, is the reading level, or no, grade… grade, like, a junior in college. So not 15, not middle school now. For sure. I didn't know what 15th grade was. But it's at a college reading level, and our goal is to get this down to, like, the 8th grade. Yes. It would be nice to have, like, a lot more pictures. Yeah. There's a lot more. I don't know, for some reason, I feel like among all the plans I've read, the parks plan seemed like it was the most accessible job, right? I don't know if that was, like, the first plan I read, and I was not bored out of my mind, but that was definitely more accessible, but it would really be nice to have, like, a one-page toothpaste summary for me.

[102:02] Diamond. We'll be sure there's an executive summary. There you go. Thank you. For example, Sylvia's here. Yeah, Copilot will do it for you. It'll speed the 220 pages in. Do you all feel… is there anything that's burning? Any other questions that came up for you that, we could take advantage of the time with the board? Do you feel like this is a good start to digest? This is really helpful. Really, you know, like I mentioned, now this is our first opportunity to interact with Google as a whole. So the conversation was fun, it was informative, it was very well aligned with things that we're hearing from the community, from planning board, from Council, I imagine from some of our other advisory boards, too, as those conversations occur.

[103:04] So no, I don't know that I have any questions. If you guys do, Zia and Tucker, feel free to ask. But no, we're very much looking forward to continuing to iterate, use this feedback as we continue to develop the policies and the overall land use approach. And, yeah, we'll be back in March, and hopefully, you know, you all have an opportunity to really kind of dig into the policies and the land use map that we're proposing, and as Jonathan had said, I think maybe it might be worth us revisiting some of these questions as we look at the draft plan come March, and really ensure that some of the conversation we had tonight is accurately reflected in what we're going to propose with the draft plan. If you guys have any other questions for us, please do feel free to reach out. Within the slide deck, there was the project email address. If you have any other additional feedback, you can send it there, you can send it to Jonathan, Jonathan will pass it off to us. And then I think the last thing that I would ask of you is to continue to be champions and advocates for this process, this plan, its outcomes.

[104:12] get the word out. We have a lot of engagement coming up throughout the month of September. I mentioned, you know, we're going to have a really big and kind of unique opportunity for the community to iterate with us, do the work. On a map, and so if you guys can all be champions for that, and help us get the word out to your neighbors, to your friends, other community members, we very much appreciate that. On average, how many people attend these events? That's a tough question, because we kind of design our events to accommodate a lot of different audiences and size of groups. We've gone out and done pop-up events at the farmer's Market, where we've had 40, 50 people come by. We've done Bike to Work Day, We've had, you know, your more traditional city-sponsored or, say, open house with big boards everywhere. We've done 3 of those now. I think the kickoff, one on April 12th, and then we'll do this one on September 9th.

[105:07] Between 80 and 120 people is typically what we'll get for an event like that. You can help us get up to, like, 150 or 100. And when you do the outreach, do you typically… Use the… the term comprehensive plan. Or do you… have there been other, like, suggested ideas? Because I'm just curious, like, how many people know what a comprehensive plan is versus, like. what we want Boulder to be for us, or, you know, something, like, a little bit more, you know… Relatable. Yeah, like, how can the city, you know, what do we want the city to be? I don't know, something that, you know, people would naturally kind of… Yeah. you know, if you're familiar with. That's good feedback. We get stuck in our planner brains, knowledge, that we throw out there, but Tucker actually set us up so extraordinarily well at the beginning of the project. He developed the branding for the entire project, and we developed that brand so that people do know what they're looking at, what they're engaged with. So, what do we call it? A Boulder Future is sort of the slogan for the project. I like that, that's great.

[106:16] Instead of the Polar Valley Comprehensive Plan, it's a bolder future. And as we describe this project and processes to the public, we try and frame it in that type of way. Yeah, I would just think of, like. you know, outside of the planet world, like, I don't know how many people are familiar with the term comprehensive plan, so I would recommend using some other networks. So people kind of know. I mean, that could be, like, as a sub. Subtext, but, you know. And then one other question real quick. I assume that, I mean, Boulder is pretty much… I always think Boulder and Boulder County are pretty much built out, so how much, in terms of, like, land use and zoning changes, actually happened? Like, over time, is it very frequent? Is it, like…

[107:02] They occur. We'll have zoning changes. Land use changes occur. A lot of them will occur with the An annexation proposal, typically. Or a site review. But we are… I don't know if it's fair to say we're built out. There are infill opportunities within the city, opportunity sites where we think we can get additional housing or additional mixed-use community amenities. I don't have a number, necessarily, either that I could describe that really kind of sets out, you know, how much change there still is, or how much… how many applications we get on an annual basis, or how many potential applications We can get… I will say, though, that with this new land use framework, the idea is to have less of those, that there's flexibility built into these designations, so that we're not dictating the specific outcome on a parcel, but that there's…

[108:02] slew of options that could potentially occur. There's a bucket of outcomes, within this land use framework, and that's really geared towards providing our community more compliance. From a lot of different angles, over the next… Excellent. Thank you, Des. Thank you. It was nice to meet you, Paul. I've heard great things about this board. You sound surprised. We are surprised. We'll take a cookie, and seriously, thanks to the three of you for taking the time tonight. I hope this was useful. It seemed like it was a fruitful conversation. Obviously, I'm going to take some things back for our team, too. We have a big debrief tomorrow, so this information will be… being shared with the broader context of our team, and… Don't forget the meat tax. Twice the cost. You're on record now.

[109:14] Okay, Council Preview. Yeah, thanks. We can do this pretty quickly. I just wanted to signal that there are a few things that are upcoming, during aligning with some of your, meeting. conversations. One thing, if you looked at the packet, I just want to signal on September 25th, there's just been a little bit of a change for that meeting. We are going to be talking about the wildfire resilience work that we've been doing. It was something that Council really wanted to see sooner than later. That actually sets us up really nicely, because on October 9th, we're going back for the road adoption on the landscaping, the water-wise and fire-wise landscape… landscaping requirements that we talked about with you all. So there's going to be, two meetings back-to-back that are really focused on wildfires, so obviously it was the theme tonight, but now we can start to see how those policies and regulations are really starting to shape. But again, that first conversation is more of a…

[110:11] what's in flight? We've spent the last, two years really building the architecture of our wildfire resilience work, in terms of the programming, the staff teams, the regulations. Now, where are we headed? What are the concerns and issues that we need to start thinking about moving forward? So I think that'll be a really important topic for you all. And then, looking at Heather, I'm trying to remember what our October, topic is. Brett's gonna be here, I believe. It's the Water Wise Landscaping. No, that's okay, it's okay. And while Heather's looking that up, I did just want to flag this is on your agenda, that your next meeting… Thank you. …is scheduled on October 1st, And wanted to see if the board would be interested in moving, because there is that conflict with YMC Board. October. Oh, sure to move it. Yes.

[111:07] At the feed, but… Up to you guys. I think we should. Hang on, don't remind me to… October 8th would be the recommendation. So that actually is required for the book. Oh, we can't vote on this then, though. Well, I think we can. I mean, you do have a quorum with… yeah, a majority, I think, would be extremely soon. evening. We'll get a second. Great. Does that work for you? Sorry. Okay, we're gonna move to October 8th, does that work? Yes. October 8th. Let me check here, thank you for… sorry, I was lost in my thoughts there. No problem.

[112:00] That works for me. Great. Thanks. Appreciate that. So I just pointed a few things together there. But then, just continuing on to 8C, if you need a… reminder, there is this kind of loose-knit group of environmental, based boards in the Front Range. I think they are kind of calling it themselves, creatively, the Front Range Regional Sustainability Council. The next meeting is scheduled for September 10th, and I believe it's going to be in… I think that one may be virtual. It is virtual, and we're going to be presenting, myself and some of my staff team are going to be presenting on metrics. Again, I would just offer it up, This is something that Hernan had really championed to try to be part of. It was something that we helped shape early on. Whether or not you all have an interest and have availability, that's certainly up to you. No commitment to be there, but just now, I'm happy to report back after that meeting. Did they, like, email us a link or something? They did. We can forward that out again. I think it's been a little

[113:14] bit haphazard on who gets it and who doesn't. But I will make sure that you're all accurately on their list. Future. So that was just an announcement, don't need any, like, who's gonna be there or anything like that, but I think you're right, Heather, that one is virtual. To answer your question about October's topics, we've got the Decertification Risk Assessment, if ready. Resilient Landscapes Challenge. And then, potentially, we might be bringing the Climate Action Plan update. We're still weighing When that will be ready, and what feedback is needed from us. Alright, sounds. Okay, great. Cool. Thanks for sending this stuff ahead of time, that was helpful. Yeah.

[114:05] Yeah, and all the victims of today's releases. Stick a lot. There's a lot of me. I was actually more impressed with that than I thought it was gonna be. With the food plan. I was like, oh, this is actually great. Adjour… a motion to adjourn. Second. Great. Nice. Thank you. Good job. Thanks, John. Wonderful. That's great. Yeah, I've learned so much of you.