February 4, 2026 — Environmental Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:17] When do you interview people for our board? I'm sorry? When do you interview people for… We had our first round today. Oh, you did? I'm gonna run somewhere else, so I don't eat more of them. I think we did… 8? 7? I'm almost trapped at 15 hours. One! Block. We had 13 Africans. Oh, okay. On these parts, on each part. Boom. I'm sorry! Well, so I was appointed for another one year, and they did ask me if I wanted to apply again, but I'm going to be going to get my MBA. I'm still deciding, but I'll let you know what's like this.

[1:04] I have one first thought I might hear back from, so… Yeah, that's exciting. We are at 6 o'clock, so, we can get started whenever all of you are ready. Relief. Sweet. Motion to… Start? I don't have my rules in front of me. Seconded. Great. Heather, could you please share our guidelines? Like… All right, welcome everyone to the February EAB meeting, the Environmental Advisory Board meeting. My name is Heather Sandin, and I'll be serving as tonight's technical host. And my screen keeps flipping on me, so please bear with me while I try to figure out which display is which.

[2:09] Right. The City has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive, meaningful, and inclusive civic conversations. This vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members, staff, and board members, 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 the website seen on your screen, boulderColorado.gov forward slash services 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.

[3:09] Currently, only audio testimony is permitted online. No attendee shall disrupt, disturb, or otherwise impede the orderly conduct of any 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 physical or virtual meeting room, or refrain from addressing the board. Only one person at a time may speak during open comment, unless an accommodation, like an interpreter, is required. 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 racial epithets based on race, gender, or religion, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the meaning will not be tolerated. Because we do not have registration for open and public comment tonight, you can indicate you would like to participate by using the raise hand function.

[4:06] The raise hand button is in the participant box, which can be found in the menu by hovering over the top or the bottom of your screen, and then clicking on the participant icon. When the box opens, you will see the raise hand button at the bottom. By clicking that button, you can indicate you would like to participate in open or public comment. If you have joined us by phone, you can press star 9 to raise your hand. Alright, I don't see any… Guess. For public comment. Is that correct? They do not either. Okay, so, motion to approve the minutes from last… December. Second. Great.

[5:04] I don't have the agenda in front of me. I'm gonna guess over to you, Jonathan. Thanks, Hannah. Yep, I'll pick it up from here on your first discussion item tonight. For the record, Jonathan Cohen with Climate Initiatives. So I'm just gonna tee this up briefly, that way I don't run the risk of saying all of the great things that I know our guest is going to say, but… It's been a little… a little bit of time since the board has had a discussion around the city's policy work broadly, specifically our policy agenda, and a bit of a briefing on what guides, what's the process to really update that policy agenda, and then, more importantly, how it's used. That's a really critical conversation, I think, for the board to be aware of. And so I'm really ecstatic and super excited to have Heather Stauffer here. She is our Intergovernmental Affairs Officer. She hit the ground running. If you might remember, Carl Castillo, our former Policy Advisor, had visited with the board a couple of times, but I'm just so delighted to introduce you to Heather tonight. It was one of the purposes of scheduling this item.

[6:14] And it's very timely, too, because Heather's going to be talking with City Council tomorrow night about the update to the policy agenda. I want to just make one important point also. This is one area that the board might assume would come to you for input. The difference with the policy statement is that, as far as the policy agenda, is that the City Council has their own committee called the IGA, and I know Heather will talk about that, so they actually step down a little bit and spend some time really digging into what What are the things that we want to update each year? What are the priorities that we have as an organization? And I know Heather does a fantastic job of explaining how we use this moving forward. So, Heather, hopefully that is a good enough tee-up for you, but I'm just so thankful you could be here tonight and share some of your experience, and then obviously talk through some of the details of the policy agenda.

[7:10] Yeah, thank you so much, Jonathan. It's a pleasure to be here, and thank you for accommodating me virtually. I always prefer to be in person, but tonight it just didn't work out with childcare, so appreciate you guys. accommodating that. I'm going to share my screen really quick, and let's hope it… it goes as smooth as last time, but, Here we go… We're gonna share… And then we're going to… Present… Okay, can you guys see my presentation? Excellent. But where you're… it's in your notes view, so you can… switch. It's okay. The complete opposite of last vote.

[8:02] So, alright. There we go. How's that? Better? Yes. Okay, excellent. Well, thank you, Jonathan, for that wonderful introduction. My name's Heather Stauffer, I'm the Intergovernmental Affairs Officer for the City. I joined the City in August of last year, however, I have been involved with municipalities for the past 6-7 years, through work at the Colorado Municipal League, where I, manage the advocacy team there. So, I'm no stranger to municipal issues. One of the issues that I covered very briefly was sustainability, so I got to dabble in some of this work a bit. Beforehand, but definitely, taking on a new, set of climate and sustainability goals here at the city, so it's very exciting for me. So, I wanted to give an overview of the City's policy process, how we make decisions, and how those decisions translate into action, as Jonathan mentioned. I also wanted to provide the committee with an overview of the changes to the 2026 policy statement, as well as some anticipated changes that we'll be considering tomorrow evening at Council.

[9:19] And then I wanted to just briefly go over a few state bills that we're watching, or we've taken positions on. The state, convened the legislature on January 14th, so they're really starting work in earnest now, that it's February. So we're starting to see more bills drop, starting to follow bills and take positions, so we'll talk a little bit about that at the end. So, just briefly, this is our city advocacy team. There's probably a combination of new and familiar faces here for some of you. Obviously, my own is a new face. In addition to myself, internally at the City, Megs Finnelli, helps me with a lot of the advocacy work, as well as Megan Wilson Outcult.

[10:06] Megan Wilson Outcall is actually part of our water team, a water quality manager, and she, has taken an interest in advocacy, so she is helping me out this year, in addition to her regular full-time job. So I'm very grateful for their help internally. And then we also have our lobbying teams, which support our efforts. So, Will Coyne is the man in the center there, with Headwater Strategies. And he, manages our, legislative portfolio at the State Capitol. And then we have Christian Chin and Brett Garson with Smith & Garson at our lobbyists at the federal level in DC. So those three are on the ground, as our lobbyists, and they… I know that Will is at the Capitol. every day, which is important to make sure that we're up to date, and legislation moves very quickly, so we just need someone to be there all the time. So they're an important part of the team.

[11:02] I've included City Council as part of the advocacy team. This is obviously not an updated picture, so I apologize, it's the only one I have. But I included them because they do play a major role in the City's advocacy efforts. Because of their position, their voices, and their relationships, they really amplify our advocacy efforts and our message at the City. And then, of course, we have, as Jonathan mentioned, our Intergovernmental Affairs Committee, which I work directly with, which comprises, it's three, I'm sorry, four members of Council. So this year, it's, Mayor Brockett, Council Member Benjamin, Councilmember Marquist, and then Councilmember Spear, is our newest addition on that Intergovernmental Affairs Committee. So, I wanted to highlight, some of our advocacy partners that we work with outside the city. These are really valuable, partnerships, and it allows us to really amplify our advocacy messages when we're, advocating with a group, rather than just on behalf of the city. So, CC4CA is one that I'm sure most of you are familiar with.

[12:17] We also partner, very closely with National League of Cities, Metro Mayor's Caucus, the Colorado Municipal League, and Dr. Cogg, and there's several others. Northwest Mayors and Commissioners Coalition, the MCC, many, many others as well. And those partnerships are one of the aspects that, of the city advocacy that I manage as well. So, purpose and use of the 2026 policy statement. Our policy statement really creates a framework that's intended to provide clear guidance for staff and council, and as well, it sets clear expectations for the community on how the city is going to handle various issues and topics that we encounter on the regional, state, or federal levels. So it's really important

[13:11] part of our messaging, our policies, and it really guides everything. Its intent is to ensure that consistent decision-making is happening around issues, and consistent messaging is present in the advocacy space. There's nothing worse than an organization that has several different messages on specific advocacy or a bill. It confuses things, so the policy statement is really there to ensure that we're all rowing in the same direction, we're all speaking, you know, with the same voice. One of the key benefits of having a policy statement like the one that we do in Boulder is that, staff can use it as a guide, so that allows for quick response time. That empowers me to take positions on behalf of the city, which

[14:07] as opposed to having to go to Council for every single bill. So that is crucial to be able to respond quickly. As many of you know, legislation moves very quickly. So, the fact that we have this policy statement allows us to really be responsive to what's happening around us. It also ensures that the majority of our political capital, we are using on identified priorities. It's very easy within a municipality, because we cover a ton of topics. to want to respond and want to use political capital on every single thing that touches the city. But by identifying some policy priorities up front, we ensure that we are using that political capital on identified priorities from the city.

[15:00] So my team here in the city advocacy team, you'll see in the center, we kind of act as the hub for all things advocacy-related in the city. We make strategic decisions on policies that we see coming from regional, state, and federal levels. And then, as I mentioned, using the policy statement, we also obviously take direction from Council through the IGA committee and the wider council. and city leadership as well. We work to build coalitions and then strategic partnerships that benefit the city. And then we also do a fair bit of tracking legislation, and mobilizing timely responses. So you'll see here on the side of this slide, these are some of our regional, state, and federal entities that we work with on a regular basis. So how we take positions on legislation. Once a bill, for example, has been identified, I will review that within the context of the policy statement. If there is sufficient language to guide our position as a city, I will start developing strategy around how we want to approach that bill or policy. I can also take a bill or policy to the IGA committee.

[16:18] And vice versa, they can ask to hear and request to hear about certain bills, and they can provide direction on those bills or policies. If there's a particularly contentious issue, they may decide that they want to elevate that to the entire Council for discussion. Tomorrow is a really great example of one such issue, where we will be talking about House Bill 1001, which is the Home Act and land use issues. So, the IGA committee intentionally elevated that issue to the entire Council, recognizing that there was a lot of political sensitivity, and the history, kind of, of contentious land use issues within the legislature and within the council. So tomorrow, we will be discussing, that bill with the entire Council, and hopefully taking the position or receiving some direction from Council on how they'd like to

[17:16] address that. But that happens from time to time. I understand from Carl, since this is my first year, that most of the decisions happen within the IGA committee, and only in very few circumstances do we elevate to the entire Council when it's particularly contentious. So, how the policy statement and decisions translate into advocacy. So, once we have a policy or a direction, it's my job then to translate that into action. So we do that through a number of advocacy strategies. We can, you know, obviously there's direct legislative engagement. We may bring council members to testify on specific bills. We have meetings very frequently with legislators within our delegation and others. We provide written comments. Way at the bottom, there are technical assistance. We also provide,

[18:13] you know, I think… In the city, we have a lot of, Expertise, and so oftentimes legislators will reach out to us and ask for our, opinions, and we provide that technical assistance for them as well. We also, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, coalition building is really crucial to, how we advocate, especially now on the federal level. So we will work with advocacy partners, regional coalitions, and then cross-sector alliances as well. Such as the Boulder Chamber, that's a good example of a cross-sector alliance there. We also use strategic communication as part of our advocacy efforts. We talk to the media when they have questions, things like that. And then we also participate in rulemaking. Jonathan's team is… knows much more about that than I do, but that is part of an advocacy strategy as well.

[19:15] So I wanted to go over a little bit, updates to the policy statement. So, one of our identified state policy priorities this year is a bill that some of you may be familiar with. It's been something that the city has worked on several years in a row now. It's intended to remove barriers for folks who want to make upgrades to electric technologies and participate in climate resilience efforts, but may not have the funding up front. So, it's called On-Bill Repayment Program. So this would allow them to pay overtime on their bill for those energy upgrades to their home. It has not been introduced into the legislature yet. We're working with stakeholders right now. I think there's a lot of enthusiasm this year, and we're hoping to get it over the

[20:09] over the finish line this year. But Senator Ball, from Denver will be our sponsor, along with Representative Joseph in the House, who obviously represents Boulder. So we're very excited for that. Some other updates, in the 2026 policy statement that I want to highlight. I'll just go over these very briefly, and I'm happy to answer questions or kick it over to Jonathan to answer questions about these specific items. We did add a new economic resilience item to the Climate Change and Community Resilience section, and this just recognizes that economic resilience is just as much a part of climate Resilience as anything else, so we thought having some language to that effect would be helpful to help support policies. We wanted to add a new food and supply security item to the Climate Change and Community Resilience section, so you'll see that there.

[21:06] We have added new polluter accountability and local control language to the climate action section, and local control section really speaks to, kind of, what's happening at the federal level. We want to maintain control around our ability to restrict use of fossil fuel resources at the local level, as is in state law as well. And I should mention, both of those actually speak a lot to what's happening on the federal level right now, too. We changed language in our clean energy standard policies items to better align with our state goals around clean energy standards and renewable electricity, so you'll see, that, and that's a reflection of state standards and policies. We have added language to preserve protections for rare and endangered species, into ecological conservation… into the ecological conservation section.

[22:09] So that's new. And then we are going to be discussing, as Jonathan mentioned, updates to the policy statement, tomorrow in Council. So I've added a couple of the anticipated changes, that were recommended by the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee. One such change is around the food and supply security section. They wanted to add language in there, addressing food security policies. Reducing the number of miles traveled from farm to consumer, and then also policies that support local growers. And then, also, we wanted to add some, recommendation to add language around orphan wells, to support the cleanup of orphan wells, and statewide accountability measures there. A couple other anticipated changes, we have, new language addressing coal ash mitigation, which was recommended, by one of the council members, as in addition to language addressing wildfire ignition risk reduction.

[23:13] And then finally, data center water and energy conservation measures, was something that was recommended by, by Council as, excuse me, by the IGA committee as well. Excuse me. So, that is, Those are the changes to the policy statement for 2026. I'm happy to answer questions on those. I did just want to highlight a couple of bills that may be of interest to you. I mentioned that the legislature started their work on January 14th this year, so we've seen a number of bills drop, in addition to, our on-bill financing bill, which we will obviously be supporting once that's dropped. We've taken positions on a few other pieces of legislation.

[24:02] And I will send out the, link to our, bill dossier, you can look at that link anytime, and it reflects the city's official positions on bills, if you're ever curious, so I'm happy to provide that link. I did notice on the website today that it's still reflecting 2025, so I'll… make that update. But, so first bill I wanted to just quickly highlight was House Bill 1007, Improving Customer Use of Distributed Energy Resources. This speaks to plug-in solar devices and making those, usable, once they kind of come into the U.S. markets. So, we are supporting that, as of now. I don't believe it's had its first committee hearing, but we'll be supporting that once it goes to committee. House Bill 1051, we're supporting the continued the microgrid Community Resilience Grant Programs.

[25:03] And then Senate Bill 2, the Fair Service Program, we're amending right now, we just have a couple technical amendments, but that is something that I think we will, Excuse me. I think I just… Ended my presentation. Sorry. Can you guys see that? Let me get back. Beautiful. Is it showing my notes again? Do I need to. It is. Bing. Okay. Okay, sorry. There you go. We've got our little, I'm just a Bill here. So I was mentioning Fair Service Program. We're amending that right now with a couple, technical amendments. I anticipate that we'll be able to support that once we get that figured out. Senate Bill 28, this is the removal of wind energy from state climate goals. We are opposing that bill.

[26:09] Right now, I do not anticipate that that bill will go anywhere. It has one lone Republican sponsor on it, so, I don't anticipate that going anywhere, but it is good to… Oppose that. Senate Bill 6065, these are bills that we haven't formalized a position on, but, we are looking at with our staff the systemic Insecticide Use Limitations Bill, so that is something that we could take a position on at the City, and we're still analyzing kind of what that means. So, in addition to those bills, We do anticipate the PUC Sunset Bill this year, which we will be very involved in, and I would anticipate that there'll be a renewable energy siting bill that we'll watch pretty closely and analyze once that drops.

[27:06] So those are the bills that we're seeing right now. It's early in the session, there'll be lots more, but that's what we're seeing right now. So I'm happy to answer questions if anyone has, Questions about any of the bills, or policy statement, or how we take positions? Yeah. I do. Thank you very much. It was a very insightful summary and insight into what's going on. So, This is a process that you do every year, so this is the 2026 kind of update, and so are there, like, interim update… interim milestones throughout the year, or is it, you know, just kind of an annual process that you… So typically, we can revisit the policy statement at any point, but typically, we try to make, our initial changes by December of the year.

[28:06] you know, so we made them in December this year. And then any updates that we want to make, kind of when the legislature starts, and we have a better idea of what is going to be addressed, and if we missed anything. So that's why February is typically a time that we make any, updates. And then we, Are usually pretty well covered, is my understanding. Okay. And then, in your efforts. Is there ever kind of a collaboration or discussion with local advocacy groups outside of the public realm that also have an interest, and do you ever have a collaboration, or do they have their own kind of, like, mechanism for, you know. Lobbying or, you know, influencing. Legislation. Yeah, so down at the Capitol, we're all piled in one area. So, you know,

[29:06] coalitions around bills that everyone… so say we're supporting a bill that Western Resource Advocates or another environmental group is supporting. We will work with one another to strategize around how to, how to best address that bill. Certainly Certainly happens all the time down at the Capitol. I think… could I just add one little piece? I think it's an excellent question. Maybe what I heard you getting at is, how do organizations, say, like the Chamber or other entities, get involved and provide input? And historically, my experience shows that that really, comes from the work that happens in the lead-up to our policy agenda update. So, in other words, council members have conversations with representatives from lots of different entities, individuals across the city, and then those kind of come into the process as new priorities, things that we ought to be thinking about.

[30:04] But then, I think as Heather was mentioning. when it comes to kind of triaging existing bills, what's being introduced, it really is, like, who's interested? They show up, and Heather is masterful at kind of orchestrating who's taking positions, are we aligned, how do we come up with a strategy on who should be testifying, what positions. are kind of within our wheelhouse versus theirs, so I think that's fairly accurate, but I just wanted to add that. I appreciate that. Thanks, Jonathan. And just out of curiosity on, like, one policy area with the, you know, wildfire Resilience and wildfire hardening. Do you… One of the things that I see that really pushing that, agenda, or that policy goal forward, is… How quickly the insurance companies will factor in

[31:06] a residential home exposure to wildfire risk. And, you know, just out of curiosity, how do you kind of keep the pulse on where that industry is in, you know, bringing that into their, you know, insurance policy pricing decisions and whatnot? Yeah, so the state has really taken on, a lot of those issues through their insurance, and I'm trying to remember what his official title is. now it's escaping me, but, their Division of insurance, they have a person who, really is… their job is to assess what's happening with insurance, or, specifically homeowner insurance wildfire resilience, and so we get updates I want to say his title is the Commissioner of Insurance, but I will double check on that. We get regular updates and pay attention when he is testifying in the legislature, to make sure that we understand, kind of, what's happening, in that realm, and they have

[32:12] The last couple years have suggested, legislative changes to address some of the high costs of insurance that we're seeing. around. So that's… that's definitely an area that I like to keep up on. And I'll remember what his title is, I'm sure, a minute after I… I'm off this call. So this is somebody that works for the state that, kind of, is the intermediary with… keeps the pulse on where the insurance industry is within Colorado, and then… and then they brief, kind of. other interested parties on where things are at. Okay. Yes, yep. The Colorado Insurance Commissioner, and he. you know. I work out of, the Department of Revenue.

[33:00] Your question raises an important point, too, in how our policy agenda is used. the art that Heather has to work with is kind of managing the elevation or the altitude of the level of detail within the document. So you have, in front of you, you have the entire policy agenda, which is… there's a lot there. More than, I think, any other community that I have ever seen. And so, there's a lot here, that could lend itself to being very specific on particular issues, and so the art that I'm referring to is kind of crafting language that's broad enough to anticipate what things might be coming, and allow Council to weigh in and determine whether or not we would support or oppose Things within that area. So, it lends itself to an interesting dialogue where we've had recommendations from IGA or council members to be very, very specific about a thing.

[34:06] Rather, does the policy statement… is it implicit? Does it suggest that we can make a decision that we would support things within this area? And so I raise this because it's one of the things that we've talked about in terms of insurance, which is Would today, if there was a bill that came forward that would have big implications in terms of changes in the insurance sector to homeowners in Boulder, would we be covered? Would we be able to look to this and say, can we actually move and support that bill, or would we oppose that bill? How would we know? We turn back to this architecture to kind of guide that conversation. And if we feel like it's not specific enough, we'll do exactly what Heather's doing tomorrow, which is bring forward a conversation with Council to really get explicit direction from Council members. So… Absolutely.

[35:01] What's the city's lobbying budget? Because I'm new, I am not. privy to that at this moment, but I can find out. We have two lobbying contracts, one on the state level and one on the federal level. But I can find that out. I apologize. That's like… that I have worked on yet. I was just… Surprised to see that the city has lobbying firms. Yeah, and most, I'll just say, from my work at Colorado Municipally, where we represented all the cities in Colorado, most Larger, mid to large cities have, either have contract lobbyists, and it's just, you know, there's a saying that I like to refer to, it's if you're not at the table, you're probably on the menu, and that kind of,

[36:09] So, if you're not there participating in the process, you can't advocate, you know, or be too upset when you're, impacted negatively. So, it's… it's an insurance to make sure that we're participating. Fair enough. Yeah. And out of curiosity, do you feel like… You have greater influence. Participating directly. with some of your lobbying outreach or involvement in those at the state legislature? Or is it just that you are then part of one of these other, kind of. larger groups, like the Colorado Municipal League. I'm just wondering, like, how do you… how do you measure… where do you get the biggest bang for your buck? Is it just the direct outreach, like, you know, we're representing, you know, the city of Boulder, and we're adding our voice as one of many, and they know that we're active, or is it that we, through participation, through these coalitions.

[37:14] You know, and contributing in whatever capacity that you have, then that then adds credibility or strength to The advocacy that that, you know, coalition supports. Yeah, it's… there… It's a bit of both, and it depends on what issue you're working on, right? So, when we're looking at on-bill finance, for example, direct lobbying efforts by the city, are going to be the way to go, because we are directly pushing that piece of legislation. We also enjoy very, good relationships with our legislative delegation, which some cities don't. Our legislative delegation is very responsive to cities,

[38:05] input and feedback on specific bills, so that's, very important for direct advocacy. We also enjoy a very close relationship with the governor's office. This is his hometown, so he cares very much about what we… what we have to say at the city as well. So, in terms of, where we can make a difference, it just depends on the issue. I mentioned coalitions and being able to amplify our voice. I think a really good example of that is more on the federal level. When we look at kind of our sphere of influence, when we make the transition from the state level to the federal level, we're one city. you know, within, within the state. So, our ability to, influence is diminished when we go to the federal level. However, if you're a part of a group like National League of Cities, and you contribute your feedback and input through that process, they have much greater

[39:08] reach, and they have a much greater sphere of influence, on the federal level. So, it really just, yeah, it kind of just depends on the issue, right? there may be issues on the state level. Of course, you know, CC4CA is a great example, too. When you have, a variety of municipalities and counties advocating for the same environmental, bills, that makes a bigger difference, and people see that, and they say, oh, you know, this is… this is something that maybe we should consider. But it all kind of comes back to this idea of the sphere of influence, right? You amplify your sphere of influence, with a larger group, and sometimes that's a good strategy, and sometimes you need to do more direct advocacy. It really just depends. And it's part of my job to figure out, kind of, what that strategy should be.

[40:12] And within the city advocacy team, would you say that you spend more time in, kind of, direct, you know, direct advocacy, or would you say you work more with some of these other Coalitions or advocacy groups? And do you work with one more than the other at a state level? Oh, it's a really good question. Since this is my first session, I'm still, experiencing a lot of this. We do, at the moment, we are involved in a lot of direct advocacy. We're talking to our legislators, we're giving direct feedback on bills, However, we do spend some time

[41:00] you know, I'm trying to think of, like, what the percentage would be. I don't know if it's 50-50 right now. It might… it feels like it's 50-50 right now, but, that may change over the course of the session. So, once… once I have a good feel for the… for the year, I'll come back and tell you what the percentage is. But we're involved in both, just to… To boil it down, and… some… in some circumstances, we're working on the same bills, that CML, that CC4CA that other, coalitions are working on, and in other circumstances, those coalitions… like, CC4CA would never be involved in, like, a land use issue, necessarily, right? So we're working on different issues than them. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. And in my experience, it kind of… it evolves, throughout the session, and…

[42:00] as it relates to a specific bill or item, oftentimes we… and I'm speaking from my experience just We did a lot of this work before we had someone like Heather to do this work, and Carl, but a lot of it is starting in a coalition, because we've expressed interest in a particular bill, the outcome of a bill. And then, as we move further in, we get into committee hearings, we start to see that some of our coalition members have a stronger voice, have, maybe, are… have more expertise on that, so they end up in kind of a leading role in that. And in kind of the climate work, we assume that role often, and that was the reason that we created CC4CA, is to kind of build that cadre of cities who can also stand up and, represent their unique interests of their own community. And so then, as that starts to move forward, it becomes more individual advocacy, working with the bill sponsor or a legislator to say, here are the things that are really important to us. We'd like to… we'd like to meet with you and talk about our concerns, to maybe move our position from a monitor to a support.

[43:13] And so I think it all depends on the spectrum of where things are. We usually start in more of that broad coalition, unless it's a very specific thing in the agenda, which is While that hits that very, very specifically, we need to take a very active approach in this. So, that's helpful. And Boulder has unique structures, right? We're not like every other city in Colorado, so oftentimes we care about some things that, we're on our own about, so that's been interesting. Is it your office? And I saw you had this kind of very nicely phrased as local control or jurisdiction of our own, maybe path forward where we differ with the federal government, but is it also your office that responds when laws that exist either at the federal level or state level are now being violated by the federal

[44:07] government, maybe? Or they Oh. Yeah, usually… Completely different team. But usually that would go to our, our attorney's office. They are very, yeah, yeah, that… I… I… yeah, because there's a lot of concern, I think, around, like, the energy and bringing back coal or whatever, and, like, the impact that would have on, like, the Colorado. We're involved before, items are considered, or during which time items are considered, or policies, or bills. But after they're passed, that's… that's the attorney's problem, baby. He played not my album, it's probably gonna be And so, with the local initiative policy you have on there, that would be supporting any policy at the local or state level that maybe affirms things that maybe had been protected at the federal level that we feel like might go away. Is that kind of what the thinking is?

[45:06] Yeah, and Jonathan can probably provide a little bit more to this, but, there are efforts at the federal level to limit a local government's ability to, engage in litigation with oil and gas companies for environmental, damages related to oil and gas, and so that directly speaks to some of the efforts that we are engaging on as a city with those At the federal level, I should say. Yeah, I was thinking about that as a great example, Heather. So, as an example, fossil fuel immunity, like, counter to… everything that we believe, and so the question that becomes, what do we do about that? Yeah, that's… And, so what we do is we engage with our legislators and our delegates, and so, being able, using our federal lobbyists, to set up schedule meetings to talk with our legislators, to say, this is a concern.

[46:11] why we believe this is a concern, and our expectation of you representing us that you'll take an active position in opposition. That's how we use that, and we've done that many, many times. We haven't… I don't even know if we still do an annual DC trip, but, you know, that's been kind of the historic practice, which is… the areas that are really critical in terms of federal intervention, or support, or opposition. Oftentimes, if it's a transportation-related issue, our director will go on a group trip to DC. We have scheduled meetings with the transportation secretary, or our delegation, and be able to go in and say, here is why this is a critical issue for us, and here are some of our expectations. And so, it's that kind of, kind of connection all the way up to the federal level that has been really powerful, and it's resulted in some appropriations, directly to some of our programs, a keener understanding, our delegation being able to actually identify projects that can be in a federal appropriation, so it's a really powerful relationship that we have.

[47:21] Another question, and I know you're fairly new in the position, but are there any kind of, like, past successes that, your team is very proud of, of, like, oh, we were heavily involved, and this was the result, and, you know, we, you know, were proud of this, accomplishment? Well, you know, I watched Boulder, at my prior job at Colorado Municipal League, and obviously Boulder was a member of Municipal League, and I was very proud of their work, getting, you know, some legislation around Sundance. It seemed like from my perspective, that everything that Boulder engaged on somehow turned out all right. So, I'm not sure that I could speak to a specific, bill

[48:13] Right off the bat. But, you know, it seemed like Carl did a really, really great job of setting up the city for success. and, developing the relationships at the state, federal, and regional levels. So, coming into this role, is a really easy transition, because everybody already knows the city, they know what we're… what we're about, they know, kind of, they have a positive association in most cases. So it's, so that's been really nice. I'm thinking of the annual wrap-up that Carl would do, which I'm guessing you will probably continue, and so, to your question.

[49:02] at the end of the legislative session, actually it was the end of the year, because what Carl would provide to the community and council is, here's a summary of the successes that we've seen, and here are particular roles that we are proud of. We took the lead on this, we drove this bill, we killed this bill, we negotiated with the sponsor, we built a coalition, and so there is a summary that's out there, and I will put my hands on that and make sure that the board has that. Yeah, for 2025, and then I'll be sure to make sure you have that for this board for 2026. We'll continue that. So, I have a couple more questions. I find this topic fascinating, so I appreciate that. Me too! So, in terms of, like, how would I say it? Impact evaluation or evidence-based information.

[50:02] How do you see that playing a role in your influence, in talking with legislatures or with these advocacy groups? Is it, you know, what kind of role does that have at a place, like, providing sound? policy evaluation of, you know, if we implement X, we anticipate that Y will happen, and our analysis is defensible, and And, do you do that? Does the lobbying groups that you employ, do they do that? Like, where does that play a role? So, a large part of what I do is collecting data on behalf of the city that then we use and our lobbying team uses to advocate for positions, and much of it is that evidence-based, kind of, here's what we expect if this policy is implemented. I would love to say that the legislature looks at evidence-based data and says, oh my gosh, you guys are right. Here, here, let me respond appropriately, but it is not always about that. So, oftentimes, you know.

[51:11] I like to say that, facts are kind of optional at the Capitol. You can present all of the fact-based evidence that you want, and it may not result in a difference, right? And that's really… But it doesn't mean it's not important, right? It is important to present those facts and that evidence-based kind of data. So we keep doing it. It is used, but Sometimes, unfortunately, it is put on the side, for more political reasons, for… other… yeah, for other issues. But, it is an important part of advocacy. I don't want to give you the wrong impression. It plays an important role, and it establishes credibility. Yeah.

[52:00] At the end of the day, other priorities may… Maybe, maybe. overshadow or… I love data, and I love diving into the data and facts, and I think that if policy was based solely on those, it would be so much better, but it is a human invention, and humans You know, kind of play a role in it, so it's unfortunately not all fact-based, yeah. And along the line, a theme of evidence-based, data-driven decision-making. Have you had any interaction with, the results for America, or what works cities, and just curious what level of participation you have with those organizations. I have not participated with those cities. I'd be intr- or, I'm sorry, with those organizations. I'd be interested to know more about them. Okay. I've dabbled a little bit in just trying to understand them, and

[53:02] Because Boulder was recently certified as, like, a gold-level work city standard city, if you remember, and so I contacted the assistant city manager and just asked them about what do they do, and how do you use it, and so I've just been really fascinated in that area. Yeah, that's not something I've dabbled in yet, but, definitely would be interested in learning more. And I couldn't help but notice that there was a reference to a food… supply security kind of policy, and I guess out of self-interest on our board, just wondering, I don't know if that's something else that you're going to talk about, but I'm wondering, with our letter that we sent to the City Council with our recommendations. just curious, like, if there was any… how that may have influenced or played a role in that policy position by the City Council. Yeah, I might hand this over to Jonathan, because these conversations kind of took place before I was on board, fully, so…

[54:06] Okay, we can table it to whenever. There is correlation. Oh, great! Stroke, I guess. I feel like they missed our point then, just… I wasn't gonna say this, but… I think the food section is missing the word sustainability when it comes to food. It's really talking… I think it's great. All the things… I agree totally with it. We should support local For saying, like, climate-resilient food. But where it says, like, a healthy, affordable. Like, and then it should say sustainable or climate-friendly. That's my… I know you're not asking for feedback, that's why I tried to keep my mouth shut, but for the record, you know? We revisit the policy statement every year. Okay, great. There's always more opportunities. I could foresee, like, It actually coming up somehow, like, in a statewide Situation would… Different dairy industries and such.

[55:02] Hmm. In a way, so, just something to keep in mind. I think this is one of those instances where, would the lack of the word sustainable, prohibit or limit us from taking a very active position? It would not. And that's where I think that whole issue of elevation, it doesn't have to be prescriptive, it has to have enough content that really allows staff to say, of course, that… the intent behind this statement is such, and therefore, we are going to be active in that. If there's any question, then we refer it to the IGA for a little bit of, like, clarification. Yeah. I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying at all, Hannah. Yeah, that's… that's great, though. That's a helpful example, actually. A really great point. Alright, is that everyone's questions?

[56:01] Thank you, Heather. This was really, really interesting. Thank you all. for having me. Have your hands full. Thank you so much, it was very enlightening. I really appreciate it. Thank you, appreciate… Thanks. Good night. So, we'll head over back to Jonathan for the Council Policies, or is that the same word? Yeah, council. There we go. I think we're moving right along. We don't have any public hearing items or old business, though I think I could probably introduce this next topic as an old business item. I wanted to give a bit of a recap of the Council Retreat. Not necessarily on the process of the retreat itself, but more how it resulted in the Council priorities. I think that was where I really wanted to loop back with all of you, the question, obviously, about the impact of your letter.

[57:06] how that really surfaced, and particularly the things that you were really holding as important, and so I want to talk a little bit about that. Before I do that, just to give you a sense of process. If you remember back in December, you all were busy, putting together your letter that then was compiled with letters from all of the other boards and commissions, and those were provided to City Council. Right around that time, Council was also in the process of coming up with their individual priorities, so each council member was asked to come up with ideas that they felt that they should be priorities for the council members in 2026. The question that came up earlier about the duration, I wanted to make sure I hit on that, because it's an important one going into the conversation that Council had at the retreat. So, they were looking at priorities that could be reasonably, they could be reasonably successful in one year's time frame. And the reason for that is that, the council priorities as a… as a document is going to now align with the… the even-year elections. So it… it has to do more with that than the fact that we have five council members who are up

[58:22] re-election this fall. So everything is getting into the cadence of the new election cycle, which has taken many years… well, when that was originally voted on in 23, I think, or 24-ish, I can't remember exactly. And so it was getting everything into that cadence of even your, election. So, with that in mind. Council really wanted to prioritize things that they could get accomplished reasonably well in one year. So that's a lot. That's a lot to kind of squish in. And I mention that because in their conversations at the retreat, they talked about things that were obviously not going to be able to be completed in a year. Doesn't mean that they weren't important, but they needed to focus on things that they knew they could actually accomplish.

[59:06] So, getting back then into, the process, back in December, each council member provided a list of the things they… I think they had roughly 5, 3 to 5 that they could put forward as ideas. And some of that resulted in, some natural kind of brokering, talking to other council members about what their ideas were, could they bring something forward together? And all of that was put into, one big kind of tabulated format, and then council members were asked to vote on those things. So then we started to see where affinities were starting to show up. What were the things that people, the council members, were really caring about? caring about, and then those carried into their, Council Retreat, which was held, the second week of January, the 12th and 13th. So, at, at their retreat, they spent a lot of time prioritizing, the West, talking about which things they could

[60:06] conceivably commit to and actually complete. And then there was a big conversation with staff at that time, too, to be able to say, if we made this a priority, does staff have capacity to back that up? What would it look like? What are the deliverables? What are those touchpoints with Council during 2026? So that was the process, and I want to talk about what rose to the top in terms of terms of priorities, answer any questions that you might have. And then I want to talk about, just this piece that's come up a couple times, which related to the priority that you all put forward related to food, and how we want to carry that forward. So, Councilmembers reached consensus on 5 new priorities. And I'm happy to send these out. They were in the media quite a bit, and tomorrow night, there's going to be a recap of all of this presented to Council, so there actually is a memo that lays all of this out, has more detail about each one of these priorities, what it might look… kind of who the lead is, and then what we're trying to accomplish in each of those areas. But,

[61:13] Without further ado, the first was bicycle security and theft reduction. Second was cost-benefit list of measures to become a fire-adapted community, and wildfire home hardening implementation hub. This is really more… this is a two-piece, so as Council often does, they describe this as tucking in a second priority within one. So this is, really to acknowledge the key focus on our wildfire And one is really starting to understand data-driven decision-making around impact in the interventions that we are making as a city. is it… what is it resulting in? We've done a lot of work to kind of be prepared to answer some of those questions. And the second is really this concept… well, I'll say it a community-facing

[62:01] dashboard or location that people can go to get more information, and so just really that repository for a lot of the wildfire work. What should you be doing on your own, in your own home? What is the city doing? Where are opportunities lie in terms of home hardening? So, really kind of creating that portal for community. The third was exploring the new authority to modify the tip credit. Fourth, actually, I'll come back to the fourth. Fifth was the sister city language updates. It's something that Council has been eager to get to for a while. It's been a while since the language around our sister cities has been updated, and so they wanted to address that. Again, if you think about time horizon, the things that they could conceivably complete, you'll see why some of these… What's that? Who's our sister city? We have 7? Nine? Very important. Do we have 9 now? 8 now? I can't remember. I can't keep track. But again, I think it's one of the considerations when we've had applications to be a new sister city on the add-that list.

[63:07] What are the qualifications? What are the criteria? What are the characteristics that we'd be looking for? Do we want to take more than the group that we already have? What does it mean to remain a sister city? So a lot of that is… Yes. The fifth one, landed with my department, and this is not surprising, obviously, given we were just coming out of, a pretty dramatic period with the, the public safety power shutoffs, and so power resiliency, including timing and barriers, was, I think. I think got the most votes, if not the most, the second most votes. And we were already planning on doing a fair amount of work this year, but really what the scope of that is, is to not do infrastructure upgrades and do all of the stuff, but to really map out where do barriers exist. What does Excel already have planned? How do we engage more effectively in terms of planning? What does a resilient system look like? What are the opportunities that we have?

[64:08] And ultimately, we'll have a plan by the end of the year that really lays out in conjunction with our partner, Excel, to figure out, where do we go from here. With some… Real clear, achievable outcomes with respect to impact to community, outages. So there's a lot that's going to be built into that work plan item. There are two additional items or projects that remained on the work plan, just because they were not completed, and then they still represent a pretty big lift for this year, and that's the long-term financial strategy. This has been a multi-year process, and then, of course, the Boulder Valley Comp Plan. Which you all have seen a number of, presentations on. So, the memo that's available, and Council will be discussing tomorrow night lays out the scope of each of those, the timing, the outcomes for each of those priorities.

[65:05] And it's an opportunity, really, for Council to confirm the approach to each of those moving forward. So, do they still believe that that should be the thing that we're trying to accomplish, or maybe we didn't quite get it right in what we heard from them at their retreat, and they might want to kind of fine-tune that a little bit. So, that brings me to one of the questions that was raised, which is, so what happens to all of the other stuff? There was a lot of incredible content that was put forward by all of the boards and commissions, and by community, and by council members themselves, in terms of, here are priorities that we believe are really critical that we get to. So, what staff does is we look at those and we say, are any of these things already on our work plans? Are these things that we already, intended to be working on? If so, then we can start to… kind of build into that a little bit more, talk with whoever the sponsor was to say, yeah, we already intended to do some work there. Are there things that could come off of the work plan to make space for a new item? But most departments have already established their work plans for this year, so adding a big new lift is somewhat difficult.

[66:14] That said, that doesn't mean that we can't make progress in some of these areas. Doesn't mean it has to be a major work plan item, but we can start scoping, we can start thinking. And that's where I wanted to come back to what you all put forward with respect to food systems. I want to make it clear that it was not something that was just kind of tossed aside with no conversation. Council members, a number of them, were very interested and have been very interested in starting to get more active in food systems. As we've talked about, the question remains. what are we talking about? What's in scope? What's out of scope? What could we do this year? Who's the lead on that? Do we have a department? And that was really the genesis, I think the focus of your letter, which was, there's no one that's really focusing on this. You all should figure out someone that can focus on this. So that was not,

[67:10] that wasn't, lost on anybody. I think there was a lot of discussion internally about, yeah, that makes some sense. We need… in order to be effective, we need to have someone who's really prioritizing and really coordinating, developing strategies, etc. So, there is an internal team that's going to continue, over the next many months to try to figure out how to piece that together. And one of the ways that we do that is we find openings to just elevate that. So what you saw listed in the policy agenda, that paragraph we wrote, staff wrote that. And then the little added piece around local growers was what the IGA said, yeah, this is great, we support this, we think that we should actually be prioritizing policy related to food systems. And we want to add this other little piece of a sentence. And that's why, Hannah, I had that reaction. It was not a negative reaction, it was, in fact, this is a really good step to start to identify that we care about food systems, and we can start to kind of build into that over the next year and have a work plan more scoped out, I think, as we go into 2027. Does not mean that we won't do any work

[68:20] On it, but it does mean that we need to have some conversations about what's in scope and what's not in scope. The last thing I want to say about the food piece is that Council is having, a Lunch and Learn coming up in a couple of weeks. And this was prompted by one council member who was really interested in learning more about, our water and ag policy and our work in that space. And so we have, about 5 departments coming together to give them a presentation on the portfolio of work in our ag portfolio, and in our water portfolio, how those two things come together. It's not specific on food production, but obviously that's a dimension that has to be included when we talk about ag.

[69:07] Meaning, we're not talking about the food programs that our HHS program… department provides, but this is a level set. This is a great opportunity to get Council up to speed on, here is what we have to work with here locally, and here's how it could support broadening our approach to food systems. Okay, that was a whole lot, I'm sorry, but I really… I really wanted you all to kind of crack. that process, and I wanted you to feel confident that Council saw your letter, they considered what was in it, as did they with all of the other letters that they got, and all of the other input. And so a lot of council members, they didn't get the things that they wanted, but this was how they brokered down to the five things that are new priorities for this year. I'll stop talking. What kind of questions can I answer, for y'all?

[70:03] Just… I want to comment, thanks for the update, that's very helpful, and glad to hear that That they seem to be in agreement that there's something there to explore, and that will be ongoing, even if it's not an immediate priority, but… You know, it seems like, you know, we're on the same wavelength in terms of, here's an area for improvement that, you know, needs some attention and focus, and there's some value in that. It sounds like there's some consensus there. Yeah. So, I guess two questions. One is. what opportunities might we have to participate and kind of, you know, fleshing that out? Is it just kind of… getting updates from what staff is doing, in that area, and any other areas, any other ways to participate, and kind of growing that, either through research or… I don't know. And then for this Lunch and Learn to City Council, is that just… staff and city council, or in… okay, that's open to the…

[71:00] Greater public. Yeah, let me… let me answer your first question with a big TBD. I anticipated that question, and I don't have an answer for you. I think as we start to flesh out, really Where do we want to go? where is the there when we think about food systems? It will lend itself to understanding a bit more about what are the near-term, steps that we need to take. One, of course, being, where does it live? How do we make this a priority for a multi-departmental staff team? where should it be led? And so, as those things start to surface, and we start to make some decisions, my expectation is that that would be a time to come back to the board and give you an update, and as part of that update, it would be, now we need some input from you, and I think there would be a role at that time. And I can't signal now when that will be.

[72:00] But that's the process that I envisioning. Your second question, the Lunch and Learns, we don't do these very often, but they are not open to the public. It's one of the few meetings that Council has to talk very discreetly with departments about. policies, internal policies. What comes out of that will certainly be public, but this was requested by a council member. We don't even know how many will show up. It's open to all council members. It could be one, it could be all of them. But the way we typically run these is what is it that they want to hear about? We bring together an internal team to prepare for that, and really, it's an opportunity to share what we know and what we're already doing, and then field a whole lot of questions from them. From those questions, I expect there's going to be some direct connection to long-term water planning, land use policy, and food. Those are the three areas that I could immediately see coming out of that conversation.

[73:03] Here, I think. So… Bike security. And, our resilience. So bike security worked exactly the City Council want to do for that? Is it in a plan? Is it increased budget for security? Yeah, and let me just tell you, I can just read it for you, that way I don't get it. I would recommend giving out bike locks to all of us. Bike logs. Don't even leave your bike outside. Apple AirTags to track… There you go, I like that one. Let me read this to you, and then if you have questions, I may or may not be able to answer them. The description is bicycle security and theft production. So, The purpose is to create a coordinated, data-driven program to reduce bicycle theft and increase public confidence in bike parking and storage, focusing on measurable results. So in 2026, the program would implement manageable actions while establishing a framework for future expansion strategies, problem solving, policing with targeted bike theft operations, public education on bike registration, secure walking.

[74:19] coordinating with community partners such as CURTD, local businesses, and residents to promote a unified bike security culture for the City of Boulder. And the PD is going to be in the lead on that. right before Council went into their priorities, right? Okay, yeah. Did you see this? They undercover, like, a giant, like, ring, like, thefts that was happening in Boulder. Not just, like, random people. Yeah, not just, like, someone getting… I'm a bit skeptical about it. I know what you're really gonna deal with it. And then power resiliency, right? I know, as a city.

[75:00] I guess we can advocate for that, but there's… there's not much we can truly do about… we can't twist Excel's arms, too. do anything. Chill again. Is it someone's job? It's just to be able… I'm sorry? Is it someone's job just to be the person between us and Excel? Yeah, so Carolyn on my team manages the Excel partnership, and no, I completely appreciate the question that you're raising. However. In fact, just last Thursday, we held a town hall, and Carolyn and I presented… Carolyn did most of the presenting. I just kind of, like, did a little bit of this. But it was really to level set on our distribution system. A lot of people had questions about why did my side of the street go out and was shut off and the opposite side not? Why is that if my neighborhood is undergrounded, why was power shut off? And there were logical explanations to… Why did I lose power after the wind stopped blowing, and didn't have power for two days, you know? Sorry. And so we were able to explain what we learned through the process.

[76:10] Which is, there was the proactive step to shut up power, and then there actually was damage, quite a bit of damage to their system, and so they have to inspect all parts of their system before they re-energize. But even then, when they re-energize, they… some areas of damage hadn't been seen, whether it was in a transformer, whether it was in the substation, so often we saw an actual damage-driven outage, and so that's probably what you experienced. And so, we went through a number of slides talking about areas of town, but in this area. We can actually be quite a bit… we can be very effective in driving the outcomes that we seek, and we're doing that, obviously, through the state to the Public Utilities Commission. We were instrumental in helping draft and create the wildfire protection plan that Excel is bringing forth. They're going to be spending about $2 billion statewide, a good amount of that.

[77:10] Pardon me? Over how many years? Two minutes? It is a pretty quick investment. Much of that is going to be in the first, probably, 3 to 5 years. They're already started on some of the more problematic feeders. For example, north, of town on 36, right adjacent to think about, like, where the, Oh, what am I always thinking about? Like, BFW and the little pub-putt places. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, on 36 in that area, and then going north all the way to hygiene, that is one of the feeders that was shut off and saw a lot of damage, and when that feeder goes down, it affects all of North Boulder, as an example. So, they are already moving on undergrounding that. They're undergrounding lines to some of our critical facilities, like our WRF, our wastewater recovery facility. And they've been doing a lot in terms of adding new reclosers and new, kind of, hardening devices.

[78:06] And all of that is through our advocacy at the states, but we also have done a lot of the past couple of weeks with respect to, testifying, at the… at the Capitol, last Friday. testifying in front of the commission with very specific requests to say, here is what we expect to see from our utility provider. We know a lot about the system, a lot more than, I think anybody new. Yeah. And so we played a pretty important role during the PSPS. My staff and myself were in with Excel's operations team, looking at the map, looking at their anticipated outage, making recommendations. I'm sorry? I'll take your cell phone number. It's fine, and part of it is communication. It was confusing, it wasn't timely, and a lot of the work that we are trying to consider is, how do we get Excel, to identify progress and improvement in those areas?

[79:10] Because I'll say, and we said this very clearly in, and I'm so sorry, I, like, I'm looking this direction, and you're, like, way over there to my left. I feel bad. That's okay, don't, I'm… Fair. Is… that… We support Excel's decision to de-energize the system. I mean, we could have ended up with a fairly catastrophic wildfire, and we did see some fires, as sections of the system were re-energized. But, that should not be the norm. Just turning off power, as… a solution for climate-driven events that we are going to see more and more of cannot be the solution. So, what are the solutions? And a lot of people have said, well, you just need to underground the lines. Well.

[80:04] That is a tactic, a very expensive and very time-consuming tactic. There are other tactics. There are things that we could deploy here locally. We could start to identify opportunities for microgridding, looking at isolating the system around those critical facilities to ensure that they retain power. We can actually look at hardening overhead lines. We can do a lot, with our partner, with Excel, in terms of communication, and helping people understand, Well in advance what's going to happen, and how do they… how do they know what to do then? our EOC, our Emergency Operations folks, were also on that, town hall with us. And if you weren't… I don't think that any of you were there, but I'd be happy to share the… The link, we have the video recording. It's about an hour and a half long. We had about 150 people attend, which was great. It'll answer a lot of the questions that you might have.

[81:04] So, with respect to communications, I think since you probably are closer to Excel than many other folks that I know. I think one big thing that's lacking is I was under the impression that Excel has a team that works closely with businesses, right? Works closely with a business facility that has a lot of people that rely on it, right? Okay. Super example, right? First World Prub, the Boulder Country Club, right? they lost power, they were communicating to the members, right? I was under the impression that, oh, there is a person who talks to people individually, like, so my husband's company is in Gun Barrel, about 100 people, right? There is no one that the, the health and safety person can call, right, and say, hey, can I talk to someone in Excel? It would be nice for Excel to have dedicated people who communicate with businesses, right? It's more important for a business that has 100 people, or a strip mall.

[82:12] that has, like, 20, 20 different businesses that are relying on income, you know, and lose power for 2 days, to have a person that you can… Right? And right now, they're in the same boat as me, who pays a teeny bit of money to excel, and, like, I'm this one single person, and I'm just upset that I don't have power for two days, and, you know, just suck it up and live, but not… not these businesses, not… I don't even know if the hospital has a person that they can call and go, like, hey, what's going on? Right? Because even the hospital has power, right? Correct. And so, so I think that would help in communication, not just improving communications to us individuals, but, like. Focusing on communicating with businesses. Because this time, what we really did see is, yes, we prevented wildfires, but oh my god, the economic loss was just… Actually, the weekend it was, like, right around the holidays. Like, off of, like, ideal market, that whole strip mall was closed, right?

[83:13] And, like, Lucky's and the poor little coffee shop in my neighborhood run by these two high school kids, you know that coffee shop, you know. But didn't Excel proactively send out notifications to customers? Dunbarrel got no notice, and we manufactured giant equipment, and it was a disaster. Let me just tell you, like, I. Don't work. on the manufacturing side, and we went in to be helpful to our peers. So, yeah, all really important points, and this is where things get… sorry, Hannah, were you trying to say something? I just wanted to make sure we were on topic of the agenda. I feel like… I don't know, just checking in. Well, maybe what I… thank you, and actually what I was gonna suggest is,

[84:03] this is going to be a topic that I'd like to bring back to the board and dig in a little bit deeper, because it is going to be a Council priority. There are a lot of… we could spend the next couple of hours, and only scratch the surface on this one, because there are a lot of dimensions to it. what I'm gonna suggest is I'm gonna send you a link to the town hall, which is really understanding… but part of this is. for you to understand… yeah, the communications piece, absolutely right, and Excel has one area manager, and the majority of people will call us. They'll call the city, and so we don't have the answers. Like, well, it's… it's not our system. Turns out we know generally how the system works, and so… as a result of that, we recognized that our community had a need to ask and have some questions answered about why did… why this, and not that, and I just don't understand. And so that's why we put this town hall on. We were not able to answer all the questions at all.

[85:03] Many of them are business practices and specific questions for Excel. But I'm going to send you the link, and if you're interested in watching that, it'll give you a whole lot of visibility and insight into how… what happened during those events. And then how we as a city are trying to really take this opportunity to recognize that this is not going to be an isolated event. This is going to continue to happen. We need to make sure that we are developing strategies now, that we're clear on what we're trying to accomplish, and then where we can apply the most leverage with our partners. And so, like what Anna said, this is not intended… this meeting is not intended for that conversation, but I believe You had presented to the board once on the whole municipalization process, and and our partnership with Excel, so maybe we could talk, like. once or twice during the year about what your department is doing as far as priority. I know it's not like this, but this really split. Does any part of the goal, like, as it's written, include focus on renewable energy? With Excel, or is this mostly focused on power protection?

[86:09] For wildfire. Which goals are you… No, like, the specific council priority, does it have anything related to renewable? On this one? You're always working on it, but, like, no specific priority for hotels. No, no, this one's specific to resilience, but what we do have is the partnership agreement and goals, laid out there that they have to hit those emissions milestones, and they have to help us meet our 100% renewable electricity by 2030 target. Okay. And so those… that's where those live. Okay. No, we didn't feel the need to have to, like, restate it. So, if we got that to work, I feel like we'll get this to work, too. Right? You know. That's just… so I have hope, so… But I just want to acknowledge and appreciate, this is an emotional topic. It has touched everyone in this community, and I think as a result, everyone is like, this is front and center. This…

[87:10] This is unacceptable. This is unacceptable from our utility providers, so that's why this is a priority, that's why our team is really going to be focused on it. So… Okay. Other questions on Council priorities? That's your friend? I have no clue who that is. To mischief. Yes. Should I move on? Yeah, I think it's just calendar preview, right? Yeah, I'm sorry I'm doing a lot of talking tonight, it was not intentional, but you know you get that with… What I wanted to actually do, instead of just go through some of the near-term council, calendar items. I wanted to talk a little bit with you all about the items that I see,

[88:05] that we are going to be scheduling with you for the next few months. I think there are some important issues that are going to be coming up, and I just wanted to give you a snapshot. We're still in the process of calendaring them out. I'm going to go through a little bit of a list. I do want to have a broader conversation with you all on wildfire more broadly. Obviously, a couple of council priorities now. We're going to be doing a lot of work, in terms of how we start to build out a stronger engagement and communications platform around wildfire, and that's something I would really love to get the board's feedback on, so I would expect that in the next couple of months. We'd like to bring the results of our desertification analysis, so this is looking at some of our soils and a couple of plots, in the county. Really interesting data that is going to be incredibly helpful as we talk about our nature-based solutions and the importance of, our topsoil. It kind of gets in… we're going to be presenting that, at that Ag Lunch and Learn with Council. I think it's a really important one that they are tracking. We'd love to provide that data to the board so you can see what we're seeing.

[89:19] there… I'd like to bring forward, a group conversation between our circular economy team, and likely pair, kind of the new regulations on the extended producer responsibility legislation that took effect this last month. how that's going to roll out here at the local level later on this year, our broader circularity approach, and then a deep dive into some of the things that we are looking at to take to Council later this year around single-use plastics policy. So that's one that we've had on the radar, and we definitely are going to want some input from the board on that one.

[90:02] We'll be coming back to you on the next phase of our Healthy Buildings Roadmap, the two items that we had identified, if you recall, I don't expect you to remember, but for 2026, Council Touchpoints are an update to our Building Performance Ordinance, and then the SmartRigs program. And so, before we take those back to Council, we want to loop back with all of you, since we… you all have been tracking that now for a couple of meetings. Our climate resilient Landscapes, is one I definitely, want to come back to you all on. And we do have… That's separate from the wildfire? That's separate from the wildfire, yes. Yes. This is being led out of our Nature-Based Solutions group. You have a question? I was gonna say the BBCP. It's also coming back. Yep, yep. The comp plan, I think we have that scheduled to come back next month? Yes. Yeah, next month.

[91:01] And then, if you've been tracking some of the media, I wanted to have a conversation with you all, get you up to speed on our IPM, our Integrated Pest Management program and policy. And how it relates to a lot of the things that you are seeing out there right now. Reporting Lab just reported this morning on this broadcast spraying event that… that we have been… connected a bit to the county on. We have been doing some research on this particular chemical, this herbicide called Indesiflam. And so I'd like to just share with you how we approach chemical use on city properties. It's one that we've not talked to you about for a while. Feels like it's really important as we're making some adjustments to that IPM program in 2026. And then the last one, well, not the last, because I just wrote down that it's probably a good thing to come back and talk about Excel more broadly, the relationship, and what 2026 represents in terms of an off-ramp, how are we evaluating that, what are Council considerations. So that will be one. And then I'd like to, when the time is right, introduce and share with you some of the work that we're doing around

[92:16] Sundance on the sustainability side. So, lots of coordination with Sundance specifically, coordination with CU, a lot of entities who really want to help support what are the dimensions of sustainability in year one in 2027? What can we actually do in 27, and what are some of the long-term objectives, where we want to go with Sundance? So, I'd like to share it out with that. Yeah, so how will that work? sort of the… the Sundance Sustainability things. Would you… would you work with the organizers and make sure that they have Certain number of, you know.

[93:00] electric buses going around, or bicycles available, or reusable cups being used, like, how is… do you have… is it that level of specificity, or is it just more? It is, yeah, it's a great question. So, we've been meeting with the Sundance Sustainability team. They have a committee. We've been meeting with them now for a few months. And where we started is just, really, where do we want to head? What do we want this body of work to represent? What are our values? What are your values? Are they aligned? Or is there asymmetry somewhere along the way? There's not. And then starting from a, here are the things you must do, we have requirements for special events, mostly in the waste space. So if you're going to put on any big event, you have requirements. So, providing those requirements, you must do these things. So, be prepared to do that. We can be a resource for you in helping you, but obviously, like. EcoCycle. So, we had Sam Jones on one of our meetings, introducing EcoCycle and the role that they can play and support to Sundance.

[94:01] So beyond the minimum you must do, then there is, what are the things that we really want to prioritize? What do we care most about? Transportation being a big one. Interface, with, community and visitors, things like, requirements with their vendors and sponsors around no giveaway swag. And even if it's, like… I had someone offer me money for my apartment the other day for some days. No swag! No swag. Well, so, yeah, I love my water bottle! And how many water bottles do you have in your cabinet? Like, 30 or 40 bottles. So to have Sundance create, 100,000 water lines. Actually, now I need a Sundance Hydro Plus to go with my other, like, 10 different… You have the same iPhone? Rather, brainstorming, I don't know if this is what it's gonna be, brainstorming, rather… rather than giving, giving out water bottles, and then having them go to, like, a different venue, give them a… here's a sticker, put it on your bottle, and then you get $2 off a beverage, or something like that. So we're just exploring some ideas with that. Transportation, waste, and then baselining their environmental impact. So, a big piece of this is where are we starting?

[95:19] So, as you may know, the city is donating A chunk we're actually donating, but we're retiring wrecks from our hydro facilities to help offset emissions, related to the event. I am not a big fan of offsets, however, that's what Sundance does right now. Park City, they purchase a lot of renewable energy credits from out of state. As a result, Park City claims that they are net zero, or carbon-free. I think there's a real value to say, if you want to continue doing that and claiming that, why don't you do that from locally generated RECs or offsets, whether… and we can build into something that we're doing here locally, whether it's some kind of planting or something like that, but we generate RECs right now, and we can retire them on behalf of Sundance, but we don't know how many. We need to understand the baseline of the

[96:13] What's attributable to the festival? As an example, Boulder theater operates, they have shows there. every night. So, Sundance happens to be in there, so… what is attributable to the festival, and how do we calculate that and create that baseline of emissions related to waste, to transportation of staff, equipment, Attendees. So we're refining that baseline right now, and then we can start developing annual goals and targets about how we want to make progress. So that's how it's working right now. We still have some work to do, we're still kind of working through some of these details. Yeah, I'll just leave it at that.

[97:02] I'm looking forward to Sundance. What, like, 100,000 people coming into town? We should be fine. We're getting some, reports from that. They just finished their last festival in Park City, so we asked them to be tracking some things, seeing how it might then transfer to Boulder, and so it's a great team. They're really eager to Really expand in this area. So, we're really like, wow, thinking that how do we create the model for big festivals? How do we really think about that? Can't do that in year one. They have dates already? Do they what? Do they have dates for 27? Yes, and I can't tell you, like… January, February. Yeah, it's January. That's what I have. Alright. Calendar. It's a lot. And then any general… Announcements.

[98:01] Two very quick things. I'm gonna send out, a hold the date for all of you. In meeting with CU yesterday, they are going to be hosting, the Colorado Climate Week. And I don't know exactly what's going to be going on, but I, in that conversation with them, they asked, could we be a partner? I said, sure, but that's, coming up kind of quick. April 1st is just around the corner. But then I, also said I'd like to make sure that we have roles, or if you want a role, or at least be able to attend any of the events that might be hosted. during that week. And then… The other thing I just wanted to share with all of you, we started our interviews today for the two, vacancies on the board. I think we interviewed 8 today, and I think we have… 5 or 6 or so next week. 13 total. Actually, there's gonna be 12, because one didn't show up today. So, just know some really, really qualified candidates, and looking forward to, sharing with you the appointments, which will be done on March 5th.

[99:14] No, I promise I'm done. Lot going on. Great. I think that's everything, right? Okay, motion to adjoin. Second. Great. Hope to see you in person next time. Makes sense. God willing, I'll be back. Alright, bye. Bye. Feel better.