May 26, 2021 — Housing Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

[MM:SS] timestamps correspond to the YouTube recording.

[0:01] okay i'm going to call this meeting to order uh i'm michael lucchese the chair of the housing advisory board the secretary is ready we will proceed today is wednesday may 26th uh and this is a meeting of the boulder housing advisory board so we're going to do a roll call and we'll start with jacques julian here terry pomps yes juliet boone they go with the french thing here hello um mason moyer not here yet um and um danny teodoro the vice chair okay we have uh four members president

[1:00] does that constitute a quorum and we begin great um okay do we have any uh agenda amendment suppose and there's danny hi danny hi guys um as i just asked are there any amendments proposed to the tonight's agenda no great thank you um approval of minutes does anyone have questions or corrections to the minutes uh okay uh may i have a motion to approve the minutes of the last meeting on april 28th so move danny thank you may we have a vote on that proof hi so done uh we're up to public participation has anyone signed up to speak

[2:03] so lin's here i assume lynn would like to speak yup she's got her hand up go ahead land you have three minutes okay yeah um i was just talking with scott medina from bridgehouse and i was asking him after i heard bob yates at um the homeless talk at tyler city club about how boulder's taking folks and training them in culinary arts and landscaping and it pretty much infuriated me because i i thought this is lovely we've got this program a training program for people that we're paying for actually the feds are paying for it but the feds aren't cheap you know we just spent 1.6 trillion

[3:00] dollars on on you know stimulus tips for people and there's not endless funds you know there's not something beyond trillions there's gazillions now you know so we shouldn't be just abusing these funds and the city of boulder is effectively training these people and they have housing a job while they're in town but when they get out of there they aren't going to get a job and i mean they'll get a job in boulder but then they'll contribute to our jobs housing and balance which is a trouble for you right michael so how do we balance jobs housing what we need to do in this city for housing is figure out on a scale of one to ten what someone's income is and then specifically set how much housing we need for different income rates because guess what every affordable house that we create for people creates a demand i mean and i'm stating

[4:00] the obvious and i hate stating the obvious i hate that but it seems like i have to because people don't seem to get it growth is not cheap it's not michael it's not growth is expensive raw growth and affordable housing guess what those people use services they use grocery stores and library people and bank clerks and all of those things they use all of that that's not cheap each affordable house has its own expense you know what we need in this town we need 50 to 70 percent in linkage fees minimum of 50 seriously long ago and we need no more in lieu that is so old this discussion is so old i've been here 35 years

[5:01] 20 years they've been talking about in lieu and lincoln has been 20 and all the way up to 25 obscene you are asking for more unaffordable housing and for more homelessness and there's no solution to it what we need is more racial equity and it comes with wealth equity there is no such thing as rape it's all about wealth done thank you lynn i think you used your three minutes well does any of any of our board members have questions for lynn i have one len are you suggesting that there's a relationship between training job training for homeless people and increasing the number of in boulder

[6:04] john training for those homeless people is going to get them job training but it's not going to get them housing in boulder or if it is and it depends on what the demography is of those people if they're the ones that have lived in boulder for more than six months that deserve to live here and then they can get into jay's programs you know then then we're creating something for them but at the same time my point is that we're creating so many more homeless people that we will never ever ever dream of keeping up does that answer your question though i i don't think it's bad that we're training people in in culinary arts and in landscaping but i don't think that is making them homeless i mean i don't think that is improving their ability to have a home because they can

[7:02] have that home in boulder and they will be driving in if they do get a job in boulder and that increases our climate change and our you know and our jobs housing imbalance has got to be the the bottom line of what we need to improve here and you know that from uli so that's my point but did i answer that yes yes i was not sure whether you were saying your great job training but now i understand thank you does anyone have a question for lynn uh i'm sorry i'm doing this do we need a motion to or is there any other has anyone else signed up for publishing um i'm sorry i forgot to mention the beginning we're welcomed um as our playing board lead with

[8:01] uh lisa smith as the ultimate i don't know from the polls but it would be great to have you involved in heb um i guess we're on to matters from council and we have a presentation from clay fung community rights manager yeah clay you want to take it away yes um just want to confirm do i have a screen control or something okay let me just uh get things started then to take this little zoom thing out of the way okay so does everybody see kind of the slideshow as it ought to be right now [Music] okay okay because i've just debates that have taken place the last few years which have been around the related topics of economic inequality political power and racial equity and what i'd like to show is how housing

[9:01] is related to all these factors both at a local and federal level so that we may have a conversation that informs a new direction forward so a helpful lens to look at this is the intersection of myth and policy because really the story of boulder and housing is really two threads the reality and what i like to call mythology while we'd like to think that many of us are far removed from such beliefs of that of the minotaur in ancient roman and greek mythology americans still are very much influenced by american myths such as that of quote-unquote civilizing the american frontier under the guise of manifest destiny which carries with the undertones of religious justification and to be blunt white supremacy we often speak of the land of opportunity which is a reality for some namely

[10:01] landowning white males but is perhaps a myth for people of color and those that have less opportunities and it's with these two threads that we can examine the reality and the myth of what's happening both at the national level and in boulder another key concept to graphs when making this sort of investigation comes from the author ibra max kendy who wrote how to be an anti-racist and jay and i have discussed this and we have found it really hard to find instances where this is not true and it's where he notes that the actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate but self-interests oftentimes racist policies come about according to kennedy because people are coming up with rationales for policies that exclude but may promote their own self-interests it is the creation of the other that is to say the differentiation of people of different classes or different ethnicities it's these sort of artificial divisions

[11:01] that often stem from those that are in power in promoting their own economic self-interest the prologue to the story comes in 1851 which is the treaty of fort laramie also known as the horse creek treaty which was signed to scant two years after the beginning of the sword of the california gold rush california gold rush is of course a seminal event in the development of the american west as for the first time we have tremendous amounts of mineral wealth that are of great interest to those back east the united states government wish to create basically open lines of travel so that settlers can travel west on some of the classic routes such as the oregon trail the california trail and the treaty also didn't take away land at this point typically what would happen is that when the u.s government made treaties with indigenous peoples there would be a first treaty which was which would establish a rite of passage perhaps some settlements such as

[12:01] that of the cash that was supposed to change hands to build forts and roads um and then a second treaty would typically come about in which the land was then taken from the indigenous peoples the key point here though is that the horse creek treaty impacted eight nations including those that have had a key tie to the boulder area so the story of boulder really begins in 1858 and this is kind of a story about the early years where the dye is cast for the current circumstances that we live in now in 1858 gold was discovered near inglewood basically since the time of the gold rush there were always some conjecture that colorado would have a degree of substantial mineral wealth and that seemed to be borne out in discovery in 1858 news travels quickly and by october we had the first white settlement in the boulder area at the

[13:01] present day site of red rocks park chief nywot met with the settlers there and essentially told communicated to them that they were welcome to stay for a short period of time but that he did not desire that they would stay for an extended period of time in 1859 gold was discovered in gold hill and by february of 1859 the boulder town company was founded so a couple of things to track here first of all nywa and what happened to him and his relationships with the settlers after that initial meeting is under a little bit of historic debate um some feel that nywa later went to the settlers and relented and allowed that they could stay and if this is true other historians argue that he did so simply because he saw white settlement as somewhat inevitable and that it would cause great harm to actively resist this type of settlement in the boulder area as it was the foundation of the boulder town company was a violation

[14:00] of the fort laramie treaty and this is really kind of the first bit of exclusion that happens on the part of white settlers towards people of color in the area the boulder town company really kind of sets a tone that i think is still with us today they laid out over 4 000 lots in what we now know as boulder and in 1859 these loss cost cost a thousand dollars apiece by comparison farmland and other parts of the state is much more inexpensive and you can see those range from simply a dollar twenty five an acre purchase in the government to fifty dollars so it becomes very clear from the get-go that boulder is a place for the well-to-do not necessarily welcoming for the working person and will also see that high residential land prices discourage the development of industry that we might see in neighboring communities

[15:02] more on the timetable you know just a few scant years after the discovery of mineral wealth colorado becomes a territory the civil war begins in 1861. legislation places the state university in boulder although at this point the universe the colorado is yet to be a state while the civil war is raging in the eastern part of the country there's also considerable tensions happening closer to home again we have many um indigenous peoples in the colorado area and in 1862 tensions start to escalate to the point that we start to see the development of army affiliated military units including the colorado third u.s volunteers company d which mobilize it for chambers for those of you that aren't aware fort chambers is essentially north and slightly east of present day boulder and it's essentially around the intersection of 63rd and j

[16:00] rhodes in november of 1864 the sand creek massacre occurs and we'll talk a little bit more about boulder's role in that and how that changed the face of the american west essentially it's hard to term the sand creek massacre is nothing short of an atrocity or a war crime essentially a group of of soldiers sanctioned by the us army slaughtered innocent native americans the exact number of casualties is unclear but most estimates range from 150 to 600 many women and children were killed chief nywot actually died of wounds a few days after the battle and we can also see that this led up to uh basically what's known as the sort of plains indian wars which also ultimately culminated in the battle of little bighorn which was over a decade later there's also some key local players john chivington is probably one of the

[17:00] more notorious figures involved with the sand creek massacre chivington was a mason and a um a methodist minister and david nichols who we'll talk about a little more was a prominent local figure who rose to even more prominence in the years to come that i think i just reversed okay so if sorry i think i've got a little off the key here um so we look at after the civil war ends and a key piece which is going to influence housing policy in the century to come are the post-civil war amendments which abolish slavery grant the right to vote and provide equal protection this particularly around equal protection will have a significant impact on zoning and policy with respect to housing we can see quickly things escalate border boulder incorporates

[18:01] the battle of little bighorn takes place colorado becomes a state and then cu becomes an open university as we all know there was you know the story that boulder had a choice between having either the state prison or the university and we seem to have gotten the better of that deal with canyon city getting the state prison one of the key players included nichols who was instrumental in the sand creek massacre um in term but he played an instrumental role in getting the university to be located in boulder prior to the sand creek massacre he had been the sheriff of boulder county but he stepped down that is from that position to join the army and there's a lot of folklore in mythology around what nichols had done to bring the university here professor patty limerick of the university of colorado mentions folklore by 20 years afterward had

[19:01] recorded this notion that nichols had gotten on his horse on a cold winter night ridden 26 miles from denver to boulder gotten a commitment of land and support for the university and ridden back there's no evidence from the time that he did that so we can see there's a great deal of myth making here nichols is no longer the killer of innocent women and children rather he's sort of a paul revere-esque figure who went to secure perhaps the crown jewel of the city of boulder the university and it's interesting to note that in 1861 he had a residence hall built for him named in his honor at cu now the interesting thing here is that it wasn't like nichols actions at sand creek were a secret but limerick helps to shed some light and she states in 1961 in the minds of those who proposed his name for a building nichols's war activities did not detract from his achievements on the contrary they added to them and i

[20:00] think this raises a really important point about how we as americans particularly in the west define the notion of civilization limerick raises this point in a very astute way and she says but to nichols himself and to many of his anglo-american contemporaries the founding of universities and the killings of killing of indians represented service in the same cause the project was to quote bring civilization unquote colorado and to both most 19th century anglo-americans that meant displacing the natives establishing and allocating property claims installing territorial county and town government and setting up schools colleges and churches so basically there was no um negative consequence of what he did and for the most part culturally this was to be celebrated perhaps incidentally and this is maybe important of a sign of the times in 1989 nichols hall was renamed cheyenne arapaho in 1989.

[21:02] so the dye is cast in those initial years in boulder so a quick summary land was taken from indigenous people and exclusionary policies are already in place namely high land prices that are a barrier to entry the bringing in of a university and while it's true that not all university towns are elitist the fact that we have a university and a lack of more um industry of the sort that we might find in other towns such as mining or agricultural processing and the like this creates a very specific character for boulder that becomes reinforced in the early 20th 20th century and beyond in 1877 and now we begin looking at the rise of boulder from 1877 to 1950 and this picture it is believed was

[22:01] taken in the boulder area because as we'll see soon the kkk had a very prominent role in both colorado and boulder politics and this is also for better well this is also unfortunately shaped the quality of what boulder is today you're probably familiar with frederick law olmsted in 1910 he wrote a report on the nature of boulder olmsted was lauded as an architect a city planner a proponent of what is known as the city beautiful unit and he creates a very sort of agreeable quotation in his report talking about what people in boulder are after they're after a good lifestyle essentially they're not necessarily going to be of the highest most elite classes but they want to have a satisfactory life further investigation of olmsted's report notes a very marked distaste

[23:00] for industry and he very clearly says that pollution noise dirt and those negative impacts of industry are not part of the boulder character he was very much in favor of preserving open space of looking at creating great public spaces which was part of the city beautiful movement that he was very much part of but it's important to note and this sometimes gets lost in the shuffle that the city beautiful movement was really a response to immigrant communities in densely populated cities and a feeling that the other that is say immigrants and people of color would actually cause damage to property values so we have both the self-economic interests of property owners who may be in the middle and upper classes as well of this mythology of creating a community that lives at a certain aesthetically pleasing level but in fact may be part of a broader scheme of

[24:02] more covert uh racial exclusion and perhaps we get a little bit of evidence indicating this in essence olmsted was a segregationist this is a later quote from him after the 1910 report which he basically says you really can't put different races together because then a development cannot succeed economically so here we see racism essentially being tied to that of self-interest in an economic fashion also good to look at what's happening in the rest of the country and the rest of the world at this point again we're looking at two narratives 1917 the case of buchanan versus warley which essentially outlaws racial zoning by saying a violation of the 14th amendment again the post-civil war constitutional amendments so the narrative is that such zoning

[25:01] is illegal but the reality is is far different but there was also a movement to have more people owning homes in the united states at the time woodrow wilson's presidential administration feared in the wake of the russian revolution that if americans didn't have more opportunities for home ownership that that could set the stage for a similar revolt within the borders of the united states but it was also very clear that this was not going to be an opportunity equal to all and what happened in the 1920s that the federal government began to work with cities to essentially adopt zoning ordinances that might not have been blatantly racist on its face but had the over intent of protecting middle income neighborhoods from lower income folks namely people of color and recent immigrants this was supported not only by the government

[26:00] and thought leaders such as olmstead but also by the real estate industry as part of this movement irving b hyatt president of the national association of real estate boards noted a realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood members of any race or nationality whose presence will be clearly detrimental to property values in the neighborhood so this was in the mainstream of thought to be exclusionary while upholding a myth that there was in fact equal opportunity for all here we just have a little bit of a timeline about what's happening in the west we see the first latinx graduates from the university of colorado we also see and let's keep our eye on this number the african-american population of boulder in 1910. also in 1914 the first african-american student did graduate from cu and we'll be talking a little bit more about the african african-american

[27:00] experience suffice it to say though early black families in boulder enjoyed little job mobility being limited to menial work as day laborers janitors and servants they were confined residentially to a neighborhood known as the jungle which is now known as central park which was a district of rundown houses and temporary structures and there's very little opportunities for upward mobility often after giving this presentation i'm asked you know why is it that african americans don't stay in boulder and i think you know part of it has been that the opportunities have always been limited and to be frank boulder has not been that welcoming to people of color and we'll talk a little bit more about that and maybe put a little bit more of a face on that in a moment the other key piece is we start to see other groups coming into the boulder community but also being marginalized eventually the the the jungle area was abandoned

[28:00] and an african-american students were prohibited from living on campus until 1940 so they primarily were found in the goss grove neighborhood but in the 1930s latinx population began to increase in that particular neighborhood it's also worth noting that in the 1950s the population of african americans in boulder had actually gone down from what it had been decades before let's talk candidly about white supremacy in boulder in the 1920s boulder was a clan stronghold but like i said i want to put a little bit of a face on what boulder was like this woman that we see here is lucille buchanan who is the first african-american woman to graduate from cu boulder at her graduation ceremony she sat eagerly awaiting her name to be called when out of nowhere a white woman came up and said i'll be your partner in this lucy and handed her her diploma she was

[29:00] denied the ability to walk with her fellow students and it was as a result of that treatment vowed never to return to cu she lived a pretty long life i believe she was living up until the 1980s and she did made good on her promise not to return and i think this incident sort of summarizes what many people of color have felt their experiences have been in boulder let's talk a little bit about the rise of the clan as well essentially the clan had its second rise in the 1900s this was the time when we saw the the the beginning of what's called the lost the the notion of the lost cause which we know is where the civil war is viewed through a lens that is favorable to the confederacy and where one moves its roots away from that of slavery which was really the root cause of the civil war and to that notion of states rights

[30:00] popular culture embraced the rise of the klan through just increased membership but also with respect to films such as birth of a nation one of the early epic silence films that did a romanticizing of the rise of the clan and portrayed them as heroic folks that were essentially preserving the character and integrity of america the klan had also by the mid-1920s taken most of the major political offices across the state in 1924 they had won most elections but also the klan had a large scale and open presence in the boulder area including initiation rights of hundreds of clan members in north boulder public parades in both longmont and boulder and in 1922 there were four parades through boulder including one that had nearly 300 klansmen 63 cars and a float covered in white at the same time we also saw other

[31:01] groups being targeted the county commissioners passed 1932 resolution funding deportation of mexican families to the u.s mexican border saying that there was no prospect of them finding employment here we start to see in what i call the modern era from 1950 to the present federal housing policies start to take on a more inclusive character the federal housing authority starts to guarantee home mortgages but the reality was and again this is the distinction of myth and reality the reality was the federal government had underwriting policies that ensured that new post-world war ii real estate developments such as levittown and on the east coast remained segregated we also had other tools such as blockbusting redlining and discriminatory lending practices that also helped to keep neighborhoods segregated

[32:00] it wasn't until the 1960s that we saw this tide begin to change national legislation and supreme court cases including brown versus board of education essentially worked to begin to dismantle some of the deeply entrenched institutional structures that had essentially promoted racism within housing closer to home we had a lot of developments and changes in the boulder community that were consistent with its early character we had a recruitment of clean industries so this is when we start bringing in tech and organizations such as nist we see some pretty significant population growth from 1950 to 1972 with population growing from twenty thousand to seventy two thousand and in 1974 the city of boulder elected its first and only black mayor benfield tate the second he was mayor until 1976. but we can also see several

[33:00] municipal actions that impact affordability uh that are also in this timeline and we'll discuss those in a moment we can most of us are familiar here with these regulations and one interpretation and i have to choose my words carefully all the things that make boulder a desirable place to live were motivated by self-interest which isn't necessarily a bad thing because it really was about protecting some environmental values but it also seemed to have a disparate impact and we'll look at some of the numbers in a bit on what is impact on who winds up living in boulder certainly things like residential growth management and the green belt really aren't inconsistent with what olmstead might have said in the early 20th century in his city beautiful uh rhetoric and that it is consistent with boulder being a town not just for anyone and one that's reasonably free

[34:01] of the sort of uh debris resulting from industry so what has been the impact on this it probably comes as news to none of you that boulder is a very desirable and consequently expensive place to live and these are recent numbers that just show what the average home costs are in the community today it's also very difficult for renters we can see that the cost of renting a one bedroom apartment is significantly higher than it is in other parts of the state you need to have an annual income of 28 more than in other places to be able to afford a one bedroom unit yet the wages in boulder for renters are not all that off from what they are in the rest of the state and that one has to work an inordinate amount of hours per week to be able to actually

[35:00] afford simply just a roof over their heads perhaps unsurprisingly as well boulder is not getting any more diverse and is actually getting less diverse as we look at the percentage of um as we look at the percentage of the what different races are and who is being identified in the boulder area like to go to a quote from penfield tate which is the measure of a great city in a great country is not the size of its greenbelt but how it treats its people and i think that's where we need to start looking based on tate's statement on how people feel they're being treated and this comes from the communities perceptions assessment that was put together by the city in 2017 and it does talk about a lack of diversity which is related to a lack of affordable housing and that we and as a result boulder is becoming an

[36:00] increasingly inequitable community you know increasingly we are seeing less of a middle class we're seeing um less low income people and as the housing prices indicate we are seeing really more of a economic elite becoming the norm in our city there is however a potential solution which is that of affordable housing and you're probably familiar with some of these numbers here so i won't spend too much time on it how things have increased and what the goal is with respect to that it's also worth noting too how affordable housing helps to level the playing field if you look at the racial composition of heads of households and affordable housing as opposed to that of the overall boulder population you start to see significantly more diversity and you see numbers that start to line up more with what one might consider equitable

[37:03] residents have also identified this as a priority and i think that you know oftentimes we've been talking about how do we make boulder a more welcoming and inclusive place and i think popular opinion sports the notion that affordable housing is an effective tool in making this happen so what do we do moving forward i close with a couple of statements from candy from his book how to be an anti-racist and he talks about racial inequity and lack of racial inequity and basically an example of racial equity would be if they were relatively equitable percentage of all three racial groups living in owner occupied homes in similar numbers clearly that's not the case in boulder and a very strong argument be made that we do not have racial equity with respect to housing in our community

[38:00] it's also important to know that he defines a racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups an anti-racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups but what's also important to note here is that it's not necessarily the intent of a policy or you know people that may have inherited certain policies but simply what is the impact because i think there needs to be a separation between you know people perhaps defending what the intent was with something as opposed to looking at well what is the intent and how can we resolve that and i think that's what we really want to talk about moving forward is how do we shape a new conversation moving forward that enables us to critically examine old policies and look at their impacts

[39:01] on racial equity and how can we address those to create more equity while peeling away the layers of pernicious mythology that have blinded us to some of the harsh realities of what's actually happening in our community thank you for your time that's great thank you clay so i had the pleasure of working with clay on this project i mean he did the the 99 of the work but um it was quite an honor so we wanted to share this with you like i mentioned at the last meeting um but mostly we also wanted to know sort of what how does this how do you feel about this what's your reaction um and then maybe later also if you think it's worthwhile is it something that we should be trying to share with the broader community in boulder to help start some sort of conversation so with that i would open it up to

[40:01] whoever wants to share and clay can you stop sharing your screen yeah i'm trying to get to that right now yeah sorry okay oh somebody did it for me thank you any comments from board members yeah um i mean i have some comments first clay and jay i mean thanks so much for that that was great to see um and you know laid out in that timeline i you know my first i suppose my first comment is how little things have changed um amazes me although it's not surprising because i feel it you know

[41:00] constantly in boulder and uh the other piece that i that i think was important that clay brought up at the very end there is the question of intent in these things and when i say how little things have changed i think it mostly is focused on not the intent but the um functioning and the outcomes that we get uh and you know i think as a community jay you mentioned should we start to talk about this i think yeah we should start talking about this and you know if that's something that that hap can help um initiate and bring about i think that would be fabulous um you know the intent piece is really

[42:02] interesting to me because in the work that i do um i see so much of staff time and i see so much effort by individuals in our community and i hear so much discussion by individuals in our community about equity and trying to create an equitable community in boulder um and when i then engage with so much of the city process not the individuals who are working within the city structures but when i engage with the process and i think this maybe is the same thing that struck me with the quote uh i read the little the newspaper cutting about the mexican-american families who were being sent you know provided with transportation

[43:02] to get to the border and i think that that intent if you had spoken to people at the time may have been very similar to what we feel our intent is um and you know sometimes it's cloaked in other things but the function then of the city processes are actually to exacerbate the very problem rather than engage with the solutions and you know i see it in our realm and things that we talk about on the board with the challenges of permitting adus within our town we have every intent of making adus more accessible easier to get easier to build but the actuality of trying to move through city processes is not

[44:00] helping people do that and it's incredibly complex and incredibly frustrating and so i think that's where a disjunct is within our community and i think it's really critical that we talk about it the last thing i want to say is i think this also brings up a really interesting um alignment between looking at the physical surrounds of our community and saying oh we want our community to be like this from a built environment standpoint from an open space standpoint and an environmental standpoint and really starting to shift that discussion more to a question of we want our community to be like this from an equitable standpoint and from a standpoint of the community of people who can actually live here um had a discussion with a woman passing

[45:01] by my house this morning on the street and we started talking about this a little bit and she was you know her concern about her children who were born and raised in boulder and are exiting boulder very shortly so i think we really need to start shifting and giving equal weight to the discussion of what we want the faces in our community to look like and the energy of our community versus the physical and built environment of our community both are important clearly but i don't think we give an equal balance to those in our processes so that's all i have to say and again thank you that was a great presentation thank you michael you're muted sorry uh danny get your hand up and you're muted yeah uh i'm a muted

[46:01] stiller okay good um i just want i really appreciated the presentation and uh uh i absolutely agree with a lot of the uh sentiments that uh jacques just articulated and really you know i mean what we deal with a lot of issues that that um have a very uh strong socio-economic undertone in terms of the affordability of housing particularly in boulder given all the challenges we have and the point um clay that i i thought it was really good that your presentation had this the point is you know it's kind of like the three-legged race theory right so if you have uh one group and they have to start the race you know as a three-legged race and the other group's just sprinting ahead and then you say oh okay well you know you can you can uh uh untie your legs now um the race is already half over and i think that when we're dealing with uh land use issues and boulder and

[47:00] property and you know you look at people who bought their house for 200 000 30 years ago and now they're selling it for 1.2 or something like that that's all part of it so that the land use issues you know the one thing i'd say is intent i think that there's um certainly a lot of people whose you know hearts are in the right place and trying to uh effectuate better policy but the problem is all the policies that we have inevitably um when you're creating those socioeconomic issues you're also creating those racial issues because of the fact that um you know you have to deal with that disadvantage and so we're dealing with land use um which i've you know been practicing in land use for uh almost a quarter century now somehow but um inevitably things like zoning really uh have a strong potential to underscore the racial divide that was probably um much more uh intentional or volitional

[48:00] when it was put into place and now you're trying not to be that way but there's still that um that undercurrent right and so um one of the things that we've been talking about here i'd say for the last uh year and a half is how um a lot of the policies and a lot of the challenges towards even some of the more simple um things like a remodel of a home uh um how the process creates those challenges you're gonna absolutely see that when you're starting to juxtapose that with you know the racial challenges as well and same thing with you know trying to develop multi-family trying to get new families in here i think those are all things that we do need to start really trying to be cognizant about and and saying you know uh just like jacques said we're trying to determine uh how we build a community not just from a land use perspective but from a people perspective and that's something that really needs to drive a lot of the land use discussions and

[49:01] land use decisions that we're facing and so i think it's absolutely germane to what we do and and it's an incredible challenge but i appreciate um you know these steps i think that presentation can be very uh helpful and very edifying for people um moving forward from you know all different uh uh community interests because it provides a lot of context for boulder that even for me you know um having been in and out of here for many many years or three decades uh you know pretty edifying so again i appreciate it and and i think it's it's definitely something that merits for the conversation thank you obviously the whole land use industry has been shaken up in the last year i guess this

[50:01] is the actual adversary of george floyd's i think it may be um that's that was a terrible tragedy it's had some positive outcomes in raising people's awareness and getting the briefing business practices like what's what does the bottom line really mean that's not the purview of this board necessarily but it's a healthy mindset that's going to take a lot of creative thought to make happen because you're really dealing with some basic tenets of capitalism for example uh in terms of policy discussions i could say maybe this is a topic for a retreating discussion later we can talk about regulations we can talk about um stabilizing land uh costs through uh creative techniques uh you know those are things i personally would like to see get on the board's agenda certainly at the retreat and uh i hope the council will be open to discussing those issues too

[51:01] because we're really we're dealing with as a formerly codified as uh legal racism is now you know effectively the economic reality what's happening so that's a very tough issue to tackle i'm one of those bought my house 30 years ago danny i'm not selling it but uh you know if i did it would theoretically be rich and uh i don't feel great about that um but that is reality of the economic situation we're in um so uh i also think it's incredibly useful a lot of us have i hope in reading literature on this uh uh how to be an anti-racist great um color of law uh really amazing book i think that's those have been in every book group i hope uh but localizing is so important you did a great job of that and i learned a lot i thought i knew a lot about boulder history but

[52:00] um i learned a lot more from that you okay um anything else on that very large topic um if not i think we're uh prevention michael juliet i'm sorry i didn't see it okay juliet you need to unmute sorry i've uh i've now put up a couple of hands and i don't know what they are for one i think was a high five anyway thank you very much uh clay really appreciate that and uh thank you to others for sharing the comments and it just brings to light that for me that uh what was going on all over the country during that same historical period has been was going on here in boulder and we don't really think of it in the west as much as we do

[53:00] in the eastern part of the u.s um in terms of the civil war piece of it but i i was curious uh in terms of solutions to this problem um i i mean i had a couple of ideas but in talking about zoning clay and others um city or on this board would they suggest changing some of the commercial zoning that we have for office into housing because that is it does seem to present a challenge um and i and i don't mean to pick on the high-tech companies they just are very attracted to our our community but when we we have the arrival of high-tech uh companies and industry it tends to attract not necessarily a workforce that lives here but rather a workforce that is coming from other typically a very high cost of living markets so i saw your meaning mean housing price

[54:02] there on the screen and i would submit to to all of you that if you were moving here from silicon valley that would look pretty inexpensive by comparison so i i see that part of the story is is the the mix of of employment opportunities that we have in this community and and that being part and parcel to driving the cost of housing and making it less accessible and uh would we be that cert well served to change from a zoning standpoint a commercial zoning to more residential and retail that serves the residential dwellers and that's kind of my question and i'd love to know what other solutions people have in mind to to this these challenges

[55:00] yeah good like jack's got his hand up again and you immediately damn sorry you're being sorry i'm back um i wanted to loop back to it you know juliet kind of in response to that just thinking about that i i have imagined solutions but community solutions i think uh i loop back to lynn and her comment about the jobs housing imbalance that we have and you know in some ways i i don't see those solutions existing until we actually engage in a really meaningful way with that really hard debate and um i think you know

[56:02] so the start of that solution is to actually engage with the problems that you know have created it and both what clay's brought up tonight and what you are alluding to and what lin brought up and again i would love to hear us as a board start to have and i know it's all political touchy subjects but i would love to see us as a board start having those discussions and so maybe that's something that we can talk about at our retreat and see how we might bring it bring it to the boards table so i think that's our start for solutions is starting to talk about the conditions that exist thank you jacques we're going to have a great agenda for that bird retreat um does anyone else have a comment before we move on with our agenda tonight if i just may have a

[57:01] final observation because actually what i've heard from all of you has been extremely helpful but i think you know like juliet hearing your potential solution and your raising of the tech industry is being an issue of this i think it supports the argument that we've been going down a certain path since the 1800s and the influx of tech money and culture is still very much part of sort of a direct vector of all of that you know in some ways you can make a good argument that boulder is as much a suburb of the bay area than it may be of denver and i think this to me just indicates the feedback i've gotten from all of you is if that we can educate the broader community about while we have all these things that we viewed as net positives let's probe a little deeper and see what some of the impacts have been and how this has led to things like people from very expensive places saying well it's

[58:00] not all that expensive relative to where we are but i think it's really time to question some of the assumptions behind the decisions we make i mean in a way i feel it's like you know you have a multi-generational family and the initial family builds the fortune uh the initial family members the first generation builds the fortune of the family by doing things that maybe are questionable but you know by the time you get down to the third or fourth generation you know everything seems legitimized and okay and there's that veneer of respectability and um you know i think we need to look at the origins of you know boulder's a great place but how did we get here and you know what were some of the assumptions that we need to question and where are we going thank you for that opportunity thank you clay okay last call before we move on we have another um topic eviction

[59:01] prevention and rental assistance services update uh and minor amendments this will be reported out by christian heiser executive deputy director of housing and human services so it just seems really um i just always appreciate clay's work and jay's work on this topic and it just is um seems like a nice transition into this conversation because while uh we'll be providing an update on the eviction prevention rental assistance program it is it does present a small one tool that we can use to really look at um equitable access to resources that's one of the things we're trying to do with this program um and so it's just it seems like a appropriate um presentation to be able to step into this space and talk to you about this so i am joined by jay allen um who is our he's been with

[60:02] the city of boulder and hhs for many many years um but he is now joining us and he's being um he's joining us as the new program coordinator with the eviction prevention rental assistance program i was here back in march to present on kind of the the origins of the program and how it was going at that point and now from the lessons learned since we put it into action um since january we're making a trip back to council in june to suggest some ordinance changes and refinements um and that's what we'd like to present to you on tonight so let me take a minute and share my screen because we do have a presentation um i'm gonna think it's this one tell me yes alrighty jay can you give me a thumbs up when you see it alrighty

[61:02] so yeah so you heard us back in march we came that night it was karen armstrong and myself um and we were talking about how we um how ordinance 8412 was passed back in november and how we stepped into uh pretty quickly to launch this program just because it really provided an opportunity for us to shore up a lot of the program we already had in place and take advantage of this great community support for this type of work and this important tool for our community members to be able to maintain their housing and like i said any ordinance or new program since its inception in january there have been some lessons learned and these learnings have informed a few proposed amendments to the ordnance really focused on clarity and efficiencies to the program to make sure it can be as effective and as efficiently accessible um to our community members as possible

[62:00] so tonight we're going to review the proposed changes with you and we're going to be seeking your feedback so we're going to go through the presentation um and then we would like to open it up to questions um and any other insights you might wanna share with us about um how this program is evolving sure and you know i just told you what we're going to be talking about so i'm going to skip this slide and move on so just a quick look back um ordinance 8412 was a renter-driven initiative and it was approved by the voters um in boulder in november 2020. um and what how we saw that is it really a firm boulder community's commitment to being a welcoming inclusive and diverse community by um by approving this measure it just really asserts that the community is committed to making sure that all individuals um can access and protect their housing options um

[63:02] ordinance 8412 established a rental licensing tax to operate and fully fund a program to provide housing supports and including rental assistance and legal representation to tenants at risk of eviction the revenues that are generated from the tax will go to support the administrative cost of the tax in the program provide rental assistance for persons that are vulnerable to eviction cover all the costs of attendance legal services and create a tenant committee the court ordinance calls for the program to be fully implemented 12 months after the effective date of the ordinance so uh right now we're in june it's been running for about six months we'll be sharing some details about who we've worked with in those six months and it just continues to kind of move along so since january um again this is just a little bit of a

[64:01] revisiting of what you heard in march is that we executed a contract with a non-profit bridge to justice to provide legal support and representation we align pre-existing services and resources for example the community mediation that's been around for 25 30 years as well as the rental assistance that's already available in our community through a variety of our partners that have programs already set up or that were further extended because of federal resources that came to the community in response to the coved pandemic we established the eviction prevention rental service services phone number and website including an active service request form and jay will be talking about that in a second but essentially um people are able to access us by phone they can go to the website they can um fill out the request form

[65:02] it is then quickly sent to a staff member jay or another one of our staff members who then respond back and assess the situation and plug people into the resources that best meet their needs on this slide you see that the phone number is listed there as well as the website as to where that information is available you'll be hearing more about this but since the last time we talked to you we've determined that the rental license excise tax what we're proposing is that be collected on behalf of the city by the boulder county assessor's office and i'll talk a little bit more about that when we start talking about the amendments um we have also asked and uh was approved by city council to appropriate appropriate a little over a million dollars from the general fund to cover star startup of program costs until the revenues from rental license excise tax are received and once those are received we will then reimburse the general fund and repay

[66:01] these startup funds that we've received to get things going we've established a financial rental assistance fund that's accessible to clients we initiated the recruitment of the tenant advisory committee that were aiming to be seated in the beginning of q3 of quarter three of 2021 and while we're on this topic really want to put a plug in for that we're actually it's been i think we've been recruiting for about two months now and actually apple and we've done a pretty extensive uh around our recruitment through social media through our community connectors through our boards and commissions we have not received enough applications to actually do a selection process quite yet so just really want to put a plug in um to help us to you all to help us get the word out to recruit um tenants to serve on that committee um just as a side note they do get paid a thousand dollars a year to participate um so there is a nice financial incentive to help

[67:01] participate in that to really um to facilitate their ability to um be a part of this work and then finally we hired a full-time eviction prevention rental assistance um coordinator being jay allen who i'm going to ask to unmute himself and he's going to share a little bit now about how the program works and how it's been working for the next two months for the last six months and then i will pop back in and talk about the amendments yeah all right so so i'm jay allen i've been asked i've been brought on to help with this i was on a full-time basis and i have been working with the city for a long time so uh yeah so i wanted to sort of talk about where we how we see things working with the program so far we have been operating uh since january um with what we've had we're still building up the program so

[68:00] you can sort of see here on this slide we kind of think about these three different different ways that we want to want to interact with people and we can i can talk a bit a little bit about sort of some generalized case studies without any specifics um in how we're seeing those cases move through our system and what outcomes we're seeing and when we see that sort of first contact uh pre-eviction court and then boulder court's system we tend to believe that the earlier we can be involved with somebody um who's in a situation that might end up with an eviction the the better we're going to have an outcome the better the outcome is going to be for the tenant and for everybody involved including the landlords so first contact can come through that online web form it can come through a referral from another agency and they can come through the phones the phone the message line that you see there we

[69:01] also some folks are going directly to bridge to justice the the law firm that we've that we're working with and and sometimes we are seeing people come from there and being referred to us because they're not quite at the stage where legal assistance is going to be the most apt thing to help their situation so that first contact piece we really want that to be as early as we can information is going out with some kinds of eviction filing paperwork including our number and website so people can people have access to it that's seems to be one of the big ways that people are getting getting the word about the program um we're starting to see some people just sort of mouth we did have um some press last month when we saw a lot of people reach out from that i had a person call me from florida who had seen the the press piece and had a relative who had some issues in boulder and they called me that way so that was interesting

[70:00] so first contact can come very early um what we what we want to kind of see there somebody is starting to have an issue with their landlord an issue with with lack of funds to pay to pay the rent for example they reach out um through either the online online forum or through the the the phone line and our first preference is to connect them to mediation and other kinds of uh conflict resolution tools without having to go through the court system so you know we have seen that be successful in cases where somebody would reach out we'll have a mediator contact them they'll work with the mediator they'll get and they'll get a mediation set up and they'll reach an agreement and possibly reach rental assistance through us or to another agency that resolves the issue before anything else happens and that seems like a really good outcome the pre-eviction court um we are working with the courts right now we get our dockets for the the next week about a week ahead of time that shows

[71:01] all the eviction cases that are going to be that are going to be heard for the following week and the an emphasis for the program has been to really try to reach out to those people the week before to try to talk to them to see if we can get them into uh a conflict resolution scenario like a mediation or get access to rental assistance if that's going to help the situation and if if it's gonna be gonna be helpful we'll also try to connect them to uh legal assistance where that's appropriate one thing to mention with this program is because it is for the city of boulder and eviction court is a county-wide process currently bridge to justice does have a grant that is allowing them to provide their services to anybody in the county so at the moment anybody in the county can contact us and really reach the full the full range of the services that work that we're trying to connect people to

[72:00] so so that's going pretty well so far um if we talk about a case where this might happen we we see people come in we reach out to them um if we've worked with them in the past or uh on the docket so we have them on the docket they reach out to we reach out to them and the best outcome we've seen is cases where we then get rental assistance set up for them and then have a conversation between them and their landlord where they uh resolve the issue without actually having to go through an eviction any kind of eviction filing and that will get dismissed before court that's the best outcome we have seen other outcomes where somebody would we'd contact them um and then they'd work with the attorneys and then end up going going to the eviction court and then we could still have a lot of opportunity to intervene so we are going to boulder courts on fridays myself as the program coordinator i'm

[73:02] there to help help gain access to things like eviction i'm sorry rental assistance we'll also have attorneys there from bridge to justice available at court and we'll have mediators both in person and available remotely we also have some attorneys who will be available remotely if we if we have the need for that level of resources so when we go to court often you'll see a large group of people there who are offering this range of services which has been pretty well received by the court system so far often there's more of us in attendance than there are tenants at the moment because the number of cases are is a little limited because of what's happening with the pandemic and ongoing conditions that is however expected to change quickly so what you see there if we talk about a case study somebody comes to court they don't know what's going on

[74:00] and fortunately if you show up now we'll have resources there like myself and an attorney who can walk a person through the process and then engage in the mediation there at court and then as part of that mediation i'll reach out and connect them to rental assistance either through our program or through the other programs that are available there's a lot of programs that are available right now related to the to the pandemic and we have seen a lot of cases where those two things will cause the eviction to not happen though they'll reach an agreement with their landlord before actually um any kind of court action and then that gets right into the court and becomes a stipulation that becomes enforceable so yeah we really do focus on these three points of contact and those those are kind of how how we see things working right now so yeah

[75:00] here um this is just talking about the the range of services that we have available from mediation to rental assistance to legal and you can see that there's a lot of we this this slide is a little 64. i think that's a little update uh we've worked with a few more folks than that but i think this is a little more updated than some than one version of this so but you do i'll just say this was through may 15th may 15th yeah um you do see there's a lot of people who are accessing a wide range of our services which i think is we certainly feel feel good about that um and i think a lot of these things really do work hand in hand pretty well the rental assistance and mediation can often you know sidestep or go around the need to have any kind of legal assistance available and legal assistance can really help them help the mediation process be successful and all three of them

[76:00] together can obviously um turn around the situation pretty quickly so so yeah that's about what we've seen so well thank you jay that was great it's been just incredible to see jay and karen and the team to just grow this program um this the past six months has just really kind of taken off um i would also just add that uh those services that are available whether it's by phone or in person at court or any of our materials they're all available in spanish as well and so we staff members can work if there's an individual that is there or needs services and their first language is spanish we have those means to support them as well so now i'm going to talk through the proposed ordinance changes here's a quick list of them that we are going to be talking through so the first one is about the collection method

[77:00] when the ordinance was written it essentially said that it would be collected but it didn't um specify city or county or just provided us an opportunity to figure out uh kind of the most um efficient and effective way to do that so the staff evaluated several possible options for the collection of of this new rental tax including um collecting it through the city's existing licensing software you might be familiar with citizen self-service or looking at the city's tax and revenue management software called gen tax you might have interacted with that before or the collection of the tax through the boulder county's assessor's office on the annual property tax assessments after evaluating all these options staff is planning to certify the tax with the county's assessor for collection through the property owner's annual property tax bill this method we have found after analysis has lowest administrative costs and

[78:00] eliminates the need for taxpayers to manage separate accounts and to track and pay a separate tax assessment to facilitate this this so the staff is proposing amending the ordinance to authorize the city manager to arrange for other entities to collect the tax so empower our city manager to enter into this agreement with the county assessor's office as well as they'll that the tax assessment can be certified with the boulder county assessors so that's just a cleanup not a big thing it's just um something um that will just make it more efficient um for the users as well as um city and county staff we are also looking for this with the use of the dedicated revenue really what's behind this is just to provide some clarification as to kind of the the the menu of services um when you read the ordinance as it was written back um in the fall

[79:01] is it really identified rental license rental assistance and legal representation and as jay just um presented it really we want to have as much latitude to be as creative and as responsive as needed and so the proposed changes is really to provide us the flexibility and the agility to meet people where they're at and to um kind of make sure that they are um that what is needed to keep maintain their housing is we're able to employ and offer so going back to just reiterating what jay said considering that earlier interventions lead to more successful outcomes for landlord tenant matters um we're proposing that the ordinance kind of spells out the menu of options and prioritizes um and highlights the need for things to be early interventions so bringing a rental rental assistance

[80:01] bringing a dispute resolution um encouraging community mediation um and then really trying to have legal advice and legal representation really being the kind of the last option but all of those being included in there so the proposed language that will be going to city council for consideration simply allows for early intervention for a tenant at risk of eviction in addition staff is proposing an expansion of those services as i just said to include dispute resolution services and other financial assistance beyond that um what the financial assistant might look like is it could cover the cost of attendance expenses to transition to a new or temporary housing so if if there is not a resolution of staying in the home um that there might be funding that we could provide to help a tenant be able to transition to their next location so helping with simple moving costs so there would be

[81:00] parameters on this but really just whatever is needed to help somebody exit the situation and move on to their next stable housing situation we are also just providing um asking city council to provide some clarification when it comes to the tenant advisory committee the original ordinance created a tenant committee comprised of five members who are tenants of the city of boulder and they can't own real property um and how it reads is that they oversee the program and staff and that's a real departure from how boards commissions and committees work in the city um and so the clarification is just that the tenant committee will serve as an advisory committee appointed to ensure the legislative intent of um the eviction prevention rental assistance program is fulfilled um so this is something that we have shared with a variety of stakeholders and i'll be talking about outreach in a second but we did take this to the to the newer

[82:00] advocates thinking that this might be a point of contention and they were in support of this that that clarification makes sense um and is in alignment with how all the other city boards and commissions work similar to have so the next one is exemptions so at the time of the adoption exemption from the rental license excise tax was limited to units owned by the housing authority being boulder housing partners um and that is based on state statute that exempts older housing partners properties to be exempt um from local taxes and in january city council requested that um city staff look at that to determine um if there were other exemptions that might be considered and so we we've looked at three different options to to you know consider no exemptions except for the housing authority units per the state statute

[83:01] statute exempt only units owned by nonprofit and tax exempt status that was one of the options that was kind of expressed publicly by some affordable housing providers as well as city council specifically asked us to look at that and then finally is to exempt all units certified by the city as low income rental units currently exempt from the city's rental license fee so analysis of these three options included the financial impact of additional exemptions the administrative impact of processing exemptions and rates of exemptions of the city's affordable housing partners so it's estimated the rental license excise tax will generate approximately 1.5 million dollars annually and accounting for the statutorily exempted units those bhp units um that that includes that 1.5 includes the exemption of the bhp units

[84:01] it is also estimated that the program that this ordinance has created um will will require an estimated um one million dollars per year to function so the financial impacts of these exemptions are reflected on this slide so the 109 the 109 000 represents housing authority units already exempted for the state statute so that's accounted for the 1.5 you see at the top also exempting non-profit owned units is empty is this estimated to be a reduction of an additional 52 000 out of that 1.5 million and exempting all city certified units which includes the nonprofit units is estimated to be in a reduction of 66 000 so any of these options in staffs estimations is would still see a revenue generation above the cost of the program

[85:01] and relating to the administrative impact of processing exemptions city staff annually certifies right rental units furthering the city's affordable housing goals so the certified inventory that our staff puts together every year is provided annually to the city of boulder planning and development services licensing team and the boulder county assessor's office because they use it for their own kind of just knowing the lay of the land understanding the residential inventory in the city of boulder so this is this is already a practice that's been in place for many years the inventory that we track and certify includes units that are owned leased or managed by a housing authority or a non-profit is subject to a unit that is subject to a city approved permanently affordable housing covenant so that is you often hear us talk about our permanently affordable housing inventory so all of those units are included it also includes legally um rent restricted units by contractor covenants so there are properties in boulder that have received tax

[86:02] credits for example that the city doesn't have a covenant on we did not participate are my pre-date kind of inclusionary housing or we might not have participated with a housing a city investment and so we don't actually have a covenant but because of the federal financing that they received or other reasons they might have some sort of rent restriction already on the property so we account for those as well um so due to the existing process that we have to account for pretty much any unit in our community that it that we identify as contributing to our affordable housing goals we're already tracking that we're already providing that information to our rental licensing team as well as the county assessor's office so expanding the exemptions is deemed minimal when it comes to the administrative involvement of that and then finally when it comes to concerns about eviction rates and if we

[87:01] were to exempt um any units we did reach um we've had several conversations with our affordable housing providers and what they reported and we're using 2018-2019 numbers pre-covered um just because proof cobit is 2020 is just such a random year for so many reasons they all reported this is our um housing authority our nonprofit housing providers as well as our for-profit housing providers that are working in the affordable housing space they reported less than a two percent invention rate in those two years across those two years um and in most cases it was less closer to one percent um so we don't see that these are um if you were to identify potentially bad actors in the community that are pursuing evictions unfairly they are not showing up in our in our inventory they are not showing they are they are not a part of our affordable housing partners if if you were to identify someone so given

[88:02] the considerations above staff recommends further exemptions be granted to the units certified by the city as low-income rental units currently exempt from the city's rental licensing fee and so that's going to include all those units that i just talked about um the housing authority units those owned by non-profits those that are a tax credit deal that predates the city's inclusionary housing ordinance um just of all of any unit that essentially is contributing to the city's affordable housing goals so we see this approach as it's not administrative burden and it also supports the fiscal sustainability of our city's affordable housing partners and they are committed to helping us achieve our goals and so we want to make sure that they maintain their financial stability in providing those units we've reviewed these recommendations with a variety of stakeholders which i'll talk about in a second and again there was it was met with

[89:00] approval and support and moving on talking about so over the last um few months we have met with advocates from the no eviction without representation that is the group of volunteers that brought forth ordnance 80 um 412. we've also met with the boulder area rental housing association we've met with our affordable housing partners bridge to justice city of longmont community mediation team as well as manufactured housing community property management representatives the reason we met with them is because of the rental the rental of the how manufactured housing communities work with the rental of the land um are having a lease of the land and then owning your um home on top of the land that they too are protected under this ordinance so a manufactured housing community resident would be able to access these services as well so we thought it was important to reach out to that um representatives that work in

[90:00] those communities and generally we found i mean not generally so there was some there was conversation some fine finer points um that they wanted to um that they have suggested we have worked those into the um the recommendations that we're making to city council so they are represented in the information i just shared with you but generally and oh you know across the board they expressed support um of the recommended ordinance amendments finally if that wasn't enough outreach we actually then sent emails and postcards to almost seven thousand rental license holders across the city um fever back resulted in us deciding the city to recommend starting collection um for the 21 year because that's what the ordinance required that it would be collected um during the 22 year um and with the collection period being between march and um june and so that's the june 20

[91:00] june of 2020 will be the deadline for that and that was informed we were looking at a variety of things of starting to do collections in 2021 um it just seemed to be most um fair to our property owners um to be uh kind of preparing for this additional fee um and so this is where we've landed so that feedback informed us pushing this out to next year for collection 63 of the respondents support collection through the annual property tax and finally 54 that we heard back supports exemption of the permanently affordable rental units so with that i'm going to um ask for any questions or feedback on any of this thank you that was very thorough any questions from board members or

[92:03] uh can you hear me yeah yes yes okay um so is this comments two or just questions uh whatever's helpful to you okay so i i think um i think this is great and i really appreciate how uh thorough it is and and some of the improvements that have been um made obviously uh through you know pain strength meticulous process uh sorry it's my son in the background but i so what i wanted to say is a i think uh it's great to do this through the assessor and through uh property tax i i spent a lot of years um you know uh working as a municipal and county attorney and and so i think it's really effective way to to have it that's uh user-friendly and very systemic and and you know really provides statutory means of collection so i think that's terrific um i think that uh chris and some of the

[93:02] things that you talked about about the emphasis going towards um uh dispute resolution and and kind of information in the beginning that's one of the things that i would absolutely stress um having dealt with all facets of real estate law for decades i would say that what i've seen so many times not only residential leases but commercial leases is that often both sides the landlord and the tenant can really um yeah there's a lot of gray matter that maybe they don't fully appreciate or understand even in their own leases and so uh mediation to me by all means absolutely positively uh should be emphasized on this as much as possible for any circumstance because i really think that this is one of those areas and i don't think mediation is the panacea for everything but i do think for um uh you know eviction matters mediation

[94:01] can be really really really effective you know particularly it's not just money that's involved but maybe money that's tied to other things and so um i'd love to see that bolster as much as possible um the the other question that i have on this is that i didn't quite see and i'm just trying to wrap my head around is what are the so you know and any in any other scenario where we have you know court-appointed counsel let's say there's always an income qualification um here you know there's a lot of different uh economic considerations so you know if i'm renting if i'm renting a seven thousand dollar a month home up on devil's thumb you know what do i get to avail myself of uh as opposed to somebody who's trying to stay in their uh two-bedroom apartment you know with a family of five or something like that and i think that's that's a uh absolutely imperative part of this is that you know we make sure that that we're trying to

[95:00] provide the services for those who need it most because obviously everything's finite in terms of funding and resources and so um that that's my my biggest concern with that is that what mechanisms we have in place for all that so um well thank you for the feedback that's great um when it your with regards to your question the way that the ordinance 8412 was written and what how it will continue is that legal representation as well as our community mediation is available to anyone um so there are no income limits when it comes to accessing those types of services however when it comes to rental assistance uh we are you know this this um revenue source is the majority of it is going to rental assistance that is our intention um i think it's about 50 of it is going to support rental assistance off the top of my head that's number um but we are putting income limits to that um that are going to be reflective of the city's um

[96:01] income limits just because we um see limited i mean it is a finite source um and we want to make sure that it is getting to those who are most in need and so we're working through determining um kind of what those income limits will be we're also but we are also putting in some caveats as to um yes there's income limits but also somebody might experience some unexpected expense like a medical bill or something like that that there would be some um flexibility um with our team to be able to make a determination if somebody would be you know eligible because of an extreme circumstance um and there will probably be some parameters around documentation that has to be provided by the landlord if they're not within those income limits so those are the types of things that we're trying to put into place to preserve the integrity of the program as well as um the uh limited resource of the financial race the financial tools we have jay i saw you turn on your camera do you have anything to add to that

[97:01] no i think you covered it just um uh yeah we are gonna i think it is going to be a you covered everything i just want to mention that there are going to be those sort of accident circumstances that are going to be a little trickier but the yeah yeah i would just also say that we're going to maintain a little bit of the funding at the city um so when jay or one of our team members is at court they can they can be responsive on the spot if somebody if there is a financial resolution that can be helpful in the moment but we are also working with um effa as well as um uh the housing helpline that's through the county to provide money because really the intention is we have rental assistance um very very very available in our community right now thanks to not only the covid um response but then also because of this program i mean that's one of the great things that came out of um what we call epres

[98:01] is that we've never had a steady source of rental come and now we have this in perpetuity we will have these dollars available specifically for this purpose so we are having some sit with the city but then we're also working with alpha and the county because that those are access points that people um generally go to and we want to make sure that that people are it's kind of that theory of any door anyway any door is the right door so just to make sure it's available and already and we're in a lot of communication with those partners to get that information out as well as to track uh what's coming coming their way and and to uh restate denny's question um slightly it's it's not likely kristen or jay that um the seven thousand dollar month renter on table you know double sum is likely to

[99:00] take advantage of this program that's a question not enlightened they they can um so the way that the ordinance is written is if they would be eligible to access the community mediation um program they always have been or uh the rentals and not the rental assistance the legal services so the way that the ordinance is written and there's no we we haven't received any feedback from city council or our community members to change that um but we but we did try to we are putting those parameters in place with city council support around the rental assistance so yes that that person would be able to access it yeah right but they're not going to get an opportunity to keep that rent at that level for a wealthy person okay um i got a couple of questions just

[100:02] simple clarifications uh when you mention the amendment to collect uh the funds through uh property tax um and apologize by ignorance but that that that's the money assessed to people who are rental licenses is that correct it's not like a general property tax no it's it will be attached to if an individual has a rental license and they are not exempt um they would be charged this fee so it will be um attached to their rental license fee right people like me that have an ad to you and then the um if i understand your description of the tenant advisory committee correctly is essentially kind of a watchdog committee to make sure this program ensues as it should is that correct that's right they'll be a partner with the city and making sure that this is um you know rolled out and

[101:01] achieving um the intention of the the the voters um when they voted for this to make sure that people have resources available to them so they will be working very closely with us um to help us not just um make sure that it's running the way it should but to help us evolve it um because every day we're learning new i'm not every day but every month every i mean we've just the the resources and the communication and what's available in our community today from where we were two years ago i mean this is one of those silver linings from covid is like it is just it's a different landscape for individuals who are at risk of losing their rental housing and so we want to work with the tenant committee um to make sure that their interests are known and voiced um and that they're helping us grow this program to be what it needs to be and what it can be um and that i would just also add to along those lines is the city is

[102:00] jay and karen have been in contact with people across the country who are very interested in this initiative it's becoming known about it and people across the state across the country are tapping us to say what if what are you doing this is what we're doing and so we're just learning a lot so we just want to have the flexibility to really grow this program um in partnership with the advisory committee i do want to say can i make a quick um so if if you're interested in helping us recruit for the advisory committee they just need to go to that website that was on the powerpoint presentation i can drop it in the chat too but that's where they would access the application in that position is because it's a committee it's appointed by the city manager so we will be uh i think one of you has volunteered to help us um with that with that um selection um but it would go to the city manager for approval

[103:00] thank you other questions we got juliette i saw you guys thanks thank you so much kristen nice to see you um i have a couple of questions uh as it relates to your last point of getting inquiries from other cities i was curious if you had any data or we're going to collect any data about what the legal process has cost taxpayers in the past prior to the implementation of this new system and um and if then i know you're you you've got some data on on how much you think it's going to cost now but if there was a way to to put some dollars against the number of tenants served in the program so that we could see uh

[104:00] cost per tenant and that we could see what the overall taxpayer costs versus in the past because if it in fact through mediation and other forms of intervention rental inter intermittent rental assistance or temporary rental assistance we can avoid burdening the the legal system with these kinds of cases and therefore we by default save taxpayer money it would be great to be able to show that mathematically or with some dollars behind it and and it'd be great to be able to share that kind of data with the citizens and also with other municipalities that might be interested in something like this i know that's not a small task but to to make that kind of calculation but but i i wanted to put it out there as sort of a question if that's something you're doing or planning on doing or have considered doing that's one i'll just ask them all and then and then i'll put myself on mute again

[105:00] um the and this was somewhat answered already does the does every eviction process in the city is it is it required to funnel through this process so anytime there's an eviction proceeding or event would it need to funnel through this process and that and therefore take the burden off of other ways of dealing with eviction processes then my third question is you mentioned that you had surveyed rental license holders and there were total of 6 700 rental license holders and i was curious how many responses you had received in the 6700 i saw that um there was a lot in favor of this tax uh program but i was curious what the response rate was of the of the license holders thank you sure so um those are great thank you

[106:00] um so your first question about the legal costs no we have not um considered that but i think that's a fabulous idea so when you if you go and read 8412 there's like a full page page and a half of items uh various data points that we are um that the ordinance requires that we uh collect so there's going to be quite a bit of work it's an opportunity it's there's going to be a real opportunity for us to like make sure that what we're doing is effective and provides us the opportunity to really report back to the public as to how this program is working or not so but that's not one of the items that we um that was identified in there so i think that we should add that to the list i'll say the list that isn't included in the ordinance some of it is not feasible for a variety of reasons because of you know privacy um concerns um because it's just not information that's collected by the courts there's things like that so one of the first things we want to ask the tenant committee to help us do

[107:00] is really refine how we collect information about the program so i think that'd be a great addition to add to that conversation to say here's the 20 points you're asking us with the ordinance asks us to collect these aren't going to work for these legitimate reasons and are there other things we need to be collecting to tell this story um so i think that's a great recommendation thank you um the eviction process and the city um it's it's not required but our team is being so proactive as jay mentioned that we are getting the docket as soon as it's released and they are calling every single individual that's on that docket that we that we can reach um it is upon that person then to work with us they're not required to work with us we hope that we are making it as accessible and as friendly and as worth their um involvement or having us involved in the situation um but it's not something that is

[108:01] required um ask jay allen to comment on that in a second and when it comes to rental license i mean who responded so there were 6 700 that went out um what i was told by our finance team member joel wagner that put out this survey he said he never gets any responses on taxing issues that it's like very rare that he gets a response and he was thrilled to have received 300 responses so in in the world of surveying that's not a huge response rate but i guess in his world he thought that was tremendous so we did get a lot of feedback um and generally was supportive it was a lot of questions just more concerns about um i mean there were opinions expressed but it was more concerns about making sure that there wouldn't be mistakes so as michael mentioned of a homeowner getting potentially taxed on accident um things like that happening so it's more concerns of just like making sure the system is strong and um effective so

[109:01] yeah according to joel this that was like a banner year or banner um response rating on this topic so thank you kristen do you have any comments or anything to round out about the um people being required um to interact with the program yeah i mean i can definitely address that so as it stands right now how do i say this so it is it is the information about the program is going out it's where no one has um that being said the the number one group of people that we're not interacting with are people who um for one for whatever reason we don't know don't end up appearing for their their court date and that's a real um it's a real um group we'd like to reach out and as kristin said we are reaching out to everyone that we can that is a little difficult the information that we have that we've been getting so far

[110:02] is it's a lot easier to reach out to landlords and to the attorneys of landlords than to the tenants directly and it's something we're really trying to address with uh with the courts we you know this this program would function we think um we think we would be beneficial for us to be able to get access to the court filings and be able to contact the people directly as much as we can because that's who we're that's who we're we're tasked to to to really kind of represent in this situation so the the question is is everyone's everyone required to to partake in it or to to be in this process everyone who comes to court like all the judges have been really great you know hear the resources that available there's attorneys there's people from the city here to help that so um anybody who comes and anybody who engages the process early yes they're definitely engaged with us and um that the people

[111:01] we can't reach are people that are that don't that that are hard to reach for a lot of reasons so um but yeah anybody who comes to court is going to be in contact with the program i would just offer the other thing that we have in place now that started before this initiative started in january is our team is meeting i think it's monthly with the judges with um the other community meter mediators from longmont uh bridge to justice there there's just a lot of collaboration that goes on to solve for those things and determine how to um you know expand the services and one of the things we saw change this year is that the judges were actually requiring before they i think they would get called up what i saw happened was somebody would get called up their case would get called up and the judge would then tell them to go take a break go into the hallway and meet with a community mediator essentially to see if there was a resolution that could be reached and then they would

[112:00] come back and for their hearing you know whatever were to happen next so the judges are very much um helping us like interject um whenever and wherever we can and they're also actively giving out materials about this um so it's just been a great partnership with the courts thank you yep um any other uh questions comments for christian kristin i'm sorry or jay okay um so my first meeting is chair here what is the appropriate action here do we need a motion to do something and we just say great work move on so it's entirely up to the board so um you could make a motion kristin

[113:00] will um include that in her memo to counsel um or she could just add you to the list of people who say yeah they support these amendments um it's kind of it's entirely up to the will of the board okay would anyone like to make a motion of support or otherwise do you feel the circumstances of the board that were supportive of the direction described tonight the objections to that comment i think we can remind them thank you so much for the presentation and thank you and um please send some tenants our way to help us uh get our tenant committee up and running we're really excited about getting that um moving as well so that's really kind of one of the last pieces for us to get that shaped so help us get the word

[114:00] out and i saw that jay dropped it in the chat thank you j segment for dropping the information in the chat about that all right well have a great evening thanks again uh for your support and uh just for all you do so have a great evening thank you oh michael you're a mute oh you're still on mute i can see you talking so now i'm unmuted yes yes okay i'll try to where it goes back on schedule we have an important agenda item we've already started to hint at this this is um items to discuss at the retreat i had uh talked to jay about this i was hopeful we'd be able to meet in person but not none of that will be happening

[115:01] for boards until september i believe that's correct um so we will have a virtual uh retreat and that is needed because we need to get some of our thoughts to council uh over the summer uh so we can't really put out their treats so i heard some comments about discussion about changing zoning of certain areas from commercial to residential a few others shall we review those and anyone who has a suggestion we can we can dive into a little bit well wouldn't we look jay at what what um i'm sorry i need to i asked for permission to speak michael go ahead um wouldn't we want to look at what council has coming

[116:00] up on their docket and prepare for prepare for those items in terms of providing input and being helpful to them from a housing advisory board capacity as discussion points for our retreat i would suggest um suggest that as a as a starting point and i i would also move uh your comment or the point numbers uh point c under six matters from the board on the agenda the discussion of habb's position on recent action actions by council related to the unhoused i i would suggest that maybe we move that as an agenda item to the retreat because i think that's probably a deeper conversation with more complexity to it than we might have time for here tonight and i i for one am not fully prepared to discuss all of those because i don't feel like i've reached it researched

[117:02] them adequately um that's all i have so um if i could just interject so yeah i would definitely recommend sort at the end of your meeting to talk about um how to focus your work plan for the rest of the year or for the next year but i would also you know i the purpose of a retreat in my mind and of course it's up to you guys is sort of to reflect on the previous year you know what went well what didn't go so well um what is it that we're trying to do as a board what's our role how are we functioning as a board you know are there interpersonal relationships that you know need to be nurtured and i would encourage you to stay away from discussing actual um topics like the unhouse because if you recall last year's retreat you guys spent the entire time

[118:00] talking about the unhoused um of course it's entirely up to you but that's that's my recommendation and just a a quick update so i am working on getting you an outside facilitator uh through our community mediation program um use similar situation that we had last year just so that michael doesn't have to facilitate the conversation um so i'll let you know when that happens uh and also i'm gonna be out of the country so you guys are on your own again but you'll survive uh well uh i take jay's suggestion um only a chance to get to know everybody it would be helpful but uh we have very others you guys hear me michael you raising your hand terry yeah yeah no i i just jay took the words right out of my mouth

[119:00] i i think for the retreat you know i think it's a bigger picture broader discussion about what we're doing and if we're effective i would like to focus on how we can be more effective um or how can be effective at all really um we we talk amongst ourselves we hear these great presentations we have some listening sessions some are better than others but how can we affect change how can we implement or help cause some of our ideas to be implemented how can we see the results in real life in boulder of the things that we do and talk about and our desires i'd like to focus on that on the retreat or have that be one of the agenda items mechanical how do we do it is it just our one letter to the council can we do stuff in between that i just feel like i feel like i want to get some things

[120:00] done and implemented um of course everybody knows me i'm all about tiny homes and adus but if it's not that other things and i want to talk about that at the retreat i want that to be one of the agenda items [Music] you just agreed you want to speak julia i'm seconding terry's comments i i wholeheartedly agree with that i i would like to see how we can take our words and put them into actual effectiveness and i was looking to speak michael um i also along terry's lines i think i think there's a few pieces i think jay has you know i think it is important that we kind of take a little bit of a look back uh at the last retreat

[121:00] i think it was the last retreat we had we were all together we also kind of you know we took time to get to know kind of our positions in as far as how we perceive the board and i think that ties into you know what our role is what our scope is and i think it'd be great to revisit that a little bit with new board members um and kind of get a little bit of reintroduction to each other as a board um i think that'd be great i think that the uh the piece that uh terry mentioned is critical for us also um and trying to put structures and systems as he said the mechanics in place for how we will actually effectuate change and i think that comes out of the first part of that discussion also about kind of how individual members see our role and

[122:00] scope and how we can work together with potentially differing visions of that and then uh i would also like to see i think follow on to that uh some discussion of what areas we might be stepping into as juliet said you know we'll have the council work planned we kind of know that those things are going to be on there um but beyond those things are there specific areas that that we want to put some work um so i kind of feel like this retreat ideally would hit on all three of those pieces from my perspective so that's that's kind of where i am with it that's great so to summarize jacques uh every formerly got a chance to sort of say where they're coming from on housing issues um we would just talk about our individual roles and how we collectively and then discussion of

[123:01] issues related to the council's work plan but without getting into the details of issues like what issues we feel we can be effective on which goes to terry's point is that is that a good summary yeah okay and um i would like to add that i was interested in joining this board to help it become as effective as possible so i hardly endorse that idea um anything to the agenda that's obviously those are topics that can take a lot of time and i like the idea of focusing on the big picture look forward to this discussion um will that be three hours [Music]

[124:00] so that's up to the bridge you could change the um when it happens uh the easiest is just the the current time slot of course um but it's a better one you think you'll need jay can you refresh me on the date june 23rd 23rd okay great thanks okay sorry sorry michael um so what i'm going to propose to the facilitator is a 45-minute planning session for the retreat just to put the agenda together with uh michael um and maybe danny and anyone else who sort of would like if anyone else would like to volunteer that's

[125:01] what i would propose and i'll i'll take lead in scheduling that thank you come on come all um debri from housing and security listening session i think we're all there is this um terry please yeah um i'll start off i i think we maybe saw that it's really much more challenging to do one of these via zoom um i thought it was just hard to get a lot of people there to get get thoughtful and uh and good input um appreciative of the people that did show up i don't know that it was really on point very much but um i think it was just hard to do it via zoom i'm going to chalk it up to that

[126:09] um i agree with you terry and i i also feel like one of the one when we discussed having this listening session early on and the situation was with covid was even braver than it is today or even a month ago one of our goals was to try to connect people with resources who were housing insecure and to make that information provide another uh vehicle for making that information available to folks and i think that the zoom format uh was not great for making making that happen i don't know that we serve that purpose in that goal and to trying to con trying to connect people with resources i mean at the end of the day we want to help people we want to help people who are housing and secure that that was one of the goals of this

[127:00] of this listening session i don't feel like it accomplished that at all i'm gonna just say it say it straight i i thought it was really not not super effective i tried to be nicer about it juliet but yeah i know what you're saying my filters my filter is slowly leaving me as i age my question is if it was in person i think we would have a dramatically different outcome i guess i'm not i'm not sure about that not sure yeah and i mean my other observation too is as julie was saying you know the motivation was earlier in the pandemic there's a lot of concern about this eviction cliff that we were approaching and we we never got there i mean

[128:01] uh the the federal and the state supports kept coming um and we're still not there so and we kept postponing it you know we wanted more time to plan it so it was supposed to happen in the fall and then it was supposed to happen in january and then february and then march so i hey also think that the lesson maybe we can learn from this and again i'm going to chalk it up to zoom and everything that's going on in the craziness but the topics that we pick um you know the two others that we had in person about the affordable housing developers coming in you know there's a group of people that you can reach out to directly and they can come in and talk in depth about it and then the homes what was it the mobile homes the adus on wheels or the adus you know those people are real passionate about it we can reach out to them and they came in and gave us a lot of really good feedback maybe in future listening sessions we can focus on

[129:00] groups that we we can point to a group and really get qualified people to come in and give us relevant information because i thought those other two listening sessions were great but again kovid maybe the topic maybe a combination of all that who knows um well question we don't have to answer it now or should we should we try it again and maybe that's the topic for the retreat maybe it's a different subject just a listening session in general sorry so michael are you suggesting um not doing listening sessions in the future or being more selective about the topics or just or or redoing the listening session for housing insecurity so you broke up a little

[130:01] i i think it goes to that very question of how more effective i wasn't advocating doing it or not doing it i'm saying it's something we could discuss perhaps at least uh mentioned it's retreating discussion at greater depths at a later date like do we want to try this again and how we do it differently topics might be taken those are all worthy of discussion and i wasn't involved in the planning so i don't you know what went wrong right but obviously only a few people showed up to report may i suggest then um that that may i suggest that as an agenda item in in along the lines of reflecting back on our effectiveness over the last year we look at listening sessions and maybe think about developing some criteria for what what do what should a listening session accomplish and and

[131:01] who should participate in it so that we we can look at any given topic and check it check do a checklist and say yes it meets all of the criteria that we have established as a board and it it hits the litmus test and we can yes let's do this one or no let's not do that one great comment um doc there we go i was just gonna say um yeah juliet and i think we we've had some of that discussion in the past and i do agree that i think we need to strengthen that those criteria format as far as what we're trying to do i think it goes to terry's comment a little bit maybe about the breadth and scope of of what happens in a

[132:01] listening session to try to keep it that scope narrow enough so that we can be effective so i think it's a good idea for our kind of mechanics piece and discussion of that at the at the retreat thank you any other comments on the insecurity listening session um i believe we are tabling item c that position on recent actions by council related to the in-house maybe disagreement on that if not we'll move on to the committee and project liaison supports reports

[133:00] so any updates on tiny homes or any other amber my really quick update is um i'm not where i'd hoped to be yet so still working on the the mobile adu concept and how it will fit into the city but i don't have anything new for you great maybe we'll have that coffee next week and catch up on that joy terry jay um yeah thank you michael um jay remind remind me again i know that the staff was doing something with respect to updating the report or i forget exactly what it was but what was the timing on that because i thought that's where we

[134:00] probably had the best opportunity to to weigh in you're talking about edu's right yep yeah um so that's that's on my work plan but um it's been it's been put off a little bit my time has been really taken up with other priority projects so it was supposed to happen this spring pushed off to the fall and now i'm thinking it's probably not even going to be till early next year so so with that what what do you suggest because to me we're kind of waiting um on that information or that report to i don't know contribute comment do something with that information um is there anything you can do before that report happens i think absolutely i think jacques has been i think jack has a plan for you terry he knows exactly what

[135:02] he has in mind and they'll be complementary don't don't think that you have to wait for the adu update i mean we definitely want you to weigh in on that and um i think you'll benefit from the information that we gather in terms of the evaluation but in turn it's not going to talk about you know potential for mobile adus i'm going to talk about the potential for other applications of townie tiny homes that's going to be broader your your goal is to convince council that that's something that they should focus on and that they should direct staff to focus on it yes so i guess we can talk about that in our retreat as to maybe how to actually do that sounds good

[136:00] excellent i believe that leads to matters from staff so i'm just going to share um the work plan that we send out with the agenda every time as you whoops did i yeah i'm still sharing it you guys can see that yes thank you um so notes so june is the retreat um those are the major agenda items i heard um july is going to be the alpine balsam form-based code so that's one of the projects that's taking up my time and the follow-on rezonings from the comp plan update so that'll be in july it's going to planning board august 5th and we have a date for council which is um uh september 21st for a public hearing

[137:01] we had our first public meeting on monday hopefully you guys have seen that publicized where we described went through a lot of the detail of the what's already been decided with the area plan for alpine balsam um and introduced a discussion draft of the foreign base code uh and so we will be coming to you for recommendation to council in july um and maybe that's a good time to focus more on tiny homes um but these are the other things that are coming up so it's something for you guys to think about since i won't be at the retreat um i would say that um middle-income housing that reviewing that strategy might be a good topic for potentially july or august um and i don't know if you guys are aware of it planning board is planning to spend quite a bit of time talking about housing in particular

[138:01] middle-income housing and this concept of the missing middle they've shown a significant interest in that and so this thursday will be their meeting uh i will be presenting along with boulder housing partners if you guys want to tune into that uh and then at their june meeting they'll be focusing on that missing middle piece and we'll spend a bunch of time talking about uh different strategies that the city has been adopting and and get their feedback um sort of what what's what are some potential next steps to address the need for middle income housing in boulder so that's a bit but i just wanted to share sort of the latest with what's going on in the city any questions or any other information you guys are interested in yes um i was not able to tune into the blackboard last week and i believe they had a discussion about

[139:01] diagonal plaza if so could you summarize that jade i i did not participate in that either um i think yeah probably the best bet is to actually watch that recording um i did hear there was you know basic support from planning board for the concept uh to move forward um but i think there was some confusion as to sort of what the overall sentiment of planning board was so that's a little bit of the politics without the content anything else i'm sorry another question other questions for jay our staff okay um [Music] calendar check

[140:02] i guess we just did that or do we need to look at other calendar items jay uh no it's just that's always been there sort of meeting debrief how would it go what can we do better i thought you did an excellent job michael for your first meeting thank you that is i appreciate that my head is really on vacation and not in boulder at the moment uh i i do intend to meet all of you one-on-one uh have coffee um i've been with the coven starting to phase out i've been going back to work in denver that's we have a lot of time that i used to have for drinking coffee and having beers with people but um i think i think we're within the rules to meet one-on-one the only okay we did a zoom call last week but uh trying to get there on e2 before uh june 23rd so we can get to know each

[141:02] other and talk do we have to drink beer and coffee at the same time coffee stout [Music] that's a reference to bob's rule of order michael great job bud really good work appreciate uh appreciate you doing what you're doing yeah look forward to seeing everybody uh okay well have a good evening then thank you very much everybody don't forget to adjourn you have to adjourn yeah michael the last thing on your list ah [Music]

[142:00] do i have to ask for a motion to return yes i would like a motion i'll make a motion to adjourn a second yeah and remember the second too michael remember to ask for a second okay thank you i'm catching on uh okay let's have a vote you return i think we're good we're good everybody have a great night well until the end thank you