September 25, 2024 — Housing Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

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

[0:05] All right. Welcome to the September 25, th 2024. Meeting of David. Hold your accounting advisory board chair. We hope we'll have some members of the public listening in. We may have some news on that during this meeting. So I'm calling meeting order. I'll do roll call first.st So Julianne Ramsey Karen here, Steven, Chip Hennessy here, Karen Clarence, here, Phil Ogram, here, Jamie Theodoro. not here. But we're hoping to zoom in. and let's see if we can find this anywhere. Okay, so we have a form. I'll next, I'll do a review of our agenda. We have a fairly light agenda tonight we might find some interesting things to talk about. We'll be approving our minutes as item number 3. We'll have participating public participation via Zoom. After that open comment.

[1:02] And then matters from the board. We're gonna debrief debrief. Our a panel discussion we had last month, homeless housing solutions for the homeless, which we thought was super interesting. we hope that Danny Taylor will be able to zoom in and join us. We have a topic for the business matter, because he's supposed to do an informational item on employer created housing for employees. He's had a lot of experience with that in the mountain communities. He works in Item C would be a discussion regarding adding in person to current virtual only meetings. That's something that some of our members of the public have brought up, as well as a different members of the Board. That's an informational item. but it's something we may act on soon. and B is considering moving our meeting back from October 23rd to October 30, th because there is a conflict with the modular housing factory ribbon cutting. Okay? So that we've been working so hard on for some years.

[2:04] Item 6 on the agenda is debriefing the meter and calendar check calendar check, and then we'll be adjourning. So with that. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes from August 28, th 2024. Okay. All in favor. Great jay, you wanna review the rules of public participation before I invite anyone to comment. Do we have anyone? 2 people great Yup, happy to do it? And this is alright. Let's see if I can get any faster, please.

[3:04] Alright. So we have. The city is engaged with community members Co create a vision for productive, meaningful, inclusive civic conversations that help support the original physical. And if you have community members, staff, etcetera. for more information, you can go to the city of Boulder website. The following examples are rules of reform found in Boulder Revised Code. All remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation, opportunities, racial appetites, and other speech and behavior that disrupts meetings are prohibited. Participants are required to sign up to speak, using their name, that they're commonly known by and please display your whole name before

[4:01] you'll be allowed to speak. And only audio testimony is provided online. That's it. We've got Mark Taylor? Are we ready for Mark? Hi! Folks! Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Hi, Mark. Alright! Great Hi! I've got to say, by the way, your public participation requirements are so much shorter than city council. I'm grateful to not have to listen. Do 5 min of that but I would 1st like to in request, and I know this is on the agenda later. But we don't have a chance to say this during both that public participation, part in terms of restoring the hybrid option for public participation.

[5:05] For instance, right now I I can't see Karen and Jay or anybody else. Hi Karen. Nice to see you. But this is typical. Howdy and others of just the the zoom. Experience is just not the same thing at all as in person, so I would request that you restore that. I would like the city. Do that for all committees and boards. I'm not just picking on you guys. so that. And the only other thing I wanted to say is, once again, I I ask have to integrate more discussion. About 53% of the housing population, namely, rental issues. because that is a really important Po policy

[6:01] issue that doesn't get nearly the attention that I think it should be. And I think this body is one of the best places for that public discussion on better tenant protection and rental housing issues in general. and I'll leave it there. Thanks. We have to follow it. Great. Yeah, you're all done. Yes, I'm I'm finished. Yeah, thank you for those comments. We actually have the topic of having more open meetings on tonight's agenda, and they have been looking into that. And it technical possibilities and challenges having a hybrid meeting. And you know, I think you'll I hope you'll continue listening and care about that, because it seems fairly promising that we'd be able to do that. Can I follow up with a question? Sure. Mark, what's your what's your short list of

[7:00] of things that the city ought to be doing to make life better for renters. And similarly, what's the short list of things you'd like to see have focused on. Well, thanks for asking. I would like to see more discussion on some specific tenant protection issues which would include using the boulder model lease. Having the landlord tenant handbook. be a mandatory make, making it mandatory for all residents to get it when they sign the lease. Most tenants have no idea what their rights are in Boulder or anywhere in Colorado, for that matter. And there are some other issues, too, including some perhaps backdoor attempts in terms of rent control at Tacoma.

[8:00] Washington has undertaken. So those are just some of the issues. That that could be out out there discussed. Is there a a template for like a renter's right agreement at another city uses that we might look at. Yes, there is the Boulder model lease, which is a document that was created like 30 years ago, by a committee of landlords, tenants, and 3rd parties. that large landlords said they would use, but never have. and few people even know of the existence of this document. And it might need some updating, because laws have changed. But anyway, that's the short answer to that. Should have known that because I rent an apartment in my house so, and we do use the.

[9:01] Great. Mark. Would you mind? Briefly explaining, what Tacoma does that sort of quasi rent control. My understanding is what they do is, oh, by the way, this, the State of Washington is one of many states that also ban rent control. So Tacoma has come up with a clever way by saying they won't limit the rent, but they will. They will say that tenants are entitled to a relocation fee if their rent goes up to a certain percentage and or that they're a month and a half worth of. Oh. deposit needs to be returned to them if the rent goes up up to a certain amount. So that's that's the way they get around that. And apparently it's been successful. So far it's been in place, and I need to do more research on it myself.

[10:02] but that's the quick version of it. Thank you. Thank you so much for those comments. Do we have? Another member of the public would like to comment? Well, their hands are raised. Anybody else. I'm gonna go up script for a moment and ask to give my debrief on the planning board conversation, who just took a big mouthful food. It's very exciting. We're sitting on an Alpine Bolson. Wasn't the discussion last night, so when you're ready. it was a a very long, I think there were 6 motions that we needed to. we in one.

[11:01] And the interesting thing. So just big picture. the site is broken up into 3 projects. The the project that includes the pavilion. This building and a parking garage is being done by out of town architects associated with the local architect. So that's 1 piece been the housing. There is a center kind of in the middle of the property there that is being developed by boulder housing partners with affordable housing, senior housing just sort of various components. and then at facing the park there'll be market rate townhouses, and then on the corner of

[12:00] Alpine and Broadway. There'll be another building that has some rent restriction. It's Alpine no other way. So also sorry. And Broadway. And it'll have the commercial pieces on that one. Of course, the pavilion is intended to house the city staff and relocating a lot of the staff in one location. there was one. Most of these were amending pieces of the form based code which most of the site is subject to which plug in more belief doesn't have a role on. But the staff decided to bring a planning board in and so they'll you know those were complex and in understanding. And, you know, kind of getting through the issues. But there wasn't a lot that of input that we were giving on that, because, you know, it's it's

[13:04] we weren't being asked to. What do you think of? Is it a good looking building or not? Or is it not meeting the site criteria because there isn't any of that in 4 ways, code. There was one piece which is the Pavilion building in this building, and the and the parking garage, which is a basically site and use for me. And that was very interesting, because one of the we did make amendments to their proposed motions. One of them was maintain that little commercial area along Broadway in the parking garage. that was intended to just go away and become, you know, all parking. It's like the experience for the people who walk along Broadway there, which which is a lot. I mean, this is a this is a very. This neighborhood is a very vibrant neighborhood as far as walking. because that's a commercial area across Broadway there, and people come from the neighborhood. And I think that the main streets that are proposed for the project will be highly populated by the neighborhoods as well, cutting through and going through to get from A to B, so big picture. It's a it's A,

[14:19] it's a big site. It's a complicated process. the pavilion. And these buildings here are part of phase one as we're so they're getting rather than later. What's happening on the main side is a lot of the infrastructure. But something I didn't realize along balsam. There will be a green way, and I don't know if they're in daylight. Goose, creep or not, but really A a very nice feature that I had not been aware that they were that they were doing

[15:01] so yeah, it was. It's go to City council I don't know when Jane, when it goes to City Council you know this fall. Sometime it goes to city council so that the project can keep moving forward. But the the housing that I don't think they'll be working on any housing in phase one. They'll just doing infrastructure for that site. And in the interim we're trying to think of. How do we use? That's the point, the reusing the existing buildings. Is there anything in that package that planning board specifically approved so we could move forward everything. All of the requested motions were approved in some fashion or other the Site and Use Review ended up with, I think, 3 amendments. having to do with maintaining the commercial.

[16:01] the commercial alarms of the street, because it's in the zone that requires that so denying their change of use to a parking. Was one of the motions, and the others was dealing with the aesthetics of that garage building. And you know some some of those concerns. and I don't remember the 3rd one. The meeting ended at 1230 midnight, so we were just trying to stay. Okay, bye. I've never seen so much information in one spot at our meetings. So it was. It was big, and it was important. and I would encourage you folks to go to the city council when they present to city council. or at least take a look at that. just to get a sense of the scope of the proposal. You know the thing that I was. But what do you do about it? Right. The thing that I was disappointed at was, you know, the city owns the law, the land.

[17:01] and it's a city driven project. And you know, we've been told all along that it's gonna be affordable housing. Well, there's a significant amount of of market rate housing going to happen there. Which I think is the only for sale. Everything else will be rental. So that would be be. It is the master development. They develop all the affordable rental housing was part of that presentation. With that plan. The market rate, Coleman is doing everything. There. Isn't this existing. this plan that to the beautiful parking lot, and look at it every meeting to the it wasn't. It wasn't discussed. You know this, this building? Nothing. Nothing was shown as evolving. It was just a parking garage, right? And it's just like doing a lot of aesthetic moves on the parking garage. And we're like, does the city really want to spend this money that way? That was the biggest criticism was, why would you want to decorate a garage

[18:02] garage, let's call it a garage, and, you know. use some good design movies. You know. I think that was the biggest sort of point that planning board was making. This is like. and it was interesting because the city it is both the applicant and the city. It's applied to itself. So it I think that it would be good for people to show up at city council and weigh in because we we're the city right? We're not obviously planning department. It doesn't really have that process that a client a private client. has with their developer. We're all one in the same. So it's it's an interesting. It's an interesting project, and it'll be very impactful. you know, in a good way. And and that's what I kept reminding them. We want a paseo. We want to be able to come out and and, you know, enjoy the public spaces, and have all these new neighbors, and

[19:05] bring a whole collection of of new different people to the neighborhood. Because it's a pretty, you know. This is a this is part of the old original boulder. And there's not a lot of diversity in income or or people here. So I think it's gonna make a difference. And I do believe that it's gonna make a very positive difference. I think we have to keep our eye on it would be my, I think, was the biggest thing that we're recognizing is, you know, it's it's fuzzy as to who's the developer? Who's the city? So but no, it was a great, big, fat, long meeting, and I think we addressed a lot of the issues very carefully when it do. We know when the City Council meeting is?

[20:03] I believe it's sometime in October, but I'd have to check. Can can I just add add one thing? Sure. So in terms of the percentage of affordable housing at the site just to be clear. We it was never the intention that every single housing unit there would be permanently affordable and what we have now is actually the highest concentration of affordable housing if compared to anywhere else in the city. And it's always been the attention to that. Those 2 market rate, parcels would be sold to help pay for that for last. So that was. we tried to be clear about that, and maybe we weren't as clear as that could have been since someone analogous to 30 firms. I think Marguerite and Bhp. Was the master developer for that site as well. Infrastructure.

[21:00] Theoretically, we're selling buildings that have already been sort of fully entitled, Pre Approved which, hopefully we can get. It's an automated. It's been 10 years we're looking forward to apply for low income housing tax credits until the building is fully removed from the flood plain. So that's that's why that Greenway work has to be done there has to be surveyed has to approve, not just the design, but then the actual as built, and that's gonna take another year and a half to 2 years. A key part of the flood control. It does. Yeah, it's in a pipe right now, but it'll be daylighted. It will be daylight. I saw the little blue line, and I'm like Whoa.

[22:00] sorry there was a jalapeno in the middle dying over here. Wow! 30 years ago I proposed Daylight Goose Creek and the neighbors start a petition against it, even though it was just an idea. But all the good ideas come around. We'll give you credit for it, Michael. I don't wanna when would be a good time. I just wanted to respond to one of the things that Mark said. Oh, sure, absolutely he mentioned workarounds on the right control. So it's my understanding under State law and Colorado municipalities like Boulder cannot do rent control just period. And I think a workaround is probably gonna land city in some sort of legal trouble. If they try to work around just because it's state law that we can't do it. I think the best goal which is beyond the scope of what we do here in the city does is to lobby the General Assembly, if that's what people want.

[23:03] But I will say this under the recent law we had. It says you can't terminate the lease without cause. and this is a very new law. So it hasn't been tested. It basically says, if someone's been leasing a unit for a year or more, you can't terminate their lease unless you have a good reason, and then it lists all sorts of reasons. One reason is you want to move back into your home so you can terminate the lease and tell the tenant they need to get out. But you can't just terminate because you need a reason. And one of the reasons is that Lieutenant will not sign a new lease with reasonable terms. And basically the law contemplates. If your landlord wants you out, you've been there for 3 years, and they're like, well, I'm gonna double your rent. I think you have a good argument. That's not a lease with reasonable terms. Now, what's reasonable? The law doesn't really fill that in. That's something that's gonna have to get litigated.

[24:02] But I do wonder if you know your landlord says you've lived here for 3 years. I'm gonna renew your lease. You have a month to sign it for the next year, and I'm increasing your rent by 30%. And the rent's gonna be 30% higher than all the neighbors units. I think there's an argument there that perhaps that's not at least reasonable terms, you know, that's not the same as rent control that says rent can only increase 3% per year. But what is reasonable? That's up for a lot of debate, and I am wondering maybe something the city could do is created a dashboard of sorts like, how much does rent increase on average per year in boulder just like numbers that people can look at that. Tell them what's reasonable. Of course the landlord might say. I haven't raised your rent in 10 years. So I'm gonna raise it more than 5%. And there's an argument. Maybe that's reasonable. But I think maybe information that's something the city could be equipped to do is put out information, demographic information on you know what is average rent in the city of Boulder for one bedroom, for a 2 bedroom for a 3 bedroom. What is the current market rate obviously varies between units. What is the average increase in rent year over year? Kind of statistical information. If that's available to the public. I don't know if it is right now.

[25:22] but maybe that's something that could help people in this conversation as to what are reasonable terms, because the legal landscape has shifted a little bit in that respect. And I think we're all sort of figuring out. How does that law play out. But information, I think, could be helpful to people. And even on a more informal basis, you know, a tenant might say, Hey, according to the city's website. Rent increases on average 3, you know, 5% last year. And you're trying to increase it on me, 20% like, Can you come down, you know, having that information available might be helpful to people. So it's a thought

[26:00] we have anything like that, James. well, let me start with the the rent control. So that is actually on the city council agenda for our legislative agenda for the State. So that's it's been a policy, for I think several years now. But anyway, the city will advocate for some sort of local control in terms of rent control. tracking rents. Tried really hard over the years to try to look at. You know what are just to get even. You know, rough numbers over time. There is no real consistent data source, which is the biggest challenge. and I I don't remember all the specifics. But the last time that we tried to do it. It was just we thought we had this great new data source. And then they changed their methodology, changed all their numbers, and it just became a nightmare to try to track. Fortunately.

[27:00] it's just yeah. There's no centralized place to do that home home sales. We got that because there is an agency, you know, Realtors Association that tracks all, for you probably consult with the city attorney's office, but when Bowler does its rental licenses, can they ask that demographic information of the landlords. How much are you leasing units at this year? That's true, you know there might be an argument that the city doesn't have grounds to ask that information. That's private. I'm sure some private businesses would not want to tell the Government that, but that could be a way of doing it. Whether or not it's legal. I think the city attorney's office would have to look into that great good information from you. Thank you. So those are your thoughts. Okay, we're gonna keep moving before we go to the management board. I'm just gonna ruminate a little bit. housing has really been in the news even more than ever recently, since now it's a Presidential campaign issue.

[28:03] it's used to do a fascinating article about how you know, we think we think of like the boulders in New York City just being the places where it's working people to price down. It's it's like everywhere. Now, it's really spread that they quoted the Stat, that there are 241 cities in this country where you they starting price for a starter home is like a million bucks. And that's incredible. And you know, this article focused on Kalamazoo, Michigan City 10 years ago, where people were, you know. trying to fill up abandoned houses. And now rents are going up 120%. And you know, people are spreading out a little bit to looking for an affordable place to live, and that's affecting housing prices in other markets. So we're not alone in this situation. you know. A lot of it seems to be about supply shortage. But there's because housing starts are way down. Since a great recession

[29:07] you haven't been producing as much housing in the population continues to grow. But there's other factors, actually things that it's great that Boulder has gotten a jump on this issue, even though we struggle to keep up with it with that land values and home values being so high because other places are dealing with this for the 1st time ever. So I'm hoping that what we're doing here has some effect locally, and maybe provide some good examples for other parts of the country that are really gonna be in the same boat for their you know the the place they're they're at, whether that's Michigan or California, or Colorado or Washington State or New York. Anyway, I encourage you to read up on that. It's certainly been the news a lot. Both Presidential candidates have pretty ambitious housing programs that are worth reading, and it's not an easy fix for anybody at this point. So I listen to part of that. And one of the things

[30:04] one of the things that they said is that market forces are having a really hard time providing entry level housing because costs keep going up. And so the way that the for profit developers keep profitable is to make bigger homes at higher prices. So that's not satisfying the entry level or the or the lower income. And so this article basically said that it's going to require some sort of public public sector subsidy. And they indicated that public sector subsidies is not a new thing, and that actually. the public that you know, the government or the public sector has been subsidizing, housing all along like mortgage, tax deduction and and real estate tax deduction are all forms of subsidies that are subsidizing people who are already wealthy enough to have a home. And they talked a bit about when

[31:13] What was it? The Gi bill also provided a lot of housing, but there was redlining. And so again, that subsidy only went to certain types of people or certain income. So if you hear people say. I don't need a subsidy. Subsidies aren't fair. People should be able to do it on their own. There needs to be this recognition that subsidies are in place. They're just targeting people who who tend to already have money. So that same article cited Kalamazoo. providing subsidies to people who are middle income and upper middle income up to 120,000 a year, which is probably like a really good salary in California. So you know you're hearing more about. I think that we see that in places in Colorado, too, where upper middle income people

[32:05] that are subsidized because otherwise you won't have any doctors in your community, or whatever it might be. I think that's interesting, because my understanding is like the biggest housing construction boom in American history was right after World War 2, and it was funded by the Gi bill. We had all these people who fought in the war, although only certain soldiers got benefited from that to your point of the redlining and that was government subsidized housing construction, and I guess that was politically palatable at the time, because it was going to veterans or people who just fought in a war but the end result is, those are still here. People are buying them, and you know, 80 years later, 7 years later, where we're at, there's still housing that was created as a result of that. So you know, I I think you make a good point there on subsidies. It's something we still benefit from. A lot of those homes were kind of small starter type homes that are still small that are the cheapest houses you can buy in Denver now.

[33:09] even though they're not cheap. But they're cheaper. So you know, I think there's I think there's a lot of truth to that point. I've heard something interesting. I'm not gonna get in the weeds on, but I've heard from both sides interesting. Up in this national political election. We're facing interesting discussion on how immigration correlates with housing. I've heard from the right, specifically the Vice Presidential candidate that the influx of immigrants into the United States is consuming affordable housing, and that non-immigrants, people who are already here have to compete with immigrants for low income housing. and then I've heard on the left that stopping immigration will result in a dearth of labor force to build. How's me? I think just 2 arguments that

[34:00] are interesting and haven't. Don't. Always. People don't always talk about in the context of the immigration. Today. You're right about that point about housing starts. It's quoted in the article that they went from a hundred 1,000 to like 1.7 million a year in 2 years, or something pretty remarkable. Okay, before we get into the matters from the board I want to grab a couple. Is that all different people? Yeah, choking on it changed the conversation in my mouth.

[35:02] He's from Amen to the board. We had a great panel here. solutions for homeless at the August meeting, and we learned a lot and had a great conversation, but now we've got a month to think about it. In addition. some of us toward a new project called Bluebird, that was discussed with the panel a few weeks ago. It was really interesting, it said. 40 units permanently supportive housing for formerly homeless people built by a private developer with lots of partnerships, including the city. older housing partners, and and Karen's all about this as well. I think boulder housing partners is involved with it. There's something with them. They're a limited partner, and that allows maybe the tax exemption tax exemption right? Right?

[36:10] They didn't development. But like stacks of finance and all kinds of crazy legal maneuvers. But the upshot is this is a very, very nice building. that we come across as institutional, actually very warm. Whole strategy of trauma informed design that's supposed to help people who've experienced trauma relax healed from that experience. and the apartments are small. They're really not much bigger, if bigger at all than a tiny home. But, as Chip pointed out, you couldn't put 40 tiny homes on a site of that size. You really have to do a stacked apartment style project. We heard from the developer, and we heard we didn't actually meet any tenants, but we sort of an apartment. So

[37:02] anyway, it was great to get Boots on the ground to see a project that we had discussed at that meeting. And so that's 40 fewer people that are living who are sleeping at the shelter or in encampments, or, you know, under bridges and stuff. Well and interesting enough, if you have an apartment facing west. You you were looking out at one of the significant encampment sites in our city. Along Goose Creek, so people could actually be looking out. That's the place where they used to huddle, freezing to death in the middle of winter. The comfort of the department. What stood out to me, though, was. The developer told us that in the same footprint they built the project in long run. In that project they built 60 units. That's right. and I guess the reason is because the city of Boulder has human right rule or something like that. What was it? Minimum size requirements for open space requirements for that zone. So it limits the numbers. You have to provide a certain amount of open space.

[38:09] So it's the lots of determines how many units you can have. But then there's smaller units on the free market. Going up. There was some discussion. I thought you said there's a minimum square footage for affordable housing. We have livability standards. Satisfy your inclusionary housing requirement. And you're building market rate units and affordable units. We want them to be comparable so you can't go build luxury units, market rate, and then say, your portable units are this efficiency over here? Because I think these are single occupancy rooms were like 350 square feet, and the bathroom huge, was 3 times the size of my bathroom. I mean, they were small, but I've lived in much smaller, I can tell you. You know, having been a student and things like that.

[39:03] so much square footage in the background. I think part of it is that these standards that the city of Boulder adds, this is basically zoning. So think of it as zoning limits. How many units you can have on a parcel the one month does 60, and we do 40. And I just think that's okay. 40 nicer, bigger units. And then 20 people get to sleep on the street. And I think if we're building housing for homeless people, we can downsize the space so that we can get more people in there because the goal is to put roofs over people's heads or build a bigger building. I mean, I think the height comes in. I mean, I just spent a week in a hotel room that was like less than 200 square feet, and it was comfortable, you know, like, you know. And if it's this is all free housing, and the goal is to get people off the street. So you know, the bigger the space for one person, not saying that we stick everyone in a 4 foot by 4 foot closet. But

[40:05] I I definitely felt like there was you could could have made that unit smaller, and it would still be comfortable. So one of the housing options. historically, has been single room occupancy where where there might be a small room with a with a bathroom at the end of the hall, and they tended to be not very expensive. And it. It helped create affordability. But I don't think they're allowed in older are they allowed anywhere like I don't know what law or rule, but but I think that a single room occupancy concept is would create smaller units that are more affordable. Well, I think you could even make this smaller with private bathroom each. This is a big bathroom like bathrooms. Don't need to be that big, is it for Ada? Compliance? Maybe that's why. But does every unit have to be

[41:09] 88 compliant? I don't know. We might have just seen one that had. Do you know whether there's do you know what the laws are that prevent single room occupancy sized, or arrangements? I would say Sros have been rebranded as micro units, because Sros are always considered sort of blight, and, you know. needed to be removed so. And there have been some interest in in micro units in Boulder, where you know. But you typically have your own bathroom, but it's a much smaller space, but you have other shared amenities like a rooftop area. So they're popular West Coast cities. They haven't been built here, and the closest we've gotten to is 20 second and Pearl and I don't know if you've been watching the media, but

[42:03] everybody's complaining about that thing. Why is it? Well, they complain to me, is the room size, because they don't like the people who live there, you know, is, it's like, because I don't even give these homeless people big rooms. Okay? Super yeah, very expensive. They're saying. It's too small. Too many people just say it's too small and too expensive. Yes. what? What are the what is the size of those? I don't know off the top of my head. They're actually not that that we're not that small. but they're very automated. It's kinda cool, I mean, like the table comes down from the ceiling type thing. and like this is, these are expensive endeavors, and they get section 8 housing vouchers. I mean, the Government's paying top dollar to house homeless people, and I'm like, why don't? Why don't we have more in here like this is very comfortable. When I came to Colorado for America. I was in a tiny room. It was like

[43:02] twin bed, and then 3 feet like walkway next to the bed, and then a desk area in the back, and then a bathroom down the hall. And this room we toured is probably 3 times the size of that, you know, and the goal I'm not saying, Oh, let's give bad living conditions to homeless people. Let's put roofs over people's heads, because that's an extra 20 people who are sleeping on the street than Longmont may have. So one of the topics that that we've been contemplating for a future have meeting is adaptive reuse of office into residential, and looking at the housing to be not necessarily conventional market rate apartments, but alternative living arrangements that might allow for. like a more of a dorm situation, or more of like collect group housing or something like that. And so you know it.

[44:04] I'd like for us to explore different models of housing that might be more transitional because one of the challenges of taking people from homelessness into an apartment where they need to abide by lease and follow different rules is that it takes some training. It takes some adjustment, and it may be that there that some of those people who've been experiencing homelessness might benefit from sort of an interim transitional situation, where? Where that will help them. learn how to live inside again, and what are the expectations, and how do you follow a lease, and how do you abide by various rules? So I'd like to explore that going forward. I think that's great transitional housing we heard from that one Zip Folder Bridge House with the office space. And I was like, this is.

[45:05] this is excellent. These are, I do think you know, the goal of our our welfare system shouldn't just be to house people, but also to give them the tools so that they can succeed on their own. If that if that's possible. And I think transitional housing with the model they had just sounds like, I'm like, this is how government should be running things. Yeah, I felt like the most interesting out of everything on that panel, just because we've had the conversation so many times of like. Why can't we convert office spaces into housing stuff. I know you've always been really adamant on that, and we kind of just come to the conclusion a hundred times that we can. But then they told us that they didn't, that it's very successful. And that the nimbys in the neighborhood don't even know that it's there. So I agree, I think, that should be explored more. they have a great model. So if they could expand and do that in more places that would be awesome otherwise I don't know. Well, I think the work the work piece, too. That's part of it. Giving people skills, you know, like a lot of homeless people aren't in a position to go get a job full time job tomorrow. So I think that transitional piece of essentially getting them a job that transitions them hopefully. In the end they can. They can go get a job and a place to live, you know, like

[46:20] I I think I think it just sounds like such a a great model to me, and we heard about a range of solutions. Permanently supportive housing is a place you can live forever. And you don't need to have job skills. Or you could have issues with substance. Abuse the bridge house. You have to be clean and sober. and it will work so it's somewhat limiting. But it does help people around the street get off the street, which is a great thing, and it's also not permanent. It's a 2 year sort of dormitory solution. You should go look at that building sometime. I know it's table, mesa somewhere. I see those guys at the laundromat all the time, and there's like a dude

[47:04] who runs it that comes in and kind of shows them what to do, or tells them what to do, and they're getting their stuff done. No, it's by you know where it's at the corner of Morehead than the post office. Yeah. And you know the thing is, it's not very. I've only seen them like at the London when I think it's more politically palatable, you know, if people are hearing. Oh, you're gonna turn this office next to my office, into a place where people can live forever for free and use drugs. The community is gonna be upset about that. But if people hear oh, they need to be clean. They need to do this work program. It's transitional. Maybe they're more accepting. I think it's important to recognize that people experiencing homelessness are very varied, right? And so. And there are some people who have mental health issues or disabilities, and they may never get a job. And so the bluebird facility

[48:12] ensures that they can be safe and secure and taken care of, and they may never get a job. But they're not allowed to do drug like it's they're prohibited from doing drugs. They're just not necessarily drug tested right? So like it. Go out if you're gonna if you're gonna do something. The the people who the bridge house focus on are people who have the capabilities to be trained and to, and and are willing to commit to being sober and following their program. So they have a different Ca, there are different subset that has greater capabilities. But but those 2 models don't necessarily work for the different population. And so I just feel like there needs to be

[49:03] a large array of solutions to match what the needs and capabilities are of the individuals. Yeah, I really appreciate that point because Oh, shoot! What was I gonna say? Oh, well, you know, Chip, you were complaining about the fact that it could have been 60 units, you know, or you know, maybe someone else would say 62 would be a better number, you know. But when you're targeting different people with different needs, and one of the things that you brought up is that the building was informed by trauma informed design, you know. And so maybe that I mean, like my 1st reaction to like a a new building that has all these different partners. And they they, you know, they don't work together, that someone sat and thought about. Well, what should the U unit sizes be, and what are our constraints? And

[50:06] you know how? How can we fit the needs of the people we're trying to serve? And so I would, I would think that trauma informed design might have something to say about how big or small the units might be. And you know that they sat and thought about that carefully. And so I'm I'm not inclined to like. Say, oh, every project ought to. It ought to be just about the numbers, because, like 60, seems like an awfully small number when you could have 80, and so I don't know somewhere, but it seems pretty fishy to me, and I'm just saying like, there's 20 people who are experiencing lots of trauma sleeping outside. Right well, eventually you do have to draw a line, but I don't know, just based on my worldly experience. These are pretty. I felt like pretty large units. That might be just what some people need. That's my perspective.

[51:02] So just to kind of round out and and review. We heard about the permanently supportive of housing developed by a private developer who did it because they could make money doing it. That's what private developers do. And I thought that was kind of cool. Now point of Catherine Bean. They're they're mission driven, and they're not out to make a like 25% return on investments, but they're making money on it. which is great means. Other people might want to come and join them and build the same types of projects. We had the Bhp talking about. building the the other permanent for housing project on legal and also the voucher system. That was Laura. And then I found that to be really interesting, because I've done policy work forever in the kitchen. I didn't know they were so involved. Housing. and a lot of their emphasis is on preventing people from becoming homeless. So they try to intervene when they hear of a client

[52:01] who has had a life change like instead of it was divorced. And and they do have some housing there, and some properties that they provide, some housing. so that was really interesting. And then we heard, you know, Michael Block, about what's up. Formerly the shelter. Now all rooms is doing to provide support for the whole population in general. I think it was Philip who said, well, this is a money problem. We just need more money, so more people can do more of this and think, Michael Block agreed with that. But, It's we might ask ourselves, where do we as a board go with that? Is there some recommendation that we might be working on council and city leaders figure this out and expand program. So we've now seen and observed and heard are effective. But for a very limited portion of the unhoused population

[53:05] Internet team. we can invent that now. But that's what we need to be working toward. I like Karen's idea of studying transitional housing more in commercial spaces, because I think we have some commercial space in Boulder that could be used for that possibly gonna be another panel next one up. I just had some leads on that. because I think that's something that Boulder can actually do more of, you know, building new housing. It's it's true. then all the empty office space buying an empty building is much easier than building a new building. I have a question. Is there is there an ability to do a pilot right like? If let's say, there's a for profit developer who has an empty building. Could there? Could the city enable them to try some sort of transitional housing within that building? Even if there isn't precedent like? Would you have to go through all the zoning changes in the former office building that was converted

[54:17] is doing. It's a former office building getting converted to is essential. It's it's not. I don't think it's necessarily a regulatory hurdle. I think it's more of a financial hurdle. so like is Bhp in a position to make like. Do what Bridge House does to like manage a transitional housing type program? I don't think so right there. So we we need to kind of find a way for to make it attractive for other nonprofits or bridge house, or for profits like, yeah? Or well, it seems to me there's a couple of different issues. One is, how do you convert the building to a different use? So you might have a property owner who's developer, and then you might have an operator who specializes in a certain type of population like

[55:13] dealing with, you know, drug addiction or mental health, like, I'm just pretending like, let's say, there's a floor where there's a somebody rents the space to focus on people who are going through. you know, sobering up. And then there might be another floor of people who? You know, who had domestic violence and need a place to live. And then there might be another floor where there's people who are suffering from mental health. And then, and the group community is really helpful. So it could be like somebody. There's a developer who owns a building who leases the units to a nonprofit that specializes in a certain kind of population. But I don't know. I'm just throwing out ideas. But but if if you have a for profit developer who owns an office building.

[56:03] They don't. They probably don't know how to provide permanent supportive housing to people who are previously homeless right? And also, if they're using it mostly as an office building, like there's other tenants, commercial tenants, and then they don't. They don't want that. There are empty. But there are empty office buildings, and they're just burning cash on it. And you know, how how do we? I think you need to find a nonprofit to run these programs. There's no money in that. Right? Well, we have one bridge house, yeah. Bridge house. So how do we get more bridge? Our department housing and human services spent over a year trying to find a location for the Day Services Center. We looked at office buildings all over the city. and it was incredibly challenging. Yeah, first, st you have to find an owner that's willing to sell to you, or at least knowing what your intentions are.

[57:04] Well, that's 1 thing the city could do is create a tax incentive for that. Right? Our taxes aren't that significant? Is it everything else? Well, yeah, I mean, how much on a commercial property. Do we know how much the city taxes? Maybe that's someone we want to hear from on this panel is tax people. The tax man in Boulder get a sense of how we can leverage tax policy. I I don't know. I don't know what the city taxes, but the city certainly collects tax revenue from commercial tech commercial building owners, right does say, or the county set the commercial property tax rate. There's a city or county collects it. Yeah. But you know it's I mean, any any change to your taxes has to be voter approved.

[58:01] Does a reduction under tabor have to be taxes shall not be raised without the approval of the voter. But if you know, we wanted to give a tax credit of sorts or something, I mean, I I think there's definitely someone city boulder can speak to this, and that's 1 nugget. The city has to incentivize owners to use their property a certain way that seems like a good good tax policy. I mean, the the Feds give low income housing tax credits to people who build these low income housing. That's how we build low income housing in America. So I don't know like you're saying, obviously City can't waive state tax. But I'd like to know how much commercial landlords, or, you know, commercial landlords, commercial property owners are paying in tax. Is that could be enough of an incentive, especially if you own an empty building, and you're losing money on this empty building because you have to pay all these taxes

[59:02] and utilities and insurance. And then the city comes by and says, Hey. we will slash your tax bill if you lease out to this nonprofit, and the nonprofits gonna pay you a little bit of money, too, and you might be sitting there be like, Yeah. you know, this is my real estate portfolio. That sounds quite attractive. So because element, because the For profit developer at Blue Bird did a joint venture with boulder housing partners. They got tax exemption. So you're right. There is like an expense line item that gets eliminated. If. if, like Bhp is involved. So that may be something that we explore when we talk about. The adaptive reuse of housing, of office for housing with certain populations is, what's the opportunity to get property tax exemption?

[60:03] One of the things the city has been working on last year, maybe the year before is changing the zoning regulations to allow more residential in more areas. So, for example, in industrial areas or an area for an officer, you know, in area, in zoning areas that had historically not allowed residential. So that is new. And we have not seen at least not coming through planning board projects like a a big R&D project or something that's gonna include housing. But that's the goal is to allow residential in projects that so some of those office buildings would have been on zoning that might have historically not encouraged residential that has shifted. So we've got a momentum going on in the city to kind of expand the opportunities to find housing.

[61:07] so I think it could be very timely to come forth with a model for converting. There's Jay's not there. But the idea of it's been done, you know, a couple of times. Can this be scaled up in some in some manner? And what would be the mechanisms to do that. I think this is a is it timely discussion just given what we're doing with Arizona? And maybe we, I think those are good points. Something's part of it, but I think tax is also the other angle, and the county collects the tax. But I'm pretty sure the city sets its own tax rates for its property. There's also county tax rate state tax. But maybe I I don't. I think we probably want to hear from the treasure, the county treasurer to give us a sense of tax rates. Well.

[62:02] and we hope to have a panel on this conversion discussion next month, and potentially you'd have a developer who wants to learn office building. So it's very familiar with commercial fees and taxes and total. that person could probably say. This is my tax liability on this property. But, like we are, the government technically right? Right? Someone in the government should be able to tell us what the various tax rates. I don't know but that'd be the have you preserved they collect so they must know. But the city sets its own tax rates right. Don't set our own tax rates. But yeah, it'd be cool. It comes to us. Well, the city through policy. I imagine every city has different tax rates. Well, if you look at your tax, you can look at your tax bill right? It has. I don't know. I don't own properties. That's right. I think you can go online at the Boulder County and see

[63:02] what the tack, what all. It's a very, very long list, and we've always, as Michael said, voted ourselves into this list everything on that list voters have said, yes, we will tax ourselves for this, that and the other. And it's it's a big list. this thing I mean, certain things are voter approved for a specific purpose. And it's not something you can just say we're gonna wave. So we still debriefing from the panel discussion as Michael wanders out here, I wanna hear more about the tax policy is complicated, and I think that is a tool. But the city does have to encourage certain types of land use.

[64:03] Our main tool is funding. We use funding to get people to do what we want. That's from the same budget. I'm sorry. That's from the city budget. It's from the affordable housing fund. So all the money that we collect through cash and live through our linkage fees. There's property taxes specific for housing. What is that bucket of money? Has it been collected, and then sort of allocated already? Or is there additional funding that is anticipated and not yet allocated. It gets allocated every year. Doesn't sit in the pot somewhere. There is more funding coming so hopefully from one B. That was just asked last election cycle. But we don't know how that's going to be allocated by the county yet. And then it's just, highly variable. So depending on the amount of development in a given year, right

[65:02] determines how much national net, so we can get as much as 20 million in the year, or as low as one or 2. So, Michael, where are we on the agenda? I'm about to wrap up. Item a under manage from the board unless anyone has any comments on it. But I would like to say any ideas of how to move forward now that we've learned so much about this issue. What are we gonna do with that knowledge? And we've heard from the experts revisit the projects. We've seen some really great examples of ways to host the unhoused, and play in productive ways. But what do we do with that information? I don't know the answer. Do we need to have a dedicated session on that in a future meeting that would bring ideas. brainstorm in our bit more now, or something else.

[66:05] But my proposal is, I'd like to explore adaptive reuse for for housing, because it seems like Bhp. Has a very big pipeline and Bridge House continues to operate and do well, and the shelter has been housing about a hundred people a year. And so each of those organizations seems to have a model that's working that could get ramped up, but is working but So I'd like to explore something that really hasn't happened, which is more adaptive reuse and potentially for. and sort of transition. Great. I like that idea, too, and I'd like if we're doing a panel of sorts. I think it'd be good to try to find someone from the tax division and the City of Boulders Finance Department. Just so. I I think it would help us to understand

[67:06] where money works. They manage the accounts, receivable city and revenue sources, and I think they can speak in more detail and educate us. Oh, because everything we want to do requires money. and I, I think, having a better sense of what that money is and trying to. Either you're you're giving someone money or you're giving them a discount. Those are kind of the 2 things government can do. So what what tools do we have to encourage totally transitional housing? Okay, well, at this point. We have the bare bones of a panel, so we'll need some more ideas to invite, maybe at least one more person, perhaps 2. But we'd have someone from Bridge House back. We're on the technical side to discuss their optic version when you reference, Julianne.

[68:01] really, the brass tacks like, how do we do this? What did it cost over the zoning challenges? I don't think Melissa is necessarily the one to answer all that like a project manager. I'm guessing. and then the other person we have in mind I spoke with the other day. It's looking at 2 office conversions. and they would not be for transitional or even affordable housing. But this person could get to the issue of what does it take to do this? What kind of what are the zoning challenges. What are the issues around parking and open space requirements? I mean, just real, nitty, gritty things is sometimes golden gets hung up on, but prevent us from reaching certain goals, so I don't know who the 3rd person would be but open suggestions on that. Well, I've heard again. I've heard I don't know what truth there is to this, but I've heard that municipalities in Colorado, like commercial real estate, because they make more in taxes off of it than residential

[69:04] edit. You know, it bumps up their conference. It's obviously new on stuff. I don't know if that's true. I I just like to hear from someone who can speak to it with credibility. who works with it until you, if you own the home and it became an office building, you pay a lot more property tax the city Council do, because that's who we're tasked with advising to modify the incentives. you know, and obviously that plays into the budget city needs its budget. But I just think someone who can speak to that. I know it's pretty nitty, gritty stuff, but you know, power to tax is the most powerful government power like that a municipal government has, in my opinion, so, Jay, are there any group homes in Boulder? And are any of them successful models that could be replicated if they had

[70:02] a floor or a building to work from. Oh, you mean, if there was a space like, do you think that might be so like we could look at it from the perspective of who's done this adaptive reuse? And and what what is the build? What what do you have to do to the building to make it habitable? But I wonder if then, maybe another person on the panel is somebody who might operate from within that space. And what is their population like, and what kinds of configurations make that space work for that population? Think that's gonna be challenging for based on your previous speech about how different their needs are across the board. Yeah. Cause, yeah, I mean. most of the group phones are in residential areas in residential homes that are basically just converted for that purpose. And most people don't even know they exist in their neighborhood. Those, to me, are the more successful ones.

[71:03] the larger ones. You're talking about the Bridge House. you know. That's. I think that I would say, focus on that but the other, you know we I did. I thrown out all the housing partners. They just went through the process of converting a office building to residential. and they have always perfect experience the Geological Society. So let's whoever was tasked with that, why don't we have them talk well also, folks at cobra work on that? I think Coburn was also hired by a private developer who had a large portfolio, and they analyzed the portfolio to figure out which ones might be suitable. So I think someone from Coburn might make a lot of sense. I just think it's such a smart idea.

[72:02] I used to work in this 30 story office tower in Denver, and, like 15 of the floors, are just empty. And then you walk outside. There's tents, and I just was like this makes no sense to me like this world. And I think to the extent Boulder wants to be innovative. And a leader that's actually something where we can lead on. You know everyone wants to wants more money to build stuff. But there's a lot of constraints. And obviously we don't have a bunch of empty land in Boulder where you can build. But we do have empty offices. I think we've got our. I have an idea with some good case studies. we also have tens of thousands of empty bedrooms, and I say that frequently. But it's another source of housing that goes underutilized

[73:00] on in boulder like what's what's the solution? There, is it? It's not the landlord like landlords who own like. It's a commercial residential property. They they want to lease their stuff out. That's how they make money like. Who who are these empty bedrooms? You know? personal experience. I'm never shy about that. When we became investors we decided to take in borders, and it was it sucked. It's a happy ending. We convert the same space to an adu with its own entrance, and 7 years we've loved our tenants great. so I don't. I don't think there's that many people that would be here to take on borders unless they really had to, for financial reasons. but more ideas, more splitting up large houses in the smaller. which is all-. All things have been discussed there.

[74:02] They're in progress, basically. Or I heard like for this Presidential campaign from the Democrats. They're like, you get $25,000 for a 1st time. Home buyer, right? Create a financial incentive for empty nesters. People like my parents to move out of their house into a condo which my parents recently did like. How do you? How do you do that coming into their house. No, I'm not. But a young family did move into their house. That creates a different problem, because there's a shortage of condos in. That's something, you know. We always talk about building low income housing. But like. how do we also free up single family homes? And there's I, I feel like there's people, you know, they have this house that has a lot of equity in it, or you know they've paid off their mortgage.

[75:00] and they want something nice but smaller, and that doesn't necessarily exist. Yeah, but there's people, you know, my parents were not going to move into a 1 bedroom type of housing I live in now, but freeing up that. And maybe that's a problem we have is that we have the aging baby boomer population. They don't have anywhere to go. They want something nice and smaller. but it doesn't exist. Okay, great. I think we've made some progress with that discussion. And I think I have a good idea. maybe, that you and I can put our heads together again if he's about this panel. I think we can get together for October 30.th That would be great. enlightening, and interesting. So with that we will move on to Passover. Item B. Because any teodaro is not able to make it Let's hope we can make this presentation at a future meeting. Item 3. Can I just say one thing about that item, because I just wanted to lob a grenade over the fence.

[76:07] I think I think Bbsd would be the perfect partner for employee. Employer based housing. They have so much land and they have the declining enrollment. Maybe they could repurpose some of the space that they own to of housing for their workforce. I would know that the District Accountability Committee a couple of years ago, actually proposed this as a general subject of inquiry. and they they presented it at one of the meetings, and there was no is it is a it went nowhere, but at least somebody like had the the bravery, or whatever the courage to like.

[77:01] bring it up and say it out loud. I don't know. I I think. I would love to see Bbsd contemplate. This is a more serious way. So when we talked so before this meeting. Jay and I might go get together, and we sort of plan what the future agendas are gonna be. and this the agenda that we had thought about for employer employer housing w. 1 of the speakers was, gonna Be Danny, because he works with like the fire department and the police department up in the mountains. Right? And then we. And then we also talked about potentially the the te teachers public schools. And Jay mentioned that what was a twin peak Twin Lakes was a development that that

[78:01] that the school board, the school district school district owns, and there was a huge nimby and it and it didn't go anywhere. And so if we brought somebody, they would basically be talking about why it didn't work. And I think there's a lot of sore like it'd be like rubbing salt in a wound. But I think it's worth talking about. And then, potentially, we bring in somebody from Cu because all. And then a potential 3, rd a potential additional speaker might be someone from Cu, because the redevelopment of the South campus will also include housing for faculty and grad students and stuff. So we are any other ideas you have about employer housing will make a better panel. And I agree that the

[79:07] Boulder Valley School district would might be a good candidate, I mean, who are the biggest employers in Boulder after the city. You know University City School district. Who else? The labs? Those their employees are pretty well paid, I mean, I don't. Wanna I'm sure there's low paid employees, too. But does the hospital provide any housing? Well, the Alpine balsam project, I mean, that's the city provide providing housing. And I don't know. Do you know, if there's gonna be a way to funnel it through city employees before it goes out into the bigger market. Is there going to be any process, the affordable housing or the market rate? Any of it?

[80:01] Not necessarily. There's no link back to providing for the workers that are going to be working here correct because his I know I know it just didn't sound right even saying this, which is why I had asked Danny. Because what I'm trying to figure out is if you if you designate units and say, Okay, this unit goes to this kind of person or this employee. Then then you're in violation of the fair Housing act. But there's that's why I really wanted Danny to come and figure out well, how did the fire department and the police department get around those laws up in the mountains? Telluride has lots of housing for people who work have to ski or anything. I don't know. I'm not speaking with authority on this, but I don't know if discriminating, based on income is a fair housing violation. It wasn't the it. The issue in my mind isn't income. It's that. If, let's say, Boulder says

[81:05] we have a goal of our service providers living in our community. So we wanna make sure that, like. you know, within this, within this development, there's 3 firefighter families and 3 policemen, families and 3 nursing families and 3 teachers. How can you designate certain of your housing units to those employees to make sure that the people who provide services to our community live in the community. So we're not just, we're not identifying people based on their income. We're saying we want these employee types, and that my understanding has been a violation of fair housing. And so what I wanted to know from Danny or anyone on our panel is, how do you get around that? So that the greater good is that, yeah. Our policemen live in Boulder, our firemen live in boulder, our teachers lit, or some of our firefighters. Some of our teachers

[82:12] fire department. Then they can lease it to firefighters. They don't have to lease, but they're not developers. So that's what I'm trying to figure out like, how do they get those units to? Then I think they lease it, and then they sell. You know that sort of thing. Someone else builds it. And this speaks to the Boulder Valley Comp plan has a aspiration of a jobs housing balance. and that comes up so many times when we're looking at like the like, big life science projects that are bringing in a thousand. You know, jobs. And where these people gonna live, I think it would be very interesting to look at. Ow. the influx of development, and especially, and these are not low paying jobs.

[83:07] But they can't find places to live older. And so we have this big in commute. But it's a it's it's an aspiration in our Boulder valley. Comp. Plan to have there be a balance between the the jobs in the housing. And I I don't know that we have any data on. We approve all these office parks and labs and whatnot. and what's ha! What's happening? What kind of a deficit are we getting on the housing side based on that new employees we're bringing in? So some of it is data. Do we know if we know? Obviously, we know just by the community? But solutions to bring that to bear, which is why some of the zoning regulations have aimed at that that. Okay, you can build your life science building or put some housing in it that nobody's taken up

[84:01] because we can't make. Nobody's taken up that thing. But I I think it's a it's a concern, and it's been named in the Bull Valley Comp plan, as you know, this is, we want there to be a balance. We don't want this to be a community that has huge numbers of people commuting in because there's no housing. I'm gonna call the question on this part of the discussion, because I think we need more information before we even fly in those a panel, or whatever on this topic, you know. And then I think we need Danny to advise us on that potential would be for Danny to talk about his experience in Minneapolis. like the school district thing, is a maybe it's in a dead issue for a number of years. I think Jay has some inside knowledge on about that might be hearing scars from. But my understanding is that from Lakeside it's not a live issue now, but it's voted down by the County Planning Commission a couple of years ago, and that's years ago, years ago.

[85:08] hasn't come back different era. And then, as far as the university goes. Yeah, they want to build housing into yourself. But we have like a bubble diagram of what that development might look like. So it's really, really early. although they are doing the cinema redevelopment of the cinemax right? That's true. The movie theater here in Louisville is that the University of Think. It's worth exploring a panel. You mentioned that that actually is very interesting. I went to the movie there this year. It was terrifying. Only one there on this adaptive use idea in October if we can make that happen.

[86:06] And the next thing we have to talk about is, I didn't see, I believe. which is And we add in person to currently virtual only meetings for public participation. At the last meeting Jim brought brought the motion on this that we table because we hadn't really have time to talk about it. But Jay and Staff have done some research and maybe have some productive answers. You want to review what you found Jay? Sure. Yeah, Tiffany and wasn't easy. but the good news is we could start having in person participants for the next week. Here here in this room? So that's So yeah. Assuming the board is amenable to that, we would recommend that you move in that direction. The question is.

[87:01] space is a little bit limited. We typically don't get a lot of people even pre pandemic. When we were in council chambers, rarely more than you know, one or 2 or 3 people. So the next sort of question is, you know, do we want to stay here, or do we want to move closer to downtown that has some challenges moving back into council chambers. There's still the security issue. There's basically us. We would be the only ones in the building. And I don't know. Is anyone here? No, no one has been in council chambers before, right? But there, as as a hub member. So we're so basically, we would be the only ones in the building after hours. So we're responsible for making sure it's locked up and secure, which and also not everybody felt very safe leaving a building late at night. So it's not. It has its challenges.

[88:03] But we also have the option of staying here. but we're still limited in terms of the number of facilities that can support the zoom. So there's this room. Council Chambers and another building just below Council chambers. That's basically it. Because I assume we wanna still keep the zoom. Let's say we tried it here, which I think is would be a great 1st step, and 4 people showed up. Where would they sit? We just bring chairs and put them against the back wall behind you. Yeah, we can move these tables up. We could square this off we have. We have room. They get to stay for the whole meeting. Yeah, the wall moves, too. That's another option. and and then folks would still have the option of the screen. Okay, so it's a hybrid meeting. did they get to eat a cookie? No?

[89:00] Well, that's the nice thing about Council Chamber is the food is in the back room. and every you know the board got to eat in private before the meeting, and then you would come at it. Okay? So we would do the same thing over there. We would basically just close those doors. You guys would come early. we would eat on that side, and then once became 6 o'clock, you would come over. Can I speak to something I recently experienced. I observed a board of trustees meeting in Lyons. obviously much smaller community than here, and there's some housing issues going on there, apparently, from this meeting. and people from this complex came and spoke to the board of trustees about their problems. and I thought it was really interesting. The dialogue, it seems like very productive. The public had an issue. The Board of trustees is responding to it. And I I thought one thing really interesting happened. Someone

[90:00] they have the zoom set up, people could watch via zoom, and someone on zoom like raise their hand, participate in public comment, and the mayor said, Oh, we don't take public comment, via zoom anymore. You have to come in person. You can watch on Zoom. I'm not proposing we do that, but I I never got an explanation as to why that is. And then at 1 point someone got up to address. And again, this is the board of trustees. So it's not just housing. but someone got up to address the board of trustees, and he started off by saying, I want to apologize for the way I acted at the last board of trustees meeting during the public comment period, and I wasn't there. I don't know what he's talking about, but you know we've been in this like zoom world for years now. And I was like, Yeah, when you come and you scream at people in person to their faces, you're gonna feel bad because, like, there's a certain level of civilities humans we have in person. That's just a lot

[91:06] harder to overcome than when you're just sitting. And we can't even see your face. You can scream at us all you want, you know, like that anonymity that people have through the Internet. And I just thought that was interesting. I don't know if that's why they don't allow public comment through. Zoom, I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but I think getting people to come and participate in person could lead to much more productive public comment. And part of it is like, what do we envision the role of this board? I'm obviously newer here than everyone else. But I do think, you know, in a city of boulder, with a hundred 1,000 people and obvious serious housing problems. you know, people aren't always gonna go to city council with their issues. It would be nice to hear from tenants homeless people whomever about their housing issues, and maybe we can tie that all together with the experts and the panels we hear from and

[92:01] provide more sound advice to the city council. So I really think it's important to encourage that to Jay's point, I'm very grateful that you guys looked into this. I do think that being downtown would be more conducive to a public conversation. I don't know how much people we're gonna get here. I don't know how much people get down there. I'd say it's probably more likely we get people down there in terms of walkability. I never knew this place even existed before I came here. but the security issue is a concern. What's the other downtown location? If it isn't City Council chambers. The only issue is that we there's another board that currently meets in that room. So it also require us changing dates. Okay. I think my suggestion would be. let's try it. Here. Let's see how many people show up. If if the number of people who show up is bigger than what this room can accommodate. Then, after a couple of months, maybe, we explore City Council Chamber. But I think there's pros and cons like people may not know where here is, but

[93:17] I feel like it's pretty easy to get to. There's parking places to. so are there other that are that are doing a similar transition? And what are they? How's it going? I can speak for planning board. We've been meeting live. I think in spring they had to make the transition with the technology as well. But you know, truth be told, we don't get much public at all, what we get are the applicants they tend to show up

[94:01] in in person, but not always, you know. I think the zoom has really expanded people's abilities to attend. and that sort of comfort. I I haven't seen them break out of it and start showing up at planet even for this, you know big Alpine balsam lot of neighbors are going to be impacted. There was not a single person of the public. The applicants were there, but so we rarely see public showing up at the planning board meetings at the Council, and even on the Zoom calls when we have a hot item. Most of them are showing up on the zoom calls. even when there's neighbors opposition to a project you're considering. Like, when we did the the approval of the MoD factory. You know, those neighbors were concerned about the wetlands. And you know, some of the environmental impacts they all showed up online. you know. So

[95:00] I I think I think Zoom has changed the culture. Are there other any other? So that's planning none. None that I know of. The only thing, I wonder is Chip. I wonder if a part of your desire to offer it up to some live stuff is also just kind of a separate but similar thing of having more public participation. And so I wonder. I wonder if another option would be to continue on with our meetings like this? But plan a per public participation. roundtable discussion, or something with the with the topic prompt of Hey. what do you think we should do about housing in boulder, whatever, and just kind of open up the conversation and inviting

[96:01] public, and then it doesn't have to be one of the other one. I think it speaks engagement, I mean, maybe it's like, what demographic are we trying to reach? I think the people, the demographic that interfaces with the planning board is applicants, and then all the property owners around the project that don't want it to happen right? And those are probably people who are technologically sophisticated because they own property, and they have on. And what demographic are we trying to engage, you know, like the alcohol control board, the demographic they engage with is probably mostly liquor stores. So like, what demographic are we trying to engage with? And I would like to advocate for engaging more with low income people, tenants, and homeless people. I think that's where the there's a serious housing issue. I know there's a housing issue for home ownership, too. But you know, planning board covers a lot of kind of those development issues in Boulder. You know, one area that planning we're going to go near is, how do we address homelessness? I mean, maybe a little bit. But that's more, I think, in our wheelhouse. How do we engage with those people? And to your point? That's it. It's not just how do we have in person meetings. But how do we get people to attend our meetings, whether it's in person or zoom? I think we need to do

[97:21] some legwork there. So I have a question, though, if the the involvement of the people that you're targeting. they're given 3 min, are you? Are you wanting them to tell us what their ideas are, what their concerns are? Or do you also want them to stay and listen to the conversations that we have like? I I understand the goal of greater participation. But it's hard to have your voice be heard in 3 min. Yeah, that's a good point. I don't know if I have a specific answer there, I mean, part of that speaks to just our procedure. So but our public comments since I've been here has been

[98:02] very minimal. I don't think we've gotten much out of it. I mean, Mark made some good interesting points today. I'd like to hear more more of that sort of thing, or just people's concerns, and how can we act on it? And I don't think people know about us. joined the Board in May of 2021. There were occasional. They call them listening sessions. Okay, which are more like a public hearing of the type you're describing, very interactive. And I think there was a mixed results from from that. I did attend one, but I think 2 members of the public can't do whatever that that was like high Covid, so that we're only only zoom opportunities. You feel any of those were productive, Jay, or do you have any like? Was there one that had 50 people a room talking to Ab or

[99:01] the Tiny on one, I mean, I. So my sense is, it's as I'm always saying, it's driven by what is the agenda? If it's of interest to people right. they'll show up if it if it's a sort of general. Come, tell us what you think. But I thought that the listing sessions were targeted to an issuer like 10 year olds on wheels addictions. Yeah, we've we've talked about it any number of times. We just haven't done it again. Well, there needs to be a marketing component, I think, to let people know. I do think back to. When I 1st joined. I did the diversity training through the city racial equity. And whoever put that training on the city staff person I forget her name. She's like in the department of engagement, or something like that. Seems like her job is like they go into trailer parks, and they like talk to people

[100:03] and try to get the city to engage with them, and she made a comment like, we can partner with your board to engage the community more. Maybe we reach out to one of those departments and say, Hey. we're having a you know. a listening session, or just like a a day on living conditions in mobile home Parks can is is that something you can get people to attend on? We want to listen and communicate people's concerns to city council. I don't know. I mean, that's just an idea I have. It sounds like there's people in the government whose job it is literally to do to market government services, to disenfranchised communities. and perhaps we can work with them. We need to have an interpreter if we do something like that. I mean, if they're Spanish speakers. a lot of. I don't think we have the demand for it right now, but obviously, if we did, we have a pretty high Spanish speaking population. No, I mean in terms of our public?

[101:10] well, we've done this before. But why don't we put listening sessions on the agenda in October, and have people bring concrete ideas. If we want to do one, we'll do it. Yeah, I mean, if and maybe we, it's up to you guys. But I think if we are doing a listening session. We're marketing, and maybe a bigger space to be prepared for would be better if we're just doing a panel. and we don't expect large turnout. Maybe here's better, you know. That's let me do retail. Oh. you have to pay for it is, if security is a concern, I mean, that's something we obviously want to address. Can someone from the police department hang out?

[102:01] They'll do it for a fee as well. But the city pays that already. But I mean, yeah, I would say we can find a larger venue if you have a topic for a listening session that you think will generate a lot of interest bursting at the seams in October and go from there. Well, I think it should be 2 problems is facility, but also outreach. I think we need to. I don't think people are gonna show up unless we get the word out that we're actually soliciting. If the plan for October is a listening. They're not a listening session, but a panel that maybe that's not the best day for it. Or maybe it is gotta start somewhere. But who would that be Sarah Huntley's job. the communications person to get the to- to publicize to publicize our meeting?

[103:02] Yeah, I mean, we can ask them to use the city's social media to promote an event. All of our meetings are publicly noticed. They go on the daily camera. They go on all of our social media. So I know we have usual forums to get the word out. Feel like the listening session sessions that I have attended in the past. They were scheduled months out so that there was really good opportunity to get the word out. Not have. This was before. Well, actually. actually, maybe it was like original original hat like. yeah, actually. And then yes, that's true. And then also some a couple of things with the parks and Rec. whatever that is. My point is is that it seems like the

[104:00] the schedule would be in October or November, talking about some specific ideas that could be topics for a listening session, and then scheduling that after the 1st of the year their names were Brenda Ritten or Edgar. I don't know Edgar's last name, neighborhood engagement and services manager from the city of Boulder Communication and engagement department. Yes. Are those the type of people who maybe they'll come to me who would promote, you know. Let people know. Hey, we're doing a listening or a panel on transitional housing for homeless people, you know. That's part of it. If you have something to say or thoughts on this. We'd love to hear it. you know, and reach out to I mean everyone. It should be open to everyone. But how do we reach out to those communities that I guess I'm sort of wondering, like if if we have a topic that we're exploring and we promote it. Then they get 3 min to to sort of introduce themselves, and then they listen to our panel. But it's not interactive. And and so maybe a future meeting should be one where

[105:14] where we're open to any topic, and we're open to much more interaction. And then whoever shows up isn't limited to the 3 min. But it may be that if you're just inviting people to attend, they're participating before we've talked about it, and it's the I mean. Mark was the 1st time I've ever seen us interact back and forth. And I thought that was great. But I sort of feel like that should be a whole meeting in and of itself like. come to have. It's gonna be open dialogue. We're gonna have back and forth discussion. You get to present ideas that you want us to explore or share some thoughts, and we'll listen. But I don't know that that's

[106:01] that. That to me, seems like a different format than what our normal meetings are where somebody presents, and then we move on and talk about something totally different. Well, maybe we distinguish meetings that are more like study sessions, or we're trying to learn. That's the main goal of the meeting, and then ones where we're trying to listen to the public. You know, if we have a panel of 5 like last, the last homeless one we did. That was, I feel like more of a study session. We were there to learn. and it probably if we had 20 people show up to talk about homelessness, that probably that would. We didn't have enough time for that. Maybe we do a separate one on. All right. We're gonna do a community engagement on homelessness now, and the goal of that is to listen and engage with the public. make a suggestion because just an observation, I've noticed you guys spend spending a lot of time discussing different formats for outreach and how to format meetings.

[107:02] and I'm not sure it's very productive use of your time. But so I would encourage you to come up with a topic and think about that topic, and then, based on that topic. Decide exactly what kind of outreach you want to do. Homelessness. I think we decided that that wasn't what we wanted to focus on. We like the panel we had was housing solutions for homelessness, right like homelessness, has so many factors that are not in our purview. But it's fine housing solutions for homelessness. We're not public safety. We're not police oversight board. homeless housing. It's a big thing. And I thought that last meeting was excellent. I'd like to engage the public more in that conversation. What would they bring to it? I mean, I'm not saying that I just feel like we're we're kind of isolated. We hear from developers. We hear from nonprofits. We don't hear from the community we're here trying. We're here trying to help people, but we don't hear from them, and they don't know we exist.

[108:10] So I have a question. what? How? In fact? After, however, you get your information and and gather the subject together. How is this information taken back to City Council? In other words. we're asking. I'm hearing you talk about. You want the public. Input but is it going anywhere? And how does that happen so articulating? And here's what we're planning to do as a result could get people to say, Oh, my voice will matter. Well, we haven't sent a motion or a resolution to council in a while, but last time we did we weighed in on a whole host of pretty weighty issues like Zoning and Edu's. and we spent some time doing analysis and sent them maybe a 3 or 4 page memo with some analysis suggestions, most of which they adopted, not saying they took what we did, and you know rubber stamped it stuff they were already working on.

[109:11] but they took it as a good sign of support that could be a way for people to become invested in attending. in that their voice will then carry some weight right, and I think we did have better public participation. One of those meetings where we had that on our big issue that's also before State did its thing and passed all the housing bills last minute. I mean these, the agendas we have. It has like feedback discussion, comments. decision and then recommendation. Vote on boards input to city council. And I think that's the goals at the end of these meetings, or the next meeting, or whatever after we listen to public, listen to these experts. We then try to pass resolutions and send that to council, and then

[110:02] that's the only power we have. But I think that's that should be our objective. I don't. Since I've been on this board we've not sent any resolutions to council. So you know we've I've learned a lot, but I think that's our goal. and I think we should be informed by you know, our discussions and debates amongst each other, the people who we invite, and then the public. And I do think this is a productive conversation to have. I know it doesn't necessarily feel that way. But I you know, how do we? How do we make change? Well, do we need to vote on what we want to do with the structure of the meeting, even for next month, or can we just decide. change our messaging? Okay? Well, what I think can agree on this is that we should experiment with an open hybrid meeting in October.

[111:04] See if we can get the neighborhood outreach people to help us promote the agenda. if we get 4 people showing up, that's an improvement. Maybe it's a start. Who knows? I have a feeling. It'll probably because of the topic and our desire to learn about that topic a little bit more of that study session field. But I tune into council, study sessions and take notes. So you know, maybe that would be appealing to some members of the public. We could also put on the agenda for October, and like, What's a really great barn burner issue for a learning, a listening session that could actually help us shape of motion in college to council. Well, in the agenda, I feel like we're gonna be sending the motions every meeting. I think we need more time to digest information to do that.

[112:03] So the agenda for October is this transitional housing office space? Is it just tied to changing office space into housing, housing, or is it more for homeless like? Both? All kinds of housing? Some of the challenges are the same. You gotta do with writing codes, and you know zoning changes and all that. So I think it's there's lessons learned from. If you ever to do that. Also be kind of interested in learning more about that movie theater conversion. Oh, no, it's gonna get demolished. Okay, but they probably have to rezone it. So my thought was that next month was going to be adaptive reuse of office into housing of various incomes for various populations, and then subsequent meeting was going to focus on employer based housing that might include the redevelopment of the movie theater. And then, with regards

[113:08] to making a recommendation to city council, I feel like we're collecting data right now. But we haven't figured out yet what problem we're trying to solve and what solution we're going to recommend. And and so in my mind. We lose credibility if we offer something to city council that hasn't been thought through. And I I don't feel like yet. We know what we should recommend. I don't disagree. I think the idea of having our next meeting be about transitioning turning office space into housing housing solutions is a a pretty good targeted thing, and I think it's interesting. Can we get the public to attend and pay attention to this? I mean, that's to me. That's kind of an exciting idea. We don't know where it's gonna go. We're here to listen. And then hopefully afterwards, or perhaps following meeting vote on a resolution

[114:09] and give recommendations to council. I think we want to hear from all sorts of people on it. Can the public participation be after the panel discussion you can have? That's what I'm saying. Don't try not to focus too much on how we structure the meeting. Focus on topic. We construct it. Any way you want that you think will be the most useful, because maybe we'd get more participation if we have a panel discussion. And then we say to the public, What do you think what are? What's your reaction to what you've heard before we? I mean, maybe we want to ask the panel questions, and then the public can ask us in the panel questions or something. I like that. I didn't. Let's model that for a second. Let's say we had done that last month with a great panel. Yeah, and we had 10 members of the public in the room.

[115:02] Listen to what the panel had to say, and I guess we mix in board questions with audience questions. Good value would have been educating the public about the same thing. We're being educated about. Yep. Pretty good outcome. And then, after that we need the next week, and we vote on something. The next month we vote on something hopefully. We feel like we're in that position to do so. I mean, I feel like that last meeting. At least, you and I have been moved to say, let's study this this issue more. I mean, that's I think we all agreed. And then you you agree the Bridge house. Let's look into this more. I think we're onto something, and I think that's a big thing. I've heard like discussions on Npr, like 10 commercial. I I don't think anyone knows really how to do it.

[116:01] And I think that that is a potential solution, something that we can get done. So we'll remind everyone that there are some big issues coming up that we want to weigh on family friendly. I can never remember the rest of it zoning for affordable housing. family, friendly zoning for affordable, and you know some other groups like better boulder and Boulder House never done quite a bit of analysis on this that we could dive into that and make a recommendation based on their analysis. Because so would that be a subsequent meeting where we'd ask better Boulder to come and present what they suggested? We did talk about that at one of our chairs meetings getting like Macon and somebody from better boulder to come in. Tell us what they've learned, because, you know, we don't really do research outside of meetings. That's we're a little hamstrung compared to those organizations that

[117:01] like they've got a legislative committee that works on that. It meets twice a month and hammers things out. You know we don't always have the ability to do that because of Tell me me, too, the time, and so forth. So would that be of interest to the Board to have other habitat advocates who have done policy analysis. Come in and tell us what they've learned, you know, is the family friendly, affordable housing or another subject. Sure. I like the idea for our next meeting and focusing on turning commercial real estate into housing. but the vibrant neighborhoods might be a future one like January, December is getting ready to act. What is? I don't know what it is. It sounds like it's it's basically allowing for lot splitting and

[118:01] various types of multifamily use within current single family neighborhoods. It also would allow 60 units instead of 40 units. Why don't we just go right now. City Council to approve. It's going through the moves. It hit planning board and and it's going. It's it's a legislative it's a legislative project that the staff is working on and has been working on. It. Got renamed this year last year with affordable housing. And now it's I remember what the 1st part is, but it's about for vibrant neighborhoods. and it's not so. It's playing board. It's got it on. We we had a an update from staff. I think it was either the last meeting or the meeting prior to that so recently. So it's making it, and it'll go to City Council to be. You know it it

[119:03] as these big projects the staff does. You know they do these updates along the way and we weigh in. But it is in motion right now. planning board vote on anything. Are you just listening? We were giving them feedback. which is what repent when Carl Gyler comes here exactly, and he said he'd been to have, which is not an emotion. But it's really valuable, right? Right? It helps, as you say. You know, you're talking about bringing more voices in. That's what Staff does when they come, because it's a public hearing at the planning board, and you get all these different perspectives and voices that one hopes informs as the as a project gets crafted. And we do to have Carl back to talk to us about that. Okay. I need to check in with him cause he had talked about sending a memo this time this round.

[120:03] asking for your feedback that way, because he wasn't able to come to have. But maybe better. Bill Boulder presents like we read what Carl wrote and then see what their reaction was. Great. Okay, so I think we've got a plan for October 30.th I just feel like we've got some big housing problems in boulder when it comes to affordability for tenants and homelessness, and I'd like to send some resolutions to council, and I'd like to hear from people so that we're informed. That's that's where I'm coming from, and I think we can do a better job. Those goals. Well, I agree with you on that. I do feel like maybe we're starting to spin our wheels a little bit after being very productive few months before that. So I'm gonna ask everyone to

[121:03] come to meetings with some very specific ideas that we wanna do. So we don't just have to like blow air about it during the meeting. Well, I think I think we have a great idea for our next meeting. We do, we do. And I think we need to sign on meeting to say that in a nicer way if people would come with specific agenda items that would be productive for future meetings, that would be really, really useful. I have a question. Maybe this is the appropriate time. So the Boulder Valley Comp plan. Do we have a plan? If, when we're gonna kind of look at the housing portion and yes, you will definitely be involved, I promise. But do. But do we? Yeah have something kind of we're gonna in February or something they haven't scheduled formal meetings yet. The kickoff is in October.

[122:03] so yeah, but it's a long process. So it's gonna take 2 to 3 years. So there's gonna be multiple touch points along the way. I totally hear that. I just want to make sure that we're not just way back in January. And we said, Oh, yeah, it's going to be a Few Year Plan, and we want to make sure that we're putting energy towards it. And that was months ago. So I just want to make sure we're not. I totally agree. Do you feel that it's productive meeting with Christopher? Yes. Well, for me personally it was super helpful. It was very informative. And I think it was for others, too. I just wanna make sure that we're still paying attention to that. If you have thoughts or suggestions. love to hear about what you think the Comp plan should focus on when it comes to housing. Yeah, cause it's due 27. But they're hoping to push it to 26. Is that what I missed?

[123:04] So there was a Oh. Miami Board City Council meeting update on Bbcp. Was that end of August weeks a while ago. you know, just basically, we're starting. And here's the big picture. The question that was posed was, what what would look like a successful process to you at the end of it. So that was something that was part of the conversation. Is. what is your what are you hoping gets accomplished that might not question for the board. That's not one of the question who has or takes the time to watch city council and the planning board meetings or attend attend them

[124:01] planning board. That's way past my bedtime. I don't don't feel bad. I don't. I mean I'm retired, and I don't find time to do. It's really it's a huge time commitment to keep up with that stuff. I try to limit what I send you, but that was one of them was the Comp plan discussion. Yeah, I thought would be helpful. So you'd know exactly what what to expect right? Right? And then, if you start logging them to watch zoom recordings, you. you know you may as well put aside your weekend for that, because it takes a lot of time to do that. Just a lot to keep up with, I gotta admit. So I'm not surprised if you hold up watch having me use this well, no offense, no offense to us. I don't know if this is the most right.

[125:00] Yeah. Are there any good local reporters who summarize those meetings? Really? Well, occasionally we get the boulder reporting lab and they'll do a nice write up of that. And they could be listening. Now could be a report tomorrow. Usually you have to say something pretty controversial, maybe. Should we start being a little more controversial? Yeah, I mean, I mean, there are meetings meeting minutes. Those are also hard to follow. Maybe I should start a blog. I don't know. It typically is a reporting of this is what happened to council. and excuse me about that. If it's a controversial issue it will hit the daily camera right and Shake Castle, who used to kind of manage. That was her. Her passion was to attend City Council meetings and do. She is now an editor at the Boulder Weekly. Okay.

[126:02] what's the other Boulder B. Is that still good? That was her project. That's it. Let's test the controversy theory. I motion that the city sell out high Bolson to a luxury housing developer here. A second. Okay, that was not serious. so are we good moving? 23rd to the 30, we are. yeah. Do you wanna make it official? So we we can go to the ribbon cutting on the 23, rd and then have that meeting on the 30.th I'm supportive. Is there a motion? Is that how we're doing? Yes, no, we're just gonna do it by consensus. Usually do it by motion. Michael. Come on trying. Now we have when you change meetings. Yes, that's that's do. I hear a motion to move

[127:00] our meeting, our monthly meeting to from Wednesday, October 23rd to Wednesday, October 30.th In addition to open that up as a hybrid meeting with the public invited to attend in first, st and I'd like to add to that that we do it downtown, and just see if that's not in October, not in October. I haven't gotten any training on the Council Chambers, but as soon as we could do it I don't know. Probably next year, at the earliest, I would say. I thought we decided we were, gonna see how many people showed up. I don't think we're gonna get anything. but I guess part of that is also, can we? And I don't know if we need to. Emotion. Can I reach out to these engagement people and say, Hey, this is what we're doing, sure. Can you help us? I can. CC, one of you with our Covid meetings. We'll see if maybe they'll come.

[128:01] So I think that's a great idea, do. And do we need to make a motion for me to do that? Let's let's do one. I'll make a motion that we move the have meeting from the 23rd to the 30th here, and that it will be open to in person public participation. In addition to the zoom hybrid. I'll second that motion. Okay, all in favor motion passes unanimously, and we'll have our next meeting on October 30.th I have a new. Another motion that Chip will reach out to the community engagement department for the City of Boulder to see if they will help promote our meetings on these issues. Second me doing that just couldn't delete. I'll second all in favor. The motion passes unanimously for a chip to reach out to community engagement. People approach

[129:01] greater awareness and participation in our meetings, which are now open as well. Excellent. Can we talk about some more scheduling a little bit? Sure I do one more thing for this upcoming meeting. I really would like to get someone in finance and tax to speak to this. were you planning on reaching out. I don't know if it's a city. I can also try reaching out to a law professor at Cu on tax. These, I think tax could be a big piece of this puzzle. What can the city do to incentivize this? What are? What are your thoughts on that? And that's either someone in our finance department for the city or someone who understands tax law. Thinking this is so localized, we need somebody from city. And is that as easy as emailing a city person outside of your department

[130:00] and saying, Hey, will you show up after work hours like they probably don't like that right? I'm just trying to think who would be a good person and and find city finance. I, I would say, refine your ask a little bit more. I'm still not entirely clear what your expectation is, what not. Right now let me tease that a little bit. So is the ask. what could the city do to manipulate its tax structure in a way that provides incentive for housing conversions. Right? What tax incentives? So, for example, is it possible that the city can give tax credits or reduce the tax burden for commercial landlords lease their property out for transitional housing. Is that a tool in the city's tool chest? Is that something city Council can do.

[131:03] if it even requires about referendum. Is that something city council consent to the voters, you know, to encourage? What can we do to create a financial incentive to owners of commercial property to turn into housing. Can you send me an email to that? And I'll I'll reach out. Do we need to vote on these. But I think that's a conversation piece that to me like what zoning is one power that the city has that speaks to this. And then I think the other is tax. That's how this the Government creates financial incentives. Our entire tax code is in America is one to generate revenue. So the government has money to spend, but also to shape conduct, to shape financial conduct. We encourage people to have babies. We encourage people to get married. We encourage people to buy homes with our tax policy? Why can't we encourage commercial land property owners? And what tools does the city have

[132:07] right? Any other matters from what the Board members would like to bring up your motion to adjourn scheduling things for you. Oh, sure! So our November and December meetings conflict with the holidays per usual. So just keep that in mind for the next month. we're gonna have to basically reschedule both of those. Typically we've combined them into a single meeting and early December. That's typically what people prefer. So another wrinkle. So the our department housing and human services is looking to have sort of a boards and commission

[133:00] get together. It's a sort of an appreciation it is also an opportunity for you to kind of better understand what all the other boards and commissions provide, to what what they do in relationship to housing and human services. There are quite a few. So it's like 30 or 40 people. so it could be very interesting. And I think there's a small request in there to get your feedback on the side concept of an annual report that we would do reporting on all the activities of House commitment services as opposed to having a dashboard, which is the usual way for housing. It would be some something short and glossy, basically to show the accomplishments for the year. So 2 things to keep in mind. Okay, combining the November December meeting early December. we have some dates for it. What we will send you, and you could tell us. If they work for you.

[134:00] we're gonna have to do in October, the October meeting, and then the housing board collaboration. Would that be like a just a meet and greet? Or would there be structure where there would be like topics and questions, or like, is it just schmoozing? Or it's like structured? It's both. So we want to have enough time. Just make it enjoyable, like I said, celebration of all your work and and appreciation. And then a small part, asking you to provide us some feedback great, and that would be likely in early December as well. Right? So the dates being proposed at the moment are December 3, rd 4, th or 10, th likely from 5, 30 to 7, 30, 8. Somewhere in that general area we'll be at a city building, likely the Osmp hub 55th dinner would be provided.

[135:03] I will probably send out a poll next week, and I'll need your feedback by probably a week or so. So that we can get the date finalized prior to our next meeting. So then maybe we do a half meeting like on the 20th of November and skip the December since. There's that. That's an option, too. Yes. so do we want to have for November 20.th He's the 27th is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We don't wanna do that. Well, if we did the combined, we've often done that combined meeting in December so right but that but maybe, instead of a combined meeting in December. We're doing this housing and human services in December. I'm available on the 20th works for me. Thanksgiving is the 28.th

[136:12] So the joint meeting of all the boards is that basically a social get together, or more like a forum. It's not well defined, perfectly defined. But it's again celebration. Get to know each other. What you, what different boards and commissions do? Is it open to the public? It will have to be because it's well, if it's a social get together, I don't think they're gonna get away with that. We tried it, but we'll see. It might be we might say there's no city business. If it's social, then it's it's a holiday party. One time didn't work. Lot of DVD there. But it'd be great. Yeah.

[137:03] So what I'm hearing is move the November meeting to November 20, th alright, and cancel the December meeting in lieu of this gathering, 1st one of those dates in December, and then I mean, I know we're jumping ahead because we have October. We have our transitional housing panel, but I feel like we should send some resolutions to city council this year. Is that what we're gonna do in November is talk about everything we've done this year, and what we want to send city council. Would we be ready to weigh in on family friendly? Never remember. That's really cool. I don't know. and that's a big one. And then the other big one is a compliant, but that's premature to make it. I understand the desire to let the Council know what we've done this year.

[138:02] So I don't want them to think we've been wasting our time. but I don't feel like I know what I want to advocate for yet, cause I still feel like we're in the fact finding stage. Yeah, I feel like we're in the wake of a lot of big moves. It's not bad to be in effect, by the don't wanna just send resolution to for the sake of it. Well, I don't know if it's it sounds like last year before us here. You guys did like a big letter right? And we made big recommendations right? I don't know if, like, we don't have to get everything all in one letter we can. If we feel confident in November that we've we have an idea on this transition housing that could be. It can just be that like, that's not everything we stand for. Believe in this one thing, you know. such as I can see, something like that. And there's any

[139:04] potential for converting commercial to transitional and attention. We could be ready to do that. And that's not the end. All be all for all housing issues in older. But it's it's 1 thing you know, that's I think that's a good suggestion. Move on. Okay, okay. Come to your pencil sharpening, doctor over there. First.st We'll celebrate the factory on October 23.rd Do you want to vote on the schedule change while it's fresh in everyone's mind? Make it official, sir. Do I hear a motion to vote on rescheduling. combining the December meeting just to one meeting on November 20. So check in all your favorite 5 passes unanimously motion to adjourn the groups. Oh, debrief! Here in a second.

[140:00] Oh, I think you have to debrief first.st Oh, debrief! Okay. Well, Debrief is kind of a I think we had a good discussion this meeting. We had one public participant who raised the issue of I don't know problems with rentals and folder, which is something we'd like to address more robustly. We had a really good discussion debriefing our great oh. management solutions panel. Still, I think. turning the wheels on up to transmit that information into a presentation. But I think we're still need to learn more about how to make this happen in a higher level. We had to table the item on employer created housing because our guest speaker was not available. We did decide to move our October meeting until October 30, th and to add in person to virtual only, and to do that at this location. See how it goes.

[141:05] Chip has agreed to reach out to the neighborhood engagement folks the city, to see if we can get their help in generating more interest in attendance from the public. We also moved the November December meeting to one combined meeting on November 20.th I requested new ideas, additional ideas for agenda items for future meetings. and we also agreed that we based on our next meeting, which will be on the topic of converting commercial into housing, that we hope to tease a resolution out of that to send the council after our November 20th meeting. Did I miss anything big? Okay? Being debriefed. Motion to adjourn.

[142:03] Second. my favorite? Oh, it's a factory open.