March 31, 2025 — Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] Packed agenda. Lots of good stuff to talk about. So we have quorum. We're missing, I think one member, but everybody else is here and but before we start to say the dinner is awesome. Thank you. Stack for doing this, Rosa. And since this is my last meeting. This is very bittersweet. I know it's the last meeting for many of us. So let's get cracking. Should we start out with the approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion to approve it that's removed. Sorry, Jenny. Anybody opposed to the agenda, as currently stated. Okay, hearing none. Let's go to future board items and Tours. Take it over to Allie. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Folks, I'm Ali Rhodes. I'm the director of Parks and Recreation. It looks like we don't have any members of the public in the Webinar. Is that correct? All right. So for the folks in the room. Hi! Nice to meet you. I I know.

[1:13] I'm gonna assume you all still care about the exciting conversations coming in the next 3 months because they really are really important for the entire community, certainly for Prab. I'm so grateful that you all have already planned and calendared and onboarding retreat for our new board members because they are diving in deep, not only at budget time, but amidst city council conversations on the long term financial strategy. So you can see the team has done a really nice job of filling out this calendar for you for the next 3 months. The things that I want to flag are the city council touch points that are coming up. So in 2 weeks our incredible planning team gets to talk to city council about this next phase of the Civic Area Project. This planning analysis phase that we're wrapping up your input tonight will get reflected in the conversation we have with them. That'll be something that we'll add the memos due final Thursday. So we'll add just a a note about how the perhaps been consulted and engaged as part of the engagement. So that's coming up on April

[2:17] 17, also coming up in April, actually in 2 night, 3 nights. City Council is gonna get an update on the long term financial strategy. A lot of what they'll see is what you all saw in January, when Charlotte Husky, our budget officer, came and shared with you about that project. They have several touch points on that on the next over the next month, because we are talking about ballot, strategy and language, which again, you all got a really nice overview of that in January. I don't anticipate that any immediate meetings will they ask for a Prab representative. But that might be something that happens in the future. Sometimes when Council is specifically talking about departmental asks and funding, they might ask for a representative, the prab to be available at their meeting. But for April I don't anticipate that we. The intention of that conversation, is to be very, very high level on the process update.

[3:11] because only 3 members of City council have gotten that so far the Financial Strategy Committee again, you all heard this in January. So that's what Thursday night is. Councils get an overview of the process and the work outlined over the next 2 years. What is new and what you all haven't seen that you might want to pay attention to is the community engagement strategy since we talked to you about the long term financial strategy last our communication and engagement team has mapped out a very thoughtful community wide engagement strategy called the fund our future and you'll be learning more about that we can provide a consent agenda update at your April meeting, and then next time we talk to you about the long term financial strategy, we'll share more about those important engagement opportunities. other than that, I'll just also highlight items of interest that we're coming up hot on our peak season. So in may you start to see some opening dates for our seasonal amenities at our outdoor pools and the boulder reservoir Swim beach? That's pretty exciting. You can anticipate. In the next few months you'll see a lull in business, because we have so many of our teammates, our heads down, working and operating, keeping people safe and having fun but there's a lot going on.

[4:22] Great. Thank you. Any questions about that from the board. Absolutely typically what? When that would show up if a council council member wanted, or the Council wanted representation from boards every Monday morning. Something that happens is called the Council Agenda Committee. and that's where the mayor, the mayor, pro tem. And a rotating member of council discuss the flight plan for city council, so to speak, and they try and troubleshoot issues, and that's where they'll make a call for representation. So for Thursday night we would have known but absolutely, that's also something that we'll work closely on with the chair and vice chair at that monthly calendar meeting. We'll talk about just the Council runway.

[5:09] Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I have a question about just something else that was in the list. You didn't touch on. The Contract Service Provider Annual Review. This is we're talking about the future board items and tours. I think you're talking about that alright back to you, Mr. Chair. Great thanks. Any other questions. Okay? So the next segment is public participation. Rosa, do we have any folks signed up? I do not have anybody, Mr. Chair, okay. And there's nobody physically present here. So I'm gonna presume no one has shown up for public workstation, so we'll move on consent. Agenda is next as a reminder. The consent agenda is the approval of both the minutes from the prior meeting, as well as updates from the director of Parks and Rec and operations updates. And so if you have any questions related to this or those ask them during the discussion of this item, so do I have a motion to approve the consent. Agenda.

[6:19] second second from Bernie. Any discussion about this item? So for the contract service, provider annual review. This is a little specific. But I was wondering. You know I have some issues I've said before about use sports for profit, and I think I feel like a lot of it's going in direction. So I was wondering when the city manages these contracts with the providers. Is there any ability to structure cost? So it's affordable for the average person, I guess, is my question.

[7:04] Yeah, I'm happy to jump in on that. And Brian Berry is also on the call, and he's been working with our contractor programs over the last few years. I I will say that. We do ask that they provide scholarships for those in need. I think we cannot mandate their pricing structure. That being said, we want to keep programs, especially recreational programs, not competitive programs very affordable for our public. So one of the things that we're looking at now is revamping our contracts kind of moving forward. Not only with some of those type of financial expectations, but some of the reporting expectations. We'd love to be able to provide more data. You know. Anna asked for some data, and we're doing our best to to really get a better understanding of how many youth in our community are being served, and and to what level? And so we're gonna look at revamping those contracts a little bit more. Brian. Anything you'd like to add Bryan Beary: No, I mean, we do have the ability to work with the contract providers on

[8:03] Bryan Beary: what fees and what costs will be marketed out to the public. And so most of these that you'll see here are generally at market rate. And then, like Scott said, they do have financial aid or scholarship available as part of those programs. I think the place where you'll see more of those higher cost programs are where it's a rental of space rather than Bryan Beary: a contracted program with the city I wonder if one of you could speak at a high level. So last month we, when we are in February, when we gave you an overview of the 25 work plan. We talked about the community access framework and part of the goal of that project is to incent 3rd party providers to align with city values and goals. And I wonder if you wanted to add something about how an outcome of that project might influence this brand. You want to jump in on that one or Bryan Beary: Sure. And and it's it's kind of that last paragraph of the of the memo here that we have 3 projects running simultaneous this simultaneously this year for the action plan. One is around partnerships, the others around programming, and the 3rd is around this community access framework. All of them have the opportunity to touch on these these Contract service providers, both in terms of how that space is allocated

[9:22] Bryan Beary: and prioritize, and also how we set the fees for those spaces, depending on how a program or a user might be aligned with department goals. And so that's the piece in the community access framework that we're really looking to try to subsidize or incentivize in a way, those programs that do align with our department plan and those goals to make sure that we are Bryan Beary: working together while swimming in the same direction to make sure that. You know, these these services are, you know. Bryan Beary: meet meeting all the goals in in the department plan, including, you know, being affordable to the community

[10:00] Thank you. Other questions. Discussion. I have one. So I'm reading about the The reservoir reminded me of our saga with the restaurant at the reservoir. How are we doing with that? Yeah. And I. I'm actually really excited about what's coming up this next year. We are working with Rocky Mountain paddle Board, who's been a partner of ours for quite some time. To provide services at the reservoir, and they've stepped up and said they want to help us with concessions. They see the gap, they see the need, and they see the opportunity. And so really moving forward with them, we're going to be doing some community engagement here later on this week, which we're excited about having a meeting out of the reservoir to introduce them and for them to share some of their vision on how they're going to be able to provide services to the reservoir. We've looked very specifically about weekends.

[11:03] holidays, the times when the reservoir is really crowded, and we know people want food. They want the ability to spend the day out there and have the resources they need. And so I'm very optimistic. But I'm still learning as well and about what that relationship is going to look like. We know that they do want to apply for a liquor license at some point. I believe they're already moving forward with all the paperwork for that. And that process typically takes 3 to 4 months. so I'm not sure that will benefit the Reds for users this summer, but potentially by the end of the summer. But it's I'm very optimistic about where it's going. Great. I also have a question about that. I I have to admit I don't spend a lot of time at the restaurant. But there's we. There's both a new restaurant and also a concession stand. Right? So yes and no. So we have a new building out there, which is a beautiful space. And the hope would be that could be activated as a restaurant. Long term. We'd like a full service operation restaurant there. The last couple of years it's been operated just as concessions utilizing that space. And so it's got some beautiful indoor and outdoor spaces. The goal would be to have a full, full restaurant operation. We're just not there quite yet. And then, with regards to the liquor license.

[12:22] we will still be constrained by Saga, the drama, if you will. So it'll be closing early, closing hours. Yeah, I I don't see us doing extensive late evening hours and those kind of things there would be special events. They're also looking at a permit that would allow them to keep the alcohol in the restaurant area and on the porch, facing the lake, and so it would not be free. Open access for alcohol throughout the entire premises. But I think that a lot of that will be determined here, based on events and and demand and and whatnot. So I can't give you a firm answer on that. I don't know, Ali, if you have any thoughts on that. Well, I'm wondering if you could clarify your question. What this all happened for us. My understanding is that the community opposed license at the new facility because they were concerned about traffic after hour after dark. Right? There were concerns about safety sound.

[13:23] Okay? And I assume those are still concerns with the community. I don't know that I I mean, what I know is, we learned a lot through that 2 year conversation, and this agreement upfront includes many of the guidelines we put in place through that that situation. in hindsight. I think there were so many things developed through the point that we had lost trust through it, that, starting with those in place upfront this, this, this lease agreement is real, or it's not a lease agreement. Yeah, yes, it is. The lease. Agreement is robust and clear about our expectations, and how we expect to balance, being a good neighbor and a steward of a natural resource, and being a steward of a community amenity where everybody can recreate, and so

[14:11] But I wouldn't say it's constrained. I think it does a lovely job of striking that balance, and the 2 are not mutually exclusive. You can operate a natural resource with an incredible community amenity where? Where there is a liquor license, and I think I don't want to speak for anyone else. But my thing is certainly is that I'd like to see that restaurant fully activated. I think probably probably all of us would. So I just want to make this ask if there's opportunities for us to help you. Thank you for that. Again. We learned so much a couple of years ago. I think the way this process is going looks different in a couple of ways. I actually really appreciate Rocky Mountain paddles, incremental approach, and that they're looking at focusing on the peak season and learning what works and what doesn't. And it's a 1 year agreement. And then we'll keep iterating and learning. It leaves a lot of room for figuring things out.

[15:03] Great. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you for expressing that interest. We really appreciate it. Yeah, good luck. With that another question about the restaurant. So just knowing that the entrance fees to the reservoir are pretty pricey for a lot of people, and I'm just curious if the restaurant will be like if you're just going to eat, if you would have to pay entrance fees, or if there's any like, if you're gonna go eat at the golf. Course you don't have, to. Sure. Great, great point, Sunny. And and I will say that we've talked about this. We've talked about either some type of a voucher or whatnot where you don't. Necessarily, we would not expect people to pay fees to get in to just use the restaurant right? And so, looking at creative ways to to make that happen is is something we're going to investigate and do some trials this summer and and see what works cool.

[16:01] Any other questions. Discussion. Okay? So put up for a vote, all in favor of approving the consent. Agenda say, aye, aye, any opposed? Okay, that is, approved Rosie. You can send me the minutes for signature, I think. Should you send it to me? Okay, alright. and all right. Next item, no action items. no matters for discussion or information. But there are from the department the 1st of which is the civic area phase 2 update function only, which I'm excited to hear great. And I'll give a little intro while Shihomi gets organized here. You all have met Shihomi Kuryagawa, our incredible senior landscape architect. Who is the Pm. For the civic area project. Mark Davison, to her right is our planning senior manager. I just want to highlight the importance of this project. Now, more than ever, for the reasons we've known all along, we've known that downtown parks can spur economic vitality.

[17:06] We know that close to home nature in an area that is so dense is so important. We know that supporting the needs of the nearby high school students and college students is important. Last week we got some news that that just underscores all of those. The Sundance Film festival, when it comes to Boulder in 2027 is going to live on the Pearl Street Mall, and up on the campus, and the money that that festival can generate for our community is significant, and the civic area sits right between both of those. And so it's pretty exciting that this project is underway. And we can think about, how do we at this stage of the excuse me, with this stage of design? We're not so far gone that we can't lean even in more into what those opportunities provide. So with that, I'll turn it over to Shihomi and Mark to talk about this planning analysis phase where we've done a whole lot of research a whole lot of engagement. To help keep funneling us down to one great park design.

[18:03] Thank you, Alan, and thank you for having me. And I sad to see a lot of you go. I feel like I just got to know you. But let's dive into where we're at in the process for civic area. And so tonight will be, you know, it's been a while. So I'll give a little bit of context and timeline where we're at the project. The project updates will include a planning analysis phase, engagement that was included all your last 2024. And then the emerging design that we've been seeing from all the information that we've been gathering, and then finally, next steps. So tonight, we'll just go through the presentation section by section and I will highlight kind of stopping points where we'll ask Prab these key questions. So does Prab have questions on the process of the planning analysis study. Do you have questions on the engagement findings date, and then any questions or comments about the emerging design that has been discussed through our engagement process.

[19:09] Okay? So a little bit of context, civic area is right in the middle of downtown with a lot of wonderful adjacency. So we're so excited like Ali said that Sundance is landing in Boulder here, and so adjacencies and connection to Pearl Street, where they will be a hub to sundance as well as connections up to see you campus, and of course, our new conference center that's already under construction. Within the project boundary you see here in red. It not only includes the civic area park, with Boulder Creek running through it, but arboretum path that connects up to the Conference center. And of course our planning team honestly, is looking at all of these kind of lighter green arrows that connect up and through, and how we're influencing out and in civic area. And just a note about where our budget comes from up top on that slide. It's mostly funded through the community culture, resiliency and safety tax or Ccrs.

[20:08] it will include so far an 18 million allocated budget for phase 2. And so that phase 2 won't necessarily be everything you see here in red but we'll get more into that as I go through. Is the 18 million for the construction of it, or is it just for the planning? It's it's a good point. It is for both. It'll be covering this planning and design phase and then for construction of a smaller portion. Okay. where we're at in the timeline right now. So I've been to prab here a couple of times to update on the progress as we kicked off in scoping the project in 2023. But then also in the middle of planning, analysis and planning analysis did include 2 touch points. They were kind of larger engagement processes with the community in the beginning of the year in March, and then we've just completed a window in October.

[21:06] so I'll go over some of that feedback that we have here tonight that we've learned in October. But right now we are just edging our way into 2025 with our design phase. So, like Ali mentioned, we're just at a really great point. To take any feedback, and including a large potential partner like Sundance coming in 2026 will do technical documentation. So we're still in design. But it's mostly set. Been vetted by the community and council, and we're just doing construction drawings at this point 2027. 0, yeah, go ahead. Sorry to interrupt your flow. But is Sundance coming in? 2027, I presume, in the summer. January 27. Is that gonna speed up the timeline? We'll see how it goes. And really how we're here to support. Like Ally said, we're a major connection. The hubs are on either side of us. So I think we'll just have to see.

[22:02] I'm sorry, Shomi. I wanna just yeah double click that I hear you say, does that speed up the timeline for the project? And your answer was, we'll see. Well, I mean, I think there's just some priority that might for sure. There might. I guess I wanna I wanna protect the project team here a little bit. There. There's a whole lot of work that needs to happen to go from these pretty pictures to construction designs permitting to. And so might there be some micro investments at the connection. Yeah, interim updates. Yeah, yeah, okay, thank you for clarifying. Yeah, I just want to manage expectations. The park project itself will likely will not change from this timeline. Okay? And then, yeah. So Elliot, to your point construction hopefully in 2027 and in the process because we are finalizing design maintenance and space activation planning is gonna kind of take place concurrently.

[23:05] Okay, so project updates, just real quick. We are finishing up window 2 of engagement. And this summer we'll head into Window 3. But I will update you on what we heard from Window 2. And like, I said, we'll go through planning analysis. moving into site programming to concept design will really be our next stage. And we're going to progress. We're progressing through current studies of governance models right now. So how is this large civic area with a lot of different components, park and facilities going to be managed and operated and space activated? And then, finally, we're also looking at reprogramming potentials and use studies at the East bookend. So that includes some of the building urban design. So it's a little bit more hardscape than what we're talking about with just the park improvements. Okay, so let me overview planning analysis. Really, this is just we spent 2024 doing a lot of research, a lot of technical analysis and doing some discovery work on what's existing out there on site today.

[24:10] You can see by some of the small diagrams tiled here. Don't squint your eyes. We've included the summary of site analysis in the attachment in the memo, and you can take a deeper dive into that. But this is just to say we've done a lot of work and technical expertise to combine civil engineering, environmental studies, landscape architecture, facilities, planning all into one, and you can look more into that at the summary. And it's all categorized by our 2021st year, 2015 plan. So those one through 7 guiding principles. That's sort of how our document is organized. So all the research that we do is also combined with all of the policy that actually overlays the space. And there's a lot.

[25:03] The bullet points are just kind of top priority that we've listed here with the policies that overlay in civic area. Of course, we're gonna fold in that 2015 civic area park plan. I mentioned. The racial equity plan. Our scr framework. So a lot has to go into kind of looking at policies across the city downtown guidelines and more and adjacent projects that are coming online to to make sure we're integrated with everything. I just wanna highlight the floodplain analysis. Specifically. So again, you know, going back to the site analysis, we have a lot of different diagrams and summaries on different aspects. So connection and universal design. Floodplain regulation is one of them as well. Part of downtown boulder like iconic way, finding and unifying strategies for this area. But floodplain is part of our safety. Principle. And so not only is it safety, but it's really looking

[26:10] the areas in orange. And what's developable? So there's not a lot of space that's developable. So this is just key that we have to keep in mind. What's in blue is floodplain and high hazard so we do have to be careful what gets implemented here. So things like a bench can go in the blue, but an occupiable building cannot occupyable buildings can only go, and what's seen in the orange here, and so you can see a lot of what's potential for area is in the East. Bookend. We're gonna be working closely with our consultant team and utilities department just to navigate these policies. Just make sure we're what am I? The East Book, and what's there now? So the East Book and let me zoom in.

[27:02] It's the the Market, the 15th Street. There we go. So 13th Street. Here on the west you have the tea house. Yeah, right once you got the tea house, but you can see, you know, a lot of surface area parking lot. That we can actually look at what kind of development. And, Jenny, in your packet of landing analysis. These slides, or some of them. The pictures are straight, taken straight from that starting pages like 53 and down I'm I'm curious, like the flood plain based on 100 year flood 100 year flood 100. And the areas in orange, they're like they're front above 2 feet above, like, how does that like, how much? How safe are they? Really? Yeah, it's a good question. And I am just not our floodplain engineers that are on our teams on

[28:02] good enough to be a little bit dangerous. So I don't know the exact height requirement above high hazard, but these are definitely to the strictest code boulders, high hazard, which high hazard doesn't occur anywhere else in Colorado state. So we are maintaining kind of in the boundaries of source. Strictest flood safety policy. Can you explain what that means? High hazard doesn't, but anywhere else but in boulder so what is a usual case is a federal fema policy which usually has a conveyance boundary. So that's what a lot of the States tend to go by is a kind of fema that recommended or policy boulder, because we have more potential for flooding. And we've seen pretty bad, significant flash flooding. We have decided as a city to create a boundary. That's a little bit stricter or smaller than the conveyance zone. It's a higher standard of safety. Okay?

[29:12] And the benefit I heard we recently got an overview of. This is just the why behind it is, it allows nearby property owners an additional I might bungle the specifics of these words, so don't quote them and don't. But it's it does allow for an insurance capability, because we're not allowing building and not allowing flood rise in those areas it offers community benefit through increased flood protection. And so boulder is the number one city at risk for flash floods. And so by adding those protections. We're not only making the city safer, but adding insurance capabilities for nearby property owners. Give me just one quick question on the map. Blue is high hazard and orange is developable. And what is the white? Oh, so, yeah, that's a good question. So

[30:00] open space in here, technically, is also developable. But, for instance, like the Municipal Building. We know we have some historically designated landscape we know the building of Tate is also historically designated. And so we wouldn't necessarily develop on this area, especially to looking at the Park. Now, we would provide or propose amenities like playgrounds in this gray area of Central Park. But it's going to remain park programming. And so we're not going to decide. Residential, for instance, is going to be developed in the park. I'm sorry. Just one last question on this. I didn't realize that the bandshell was in the high hazard or was in the floodplain. Is that something that we are concerned about. Actually, there are a number of buildings. That do touch a hundred year floodplains. So actually, the 100 year floodplain does spread further up north and south from this. So the band shell, you know, kind of is designated. It's also higher up above, sort of on a plinth. But, as you can see, for instance, down here, it's also not occupiable. It's an open structure. As you can see down here, for instance, New Britain and Park Central are fully within high hazard. And so we are looking at a study with facilities to reconstruct these buildings and convert it into park

[31:26] staff will move to the Western City campus to occupy these 2 buildings. Oh, well, you'll tell us how far along that plan is at the appropriate time. Right? Well, so we are working hand in hand with facilities now on the Western City campus, and so it will be kind of a delicate balance to wait until our Western city campus is constructed. All staff move in, and then we can start looking at deconstructing these 2 buildings. What do you mean? Deconstructing? So they'll come down entirely. The Municipal Building no, the New Britain Building and Park Central

[32:03] but the but the municipal building that is, that being vacated also, or this is that stay so for City Council. They have decided they would like to stay in the Tate Building, and so they'll have a presence on the civic area. Wait, I'm sorry. So the deconstruction of those 2 buildings will occur, probably after the rest of this project. Right? It would probably be in conjunction with, because we're not going to start construction until 2027. And so we're doing a structural studies and cost estimating on the deconstruction. Now. yeah. And so former loamars are funny acronyms, also guided by the Federal Government. And so the is a process that if it looks at the blue. And we say, you know what we actually do, we want to

[33:04] do development or construction that will kind of impede into this blue slightly. We're gonna go through a process to regrade to make it higher, to make sure we're still safe and out of the floodplain, and then go through a federal process to get that all approved. That is a large 9 months to a year process to do it could be that some of civic areas. Improvements would require. Looking at redoing the high hazard boundary and the flow. How are you gonna handle parking for the library parking for the library is such an it's an interesting topic, because in the 2015, so that vision plan was really looking at 30 years right? If you notice, it shows actually no parking in the Guts park anymore. It's all turned into park, and it kind of generally stipulates parking garages on east and West Bookend. We are currently doing parking garage studies on East Bookend, but just know that everything will be a very phased process in collaboration

[34:12] in lockstep with the library. So we're not planning to take parking away from the library right now, by any means at all, but by 2027 no, not by 2027. So the whole vision plan is sort of looking 30 years out. And so eventually, when multimodal transportation and a lot of our needs change in downtown boulder, we can slowly look towards different multimodal ways to get downtown. We can also look at parking garages in the cars are never going away, though. like it's just the more we build housing the more cars we're gonna have. We can't remove all of our parking that upset that part upsets me because we're talking about taking the one out on the other side of Pearl, and putting it would be transitioning it to make a decision.

[35:04] If there's no place to park. No, I'm saying we would provide additional parking, but not on the other side of the East. Bookends right somewhere within the civic area. Looking at one, not the other end of. Yeah, we we still haven't got to the design stage. So it's it's worth. Wait until we get to the design stage. I just I don't. I don't like the hatches through the parking and the big question mark. I don't think that we should remove this, I don't think, is a good thing. I want to underscore a key takeaway. 2 things, one accessible parking will always be a thing, so that buildings and and sites, including park, can be accessible to all that, you know, young people, older people, people with disabilities. So there will always be some accessible parking for the rest of us, not just for the library for the entire park. We're talking about this being a heart of boulder that is going to draw people. And so surface parking in a downtown area is incredibly inefficient.

[36:04] And so it's not about eliminating park. It's about a higher and better use of park area, so that if there is the parking for the masses. Parking garages are more efficient there they could be revenue generators. So to Mark's point, I just want to double click. It's not about a net loss of parking, it just might look different. Sorry. Hi, Jenny expired. Question belong to library district? Or is that a part? Okay? And also I just background. Because I'm not up on everything that's going on here. What is the timeline for? The city campus over here? City campus, I know, is under control. It's under construction now, a lot of the greeting and drainage. and then I'm not sure if we know final completion. So those 2 buildings and the lots. Those can't come down until the move happens here. So there is a phasing in it. Exactly.

[37:02] Yeah. That's why I was just asking about the timeline for this. 2728. Okay, thank you. Okay. So let's keep going. I want to just highlight the area of East Bookend and the developable conversation that we're having. We are doing studies on specifically urban analysis on what East Bookend could look like. And so to do that? We did a market analysis which really just means who are the people moving into Boulder? Who is looking for? What? Where do they want to live? What type of housing do they want to live in? Are they looking for booty, culture, art, or theater opportunities? What do they want to be doing right in downtown boulder and to do this, you know, we also look at general trends of development as well. And so through market analysis. who's moving in? What are they looking for. And then also economic analysis. What we found is East bookend are some developable themes or development themes that really this urban area can support. And so one of them is community residential. You know, we're always looking for more affordable housing or more varied home types in boulder, especially downtown.

[38:17] The food and beverage industry can absolutely be something to look at. New space and especially partnering with the farmers. Market local food service is sort of a big theme, especially as we're hearing from the community. Of course we're flanked by lots of park space, the Boulder Creek, the Boulder Creek path. And so health and recreation is definitely an opportunity as well as arts and culture. So thinking about cultural performing arts, spaces, live work and maker spaces. So these 4 themes are coming up on. Really, what could we partner with a developer on? So my slide presentation start working? That's okay. The next one is just any questions on this process.

[39:06] Looks like you were able to ask them as we went. Are you doing this all in house, or are you contracting? We are contracting out. I will say the in-house is kind of quite the lift. So we have parks and recreation, transportation, community vitality, comprehensive planning and transport. Did I already say transportation utilities, utilities. So we have folks from all over the city on our core team to sort of vet and give advice and make sure policies are all included. That are key here, and that the design team we're contracting out with sort of works in lockstep with us. As they design through. And we have. Yes, so we did a national Rp process and vetted a team. Was it? At the end of 2023 last 2 years ago and then picked Rios in 2024. Yeah.

[40:07] And they are interdisciplinary. They're wonderful. They're architecture, landscape architecture, industrial design. Thank you. Okay, if there's no other questions on the planning analysis, I'll go to community engagement. We took basically from window one feedback and what I'm gonna present on is Window 2. And so that was more of a confirmed of what we heard. Window. One was sky high. Let's dream big. Let's think about the next phase. What do we want down here? And window 2. I'll give you a synopsis of but it's really just confirming with the public on what we heard from Window One. I won't go through every bullet point of this, but who we reached we really tried to do a huge sweep of cross section of boulder community it, you know, youth and families, older adults. Lgbtq plus. We really tried to get a diverse backgrounds of ethnicity, people with disabilities as well as a large swath of stakeholders. Really partnering on how to activate the space

[41:23] what they want to see in design, and then a lot of our boards. That we've done so far have been, of course, crab council and landmarks board. Once we get further into design, into concept. We'll start to go to many more board and Council meetings. But that will include things like The I just had a brain fart. Sorry. It'll include boards. Like the planning the planning team. Okay, so engagement window 2, we had a lot of feedback over over

[42:05] online survey. And that's about 1,500 comment responses coming in. We had a hundred person event at the library and 60 representatives from all different kinds of community organizations. That was over a span of 2 different workshops that we ran lots of responses from 5 different pop ups that we ran in different areas around the community. So a lot of them were at Cu, the different Rec center locations in the library. And then we have 2 wonderful community connectors working with us just to plug us in and integrate us into some of their communities, and other communities around Boulder, such as we did work closely with the Mapleton hoa! That is a manufactured housing community. So, plugging us into Spanish speaking, manufactured housing, and more.

[43:02] This is small. So I apologize. Let me zoom in a little bit more here. Creekside Social is one of the schemes that we showed the public. And basically this was a synthesis that our designers did of what we heard the public wanted to see. So the 1st scheme really was a nature based nature connected open flexible space. And what you see here in terms of the priorities of what people liked most about this scheme was upgrades to the bandshell. Farmers, market cultural loop, beer garden in Central Park food truck, plaza in the area, a Boulder beach connection down to the creek and generally to Creek Walk. Circulation was really popular specifically with this plan. So you can see some of the beautiful work that Rios is doing now. And then in what we call adventure loop. This was this one's wonderful, and, you know, kind of very different than the 1st scheme as well. Again, taking what we heard from the community on more of a programmed, intensely recreational space, so things that more center on standing waves and tubing down the creek

[44:19] as well as skate parks. So this whole thing is sort of tied together by a beautiful recreation loop. 2. That has sort of the 3 mile loop for people who want to get their run in. So with this, the priorities that came up were the standing wave again upgrades. Everybody's interested to upgrades of the bandshell. Everyone loves the farmers market. We get a lot of comments? How do we expand? How do we make them permanent? How do we make them year round? Library cafe was in this one that came up as a favorite as well as zip line, and again the beer garden and the Zip line is coming down from the Arboretum pass

[45:02] the Zip line. Yes. So along with the connection from the arbery, from see you down through the path. Folks wanted to see sort of a novel recreation component with the Zip line, and we talked about all different kinds of opportunities. Some people asked for an Alpine slide. Some people asked for zip line. So the public got really creative with us. Sorry, just real quick, is it? Really? It's 3 miles. If you do kind of do that I think it's just a slightly under. I'm not. I'm not quite sure on the total length of it, but it was trying to be sort of a recreational run. It's like 2.7. I'm just a little surprised to say, is that that large? But

[46:02] okay, so I kind of showed you the beautiful sketches and some of the priorities coming up from voting on the plan. I wanted to just highlight, too. When we asked the community from open, ended comments. You can see between the entire boulder community and our historically excluded groups. So we did a very similar exercise in window one on what is coming. Top of mind for this space, and you can see both again, similar to window one. They're very similar. But on social behavior and the want to feel safe in this area is definitely top of mind, for most people having family friendly spaces with youth is very important access to Boulder Creek community and social spaces. and then communing with nature and outdoors. I won't go through all of them, but I just want to highlight the colors. The colors give you a little bit more detail about what folks are talking about. So in on social behaviors, it's half purple, because people are talking about the social behaviors that they do want to see. The red is talking about operational wants and needs to clean up the space.

[47:13] So you can just see how some of these are breaking up, and what people are talking about in terms of a family friendly space. Some people are giving us feedback on wanting more designed spaces for family, friendly. So including nature play, or including some kind of playground. And then some people are talking about family friendly spaces, including more space activation youth programming, for instance. So this is just kind of a quick way, to digest what people are talking about specifically. So from that. That was pretty quick, brief summary on engagement. Do you all have any questions on that process? Is the window to of engagement. Is that your last community engagement? No, so we'll have 2 more windows engagement this year for design, midsummer for concept. And so we'll have a couple of alternatives we can choose from. And then when we go to schematic design, we'll go back out to the community. Once, we have sort of a final plan. Okay?

[48:14] And what's the timeframe? Well, well, we can get that next. That's up. It's great. It is midsummer for window 3. So that's concept. And then schematic is going to be probably the very end of the year. December, if not like January, February. So that's when you'll have like the final. Yeah, yeah. show me? I remember back in like 2011 or 2012. there was a whole like exhibit of the design concepts in the library like with the full scale, not scale, but, like, you know, giant images of what the possible ideas were. Are we thinking about doing something like that again. That was very cool. Do you remember where those were located on the north side? Okay, so we are going to be doing something similar. I love hearing about the graphics we were thinking about doing a very large scale model as well. To also kind of tie into public engagement. How people start moving things around.

[49:20] So you might mention the pop ups as well. So it's actual ways people can integrate. So we are looking to have a nature play pop up in Central Park as well for engage engagement. Window one, or excuse me. 3 so midsummer engagement window 3 will take place from June, and that pop up will go till September. We will have a whole host of climbing logs, Adirondack chairs, harvest tables for the farmers market spill out. And so a lot of ways to sort of temporarily activate Central Park. And then we'll be out there throwing events to get feedback on design.

[50:01] Remember the full like the color the designs with the colors on, like big poster boards were like. Really, they really brought it to life, and it like was exciting. That's like, I just remember that being I to this day. I remember, like the images that some of them actually became what we built, but like some of them worked. And it was like exciting to look at those ideas. Yeah, yeah. One of the reasons why I asked in the interviews. One that stood up frankly was for what you're just describing, the ability to communicate visually. And it turned up with this 12 foot board specific area beautiful graphics. So they've really got good communication skills. So we'll look at those same graphics that you're talking about. We are kind of tweaking the ideas between either a physical model? Or are there opportunities to take the community through? VR, and just kind of walk through the space? My question is, do these?

[51:01] Do most cities go through this level of community engagement? Or is this kind of our strategic plan? Or is this what like the Capra process requires like. How I I do think that boulder does take very great care in level engagement. I would say the steps and milestones are very similar between other cities. I think we go for a good reason, a good mile to make sure it's inclusive. And ever I haven't seen it done as well in other cities. It's interesting, though, isn't. It's worth mentioning this. There is a shift. And this is something we work we're doing with Metro, where we're moving away from sort of event based one office. You still need that. But as you refer to that public, you're actually activating the space before you put the design on the ground. So you're testing things out and getting like live feedback. Almost so rather than an event, it's almost like program occurring for engagement. And this kind of helps more

[52:05] frankly, sort of deeper level of sort of feedback engagement from the community and probably more buy in when you get to scissor cutting. It's not like just a surprise. So there's a few community starting to like get into this value based approach. And so it is a slightly deeper level. But to your point, very similar process. So 20 steps do you? You may have answered this already, but how are you? Are you emailing, how are you choosing? Who becomes engaged? Are you putting it into your newsletters mostly? Are you emailing specific groups you've mentioned? You'd gone up to the yes, I will say yes to all of it. So we put it out in our recreation. E-newsletter. We also put it on the citywide newsletter blast. We are marketing in person, in signs throughout civic area, in the library, in the centers and in local businesses. And then specifically for community organizations.

[53:12] We had sort of a starting list for phase one. And then it's grown word of mouth as well as all of kind of the press releases that we've had. Sometimes, you know, we're we're brought up in a daily camera interview that they would like to kind of interview on progress. And that's helped us quite a bit, too, for moving traffic through our online survey. Okay. I just feel like it'd be. It'd be good to get people who don't normally participate in that civic area to participate. But if you're not subscribing to the newsletter or visiting, and you're not seeing it. How do we get people who we want to be involved necessarily, and that's part of that is what you touched on with the historic. Oh, and you know what I didn't even mention. We have 2 community connectors assigned for civic area to support. But we are working with the community connectors, students as well. And so they've kind of gone out to their next

[54:13] works to help advertise for us. And in fact, we got Jeff and Paige for engagement window one. So you're gonna you know, you get 300 people turn up, bring us know. But we also timed it with one of our rolling strolls community. We're trying to figure out how we can sort. How can we leverage these things? Pages? Just if you want to see the complete list pages 22 and 23 in the memo. It's extensive. And so this is one of those I actually am appreciating. This is a dry run for council, because this project is so robust and complex what to include in the presentation versus what's in the memo? What's in that? But I just it's there. This team has done an incredible job doing exactly what you said, Jenny of, you know, if you're not in the civic area every day, or if you're not paying attention to our E blast. How are we reaching you as a community member, that we actually

[55:03] and the other thing, I'll notice people have turned off of the civic area there. There are perceptions. There are a lot of feelings, and the team has been so incredibly diligent and spent so much time and effort to talk to people who are. We don't typically talk to about this project. It's impressive. Thank you. Question. So I I think I saw in there that you, one of the populations that you specifically questions the unhoused population. Yes, let me go back to that. It's nice, and I'm just curious, like what what feedback was offered here. Like, I'm just curious how that was engaged. Yeah. So we sat down with our Bridge House partners, right? That have a program that actually have a group that work throughout the civic area to help us. Kind of steward and clean up. And we got some really great feedback on how to, you know, work with Pd options to have uninformed program, maybe potentially, by some of the Bridge House staff to connect with members of the unhoused, be more open to kind of checking on people making sure they're connected with resources. Now, of course, we already have our sales group that does a lot of that

[56:21] but just talking to the Bridge House folks to kind of understand a better level of comfort and inclusivity with that population. and I wanted to note that in your plans that you showed there are little parking areas, and and I don't mean to sharp on that. But you know accessible parking, I think is is good, but you have elderly people who may not have a handicap sticker or a mom with young kids who needs to visit the library. I just want to make sure that those people also have the opportunity to. You know. I mean that parking lot to me. If it wasn't there I wouldn't probably go from North Boulder, and transportation is really difficult for me to get from North Boulder, from gun barrel to the library. I have to transfer 2 buses in order to get to the library. So

[57:11] I drive, and if I had to park on the East Bookend I wouldn't go, so I just wanted to make that point. Can you point out where the parking is? Yeah. So there's a little key right here. So right in here, Rios has shown pick up, drop off, and then parking that's been resized so that we can have more space and connection down to the creek. This also doubles as an event on as well. We're also not showing any of the parking up north, going away. The 2,015 Park plan shows both parking lots going away completely. And then again, I'll just note, just because they're going away. We're not losing parking. They show a parking garage which you can see here on the east bookend both east and west bookends. They show parking garages. So right behind the library. And can I just add to these are site diagrams. And yes, if we get to emergent design, that's probably a nice space to have a bit more involved.

[58:11] So yes, it's around. I was. Gonna say, I totally agree with what Jenny's saying like coming out of the library like trying to carry books, kids, solar like, it's like, if you. I agree that if it was several blocks away. one like don't want to cross streets with kids and 2. It's just like carrying all that stuff. It's a nightmare. Sorry. Click on create. I'm sorry I have to just be the truck, Brock for the moment. And for those of you who didn't know truck, he would say. Let's get rid of the parking lot, and I feel like it's important for us to think about like we a city or we a suburb. And you know, I grew up in Brooklyn. 1 million libraries. None of them have front of us. not a ton of families, not a ton. Are you kidding? Okay, there's so many. Okay, so I think that like, it's, it's a, it's a mindset. And like May, maybe this is a moment we're gonna think about, what are we and decide. Is it super important for parking where every single place we go? Which is what we have now.

[59:16] I personally like Chuck, would like to see, you know, and this is part of the plan. I love it like better access for bikes. Better access, better transit and then I hope that we can also. And this is one of the parks, of course. But like, think about how we communicate? How do you use the bus more effectively? How? How might you take advantage of a parking deck at the east border with your family without being a tremendous hassle. How do you answer? No, there's there's no way monorail that goes from the parking garage to the library. What if there was a bus route that was circling the the park site.

[60:01] And that's on a on a loop from, you know, like Eastern or Western Arapahoe and north on 9.th And I mean, I'm not talking about having parking for the Park. I'm talking about having parking for the library, because that is a family friendly situation that I think a lot of it's a very. It needs to be accessible, and it needs to be equitable. People depend on that community resource. So, folks, I'm wondering in the interest of time, just a few takeaways one. This conversation is noted, and will be reflected in the comments, not only, you know, in the minutes, but that we pass along to City Council One. The civic Area Park plan is the guiding policy for this document, and it talks about carefully balancing boulders desire to be less car dependent and the needs to be accessible. And that's attention. We're gonna continue to have to balance and not solve tonight. And so in the interest of time, I'm I'm and we're not making parking decisions tonight to Mark's point, right? We're showing fulfilling the civic area park plan. If we cannot build parking elsewhere on the site, we will not be able to remove these parking lot, parking these or any of the service parking lot. So

[61:14] decisions aren't being made tonight about parking. We'll continue to follow the civic area park plan. Have to think about parking and having no net loss of spots and accessibility. And we'll reflect this conversation in our notes to council. Thank you. And is, is one of these concepts leading right now, is it? Actually they were pretty neck and neck. And so that's good segue for emerging design. Because we took all this information. And as we kind of launch into the year of design. We'll walk you through what that looks like for 2025. And while we're doing sort of design concepts, we just want to make a note that the end goal will be to to not only get to park improvements, but we're going to start a new park management model for kind of all of our parks across the system, but specifically civic area. We want to make sure that we're hitting

[62:17] placemaking. So that's kind of the function of design. Right? We're talking about design here today. But we want to also have a full working maintenance and operations plan as well as space activation plan and kind of dive into more social behavior. So that's the rules and regulations of the space. All of this will kind of be held in that government study that I told you about. So looking for a partner looking to create a body that helps us operate and maintain space. So we're not just kind of ribbon cutting and disappearing. We're trying to be out there kind of through the whole life cycle of this park. I mentioned the Park management plan. Because some of those colors you saw up above earlier, we're feeding into. Okay, what are the comments coming in from the public? And what buckets are they fitting into so a lot of comments coming in, of course, for the spatial design, and so talking about the Boulder Creek and farmers market expansion

[63:21] that you'll see in the physical elements of design what I mentioned in kind of wanting to feel safe. This is sort of our social behaviors, safety rules, and regulations that we'll be working on. We do have a separate group that you know. Currently again, we're always working with Sam's Pd, hhs, and more, and we'll be doing sort of a deeper dive in 2025 with that as well. And then space activation, lots of wants, desires and needs for programming, arts, festivities, all kinds of festivals and events. You name it to be out there in the city. People have a lot of ideas around the space. So but to the earlier question on, okay, what kind of plan is pulling ahead or not? They're they're both deciding to be a little bit equal. What we did instead is pull all the components from each plan. And now we're sort of tiling what is emerging as priority and kind of doing a mashup of

[64:18] both designs. So what you see in red are the top priorities of community and gathering spaces such as a beer garden expanded farmers, market food truck areas, Boulder beach, and that connection down to a creek walk. And then the Zip line. So everything in red is sort of what people elevated as most interested in. And then, you know, the black also were top priorities, too, that were elevated, but just not at top 5, and that was enhanced picnic areas, outdoor library pathways. Everybody is still very interested in how we connect up to see you and move through the space. So Zip line made the made, the cut. It did. And we're doing feasibility study on that right now.

[65:01] so that the design is like a manned pipeline like where there'd be somebody there operating it? No, it's a great great question. Feasibility. Study you just looking into what are the possibilities? And in truth, what people are saying is, it sounds like something elevated up in a canopy would be really interesting. So we'll have to look at that and then pencil out what that could be in terms of feasibility. Wise. You have somebody up there having people sign waivers. Sounds like a full time job. It's like the little one, and it's like then a national group like Start in Britain. Go away, do this so you could. It could be concession based, or you just say, no, it's not feasible, but we do want it. There's obviously an elevated need. Is that a walkway or such? So it's just that's how early this is in this phase, and that's all very cool. Thank you for this. It's really cool. just getting it's starting to get really exciting. So I touched on a little bit of this launching in summer. But along with that engagement window 3, we're gonna dive in with the Space Activation Collaboration series. So gonna go back to our community organizations. And we're gonna talk about, how do we program civic area? More

[66:15] intensely and effectively and together in a partnership? Hopefully, this kind of leads into creating a governance model. You can see the governance strategic group that's more of an internal to our design team. And so, just looking at what other parks are doing across the country, how they're creating a model through either a conservancy, some kind of nonprofit body, so that that work has been really interesting. I mentioned the operation and safety team. So again, still working with Sams, and then the other folks addressed here, we're starting to meet more regularly and see how we can sort of tackle some of these community concerns with the area. And then, just window 3. This is our connecting to nature engagement series that I already mentioned. That's taking place from June to September. So that will be launching this year. So we have a lot going on. Besides all the fun design world that will be in for all of 2025.

[67:13] Can you explain a little bit about? I think it was in the governance like talking about, hey. like, is that a way to fund it better and have more control over it? Or what's can you explain that? Yeah, it's a good question. So a governance model will really help us have sort of an operating body that will help oversee the day to day. It will also help generate funding for operations and space activation. And well is this for the whole civic center or the elements of the specific? It's a good question that we're looking into? Is it the whole civic center that we have scoped, including the arboretum? Or is the arboretum different? And the civic area is a different component, or those 2 different kind of partnerships. And so we're just diving into it right now. Yeah. And I was just thinking there, like, what if you think, within the limit of work. There's already

[68:11] 2 major partners, the library and farmers market. And then you've also got the tea house. And so there's there's almost natural partners seeing, how do we work together in the future for the next 25 years, for example, why don't we do programming together instead of doing it separately. So it's really saying, what is a partnership, and how high does it get in terms of formality from a government's perspective? Or is it more just coordinate them together. Right? So that's the part we're still. But would would it have a different funding source, the most of the models? It's interesting, like the the New York Central part. So, and the other case studies were looked at with our subconsultan. It's very rare. You can get capital improvement money through these governance bodies. It's often that still reliant upon the city with bonds or taxes, but they end up mostly providing money for like volunteers for the programming for the activation of the space, which is often frankly, where the departments don't have as much money, so they tend to fill that larger gap, and then it takes it out of parks and Rec.

[69:18] It stays in talks and Rec. It's more when you have it like it can be the nonprofit still could be a quasi body. So then it's you've got voting members of. you know the box department, the library from the market. The point is doing it this way. Cox is still managing. It is. How do you get that extra support? Mostly for the activation space? And can I? We have a great local example with the downtown boulder partnership. So they are the our partners and operating and activating the Pearl Street Mall parks and recreation operates that site as an urban park. We do the bulk of the operations they supplement with evening and weekend maintenance. They supplement with activations like bands on the bricks and the upcoming tulip and elf fairy festival, and they're funded by the business improvement

[70:05] district. And so there's all the questions you're asking are the questions that will be answered through this governance work. Who's a part of it? How is it funded? How our decision makes those? Those are things. Those are the same questions that the Governance group is looking at will be answered by the time there's a ribbon cutting along that same line as I'm looking at the plan versus like the floodplain. And you were talking about deconstructing some of the buildings. Would you consider? Are you thinking that those areas in orange could potentially be housing, for instance, on the east bookend. One of our key themes was community residential. And so, looking at what housing would be for the east bookend. Now, a lot of it would have to be kind of above 1st floor, some kind of retail or other development but it is possible. Yes.

[71:00] so that area that's like below the museum where all those little buildings are. And please tell me if I'm getting off topic. So I realize we're supposed to be talking about community engagement. So tell me just to stop. We are over the agenda time for this item. However, we have no community engagement, so you have 30 min, so we'll go believe you've spent 15 just to keep to keep us on track. Sorry? So all those all those little buildings down there below the Museum. Those are city owned. A couple of our city owned operations, and the it are city owned. The other buildings that are fully white and unlabeled are private property. And so it's a matter of do we develop just what city owned? Or is there a partnership potential partnership there. It's worth adding, isn't it? Just to emphasize what you said earlier? If you think about the 1 million.

[72:07] the Civic area project as a whole unlimited work could be 80 to 100 million. So we know the purpose of plan is to identify what comes forward with the 80 million, and then the rest of it. How do we leverage raise funds. public private partnerships to create a phase? 3. So they'll they'll have to be a phase 3. At some point. The concept plan will allow us to outline that and start to get the team together, to basically fill in the gap with 1 8, probably 80 to 100 in total if we had full funding. And this is on the plan. This is on the so we only have 18 million funded. And you'd said in the beginning that a portion of it comes from.

[73:01] So that's basically on. But that's the 18 million that we have so far. But yeah, we're collecting every. So we've got 80 million assigned for the project over a couple years, and so that's been approved. The the rest of the funding and the funding gap will become a phase? 3. About how to fund that. And can that be public private policy? And what can it be that would make that happen. And that's I had asked that question about the 18 million earlier. So that's concept. it's engagement concept design. And then this 1st portion of the construction. Okay, great. Thank you. Sometimes I need to hear it 3 times. Sorry. One question. Can you add atrium? What exactly is that used for right now? It's city staff. Climate initiatives. And is Pd, there's a police annex there. Yeah. Okay?

[74:02] And so that being a part of spoken, and also your questions about West campus. That building will also eventually get vacated, and those folks will move to West as well. So, looking at reprogramming that does it become one of the extension of the farmers market, and a permanent indoor outdoor market for them, or admin facilities for them. It is landmark, right? Is, it? Is historically designated. Yes. which doesn't mean it's not up for adaptive reuse or renovation it. Yeah, anything else. Hey? Thank you very much. Yeah. I really appreciate all of your questions just, I'll say, on behalf of the team we know this is an important project, and your questions reflect that they also help us figure out, how can we refine this for city council? Because they're very strict about how much time we spend with them. And so we need to be thoughtful about. Thank you for

[75:06] paying attention and giving the team so much helpful. Input, yeah. Sounds great. The Broadway bike path that goes through the arboretum. This, it seems like the boundary of this project is where that reaches the Conference center. Is that fair? Yes, and the bike path in total is a park facility, right? Or is it cu facility? It is parks and rec, yeah, of course. Yeah, I appreciate. It's funny. The questions you've been asked tonight, we're asking the very same questions. So it's actually nice affirmation. You know, we're sort of like asking the right questions. Yeah, thank you. Just really quick. Next steps. We kind of already covered it, but we will be going to council on the 17.th So thank you for the dry run. And then concept alternatives will launch this summer like I mentioned. So concept midsummer schematic design at the end of this year, and all of that is sort of moving towards what gets prioritized for that 18 million funding. The engagement window. I won't go through this list, but we're starting to now. Kind of program events. June 16th is our opening day. Pop up for engagement.

[76:21] July 14th will be another engagement connection, and a lot of those will be with Jeff and Paige. We'll have food truck pop ups. We'll have we'll be tying into things like the Boulder Creek fest so there's just gonna be a lot of opportunity all summer long. and then we'll be back to prab window 3 to just do an update on how all that engagement went probably around December, because it takes us a while to collate all the feedback we get. Sounds like Jeff and Page are, gonna be busy. Yes, yes, any other questions. Thank you so much. Thank you. Really appreciate that.

[77:02] Okay, except 2024 University financial group. Presume? That's Jackson. Sounds like a Jackson topic. Alright, and we have 30 min for this. I will try and make up some time. The intention behind this is really just to give a quick recap as far as where 2024 financial year closed out. I will caveat this that we did transition financial systems on January first.st So we are kind of living in 2 systems right now that there will be a little bit of variation that you see in these numbers. If you're joining Stacey, our senior budget analyst. We only have 8 slides for you, so I promise this will be the shortest presentation you've ever had from us. That being said, all of the 2025 budget development will start at the retreat with the new proud members and then continue April, May, June, and probably into July. So you'll get very used to us for the next 4 months, and for those of you not here. I hope you enjoy your time.

[78:12] You can always tune in and watch it on. This slide really just breaks down our spending by fund. This is actual spend. And it goes back to 2019 as our baseline year. As you're aware, we have the 5 different dedicated or quasi dedicated funds that we have broken about by fund. I'll highlight. The general fund is our most flexible, but what we get the least of and that has remained very consistent, and that's in the bottom dark blue. The light green is our point 2 5 cents sales tax. That's the dedicated sales tax that the department receives. This can be used for operating and capital. The darker green on top of that is the Recreation Activity fund, or also the raft predominantly driven by user fees. And then on top of that, we get into the Permanent Parks and Recreation Fund, which is our dedicated property tax, and then lottery fund dollars

[79:05] key takeaway of this slide is, we did spend a lot of money this year. I'm actually going to shift to the next slide to highlight. That because I think it is. it'll be 2 more slides this breaks out our budget by type. On the expense side. The light green is our personnel at the bottom, followed by our operating. And PE. What you can see is we did have a reduction in staff in both 20 and 2021, and we have slowly built back up, we have seen, increases to minimum wage living wage, and then just the pay rates for our standard staff. and then in the darker blue, you will see that our non personnel expenses all of the material supplies and contracts that we're purchasing has increased over time. So going from a 21.5 million dollar operating budget in 2019 to 28.4, this is actually less than inflation. But I just want to highlight our spending capacity isn't the same as it was in 2019, even though you see bigger numbers on the screen. What's the dark green?

[80:05] The dark green on the top is our cost allocation and internal transfers. So this is what we're paying for city attorney's office, city manager's office. Hr. Finance it basically the centralized services. I will say that having been here for the entire duration of it, the cost. Allocation methodology has changed over time. And basically, we haven't been paying enough to our internal services, which is why you do see an increase in 2024. That there's a cost for the services that we're paying. The finance department has tried ramping it up on a slower basis. We did see a rather substantial increase in 2024 this relates back to the increase in it contracts the number of staff with different licenses our fleet purchases. The rebuilding of our Hr. Finance staff as well.

[81:01] The lighter yellow is our capital projects. As you recall. In 2019 and 2020 we were building both the Reservoir main building, as well as Scott Carpenter Pool that dropped down in 2022 we had a turnover in planning staff. They hired, I believe, 13 new individuals. So you are seeing the slow ramp back up in Cip spending on this next slide. We have a few key takeaways. What I really want to highlight is for operating budget. We spent 96% of our overall budget. Best practice for budget is, you're spending 95 to 100 of your budget. I believe this is the most spend we have actually done and really just aligns with. We are budgeting a whole lot more accurately. And you will see this trend continue moving forward on the Cip side. We really only spend 34% of our budget with the majority of the spend was related back to the golf course project. I think there's a lot of reasons associated with this. It's the staff getting involved. It's the amount of public engagement that goes on. It's the timeline it takes for permitting design. So we are trying to be a little bit more realistic with our cip investments. As well as cip budgets. Just recognizing that we are struggling to spend this amount every single year.

[82:21] You won't see a change in how much we're budgeting over the life of your projects. But maybe splitting the budget up into multiple years. You just heard about Pacific area. Being a 4 year project, we will split that budget up over 4 years instead of having a lump sum in year one. I think that's really the highlight of this slide. I guess any questions on the overall department budget. First.st 1st of all, I just want to say that I appreciate in general, that you provide the not only year of year change, but reference back to 19. I think it's really helpful just out of curiosity, like, do we? Do? We track? And this, this may be bigger than budget. But like, do we track

[83:12] department staff compared to population of Boulder. How that's changed over time, because the population has grown quite substantially in the last 5 years. Correct, I know, for our department. We were at a peak of 144.2 5. In 2019 we went down to 121 ish in 2021 and this year we're at 152 and a half 154. So we have seen an increase. We're see this across the city. We just attended the citywide Budget Kickoff meeting last week. Citywide. There's about 130 additional fte compared to the low in 2020. What's the total staff? Number 1,500 or so? And I will say that as part of the long term financial strategy. The city is comparing itself to other like sized cities.

[84:05] The city as a whole offers a lot more services and departments than most cities of our size do open space, mountain parks, housing and human services just the size and breadth of parks and recreation. So you do have to be mindful that Boulder tends to provide a lot more services. Other communities that we benchmark ourselves to. I'll add a few data points, though. One and we've not compared to see where it's changed. But our head count is, I think, within 5 what it was in 2,005 for parks and recreation, not as a city. And so, while the number is larger than the makeup has shifted, and so I know we have fewer staff directly providing recreation. We have added staff and maintenance. As we've developed Belmont City Park and other sites, we have made more standard lifeguard positions. So full time equivalent is similar to what it was in 2,004. But it's different. It's it's drastically different. When you look at it. Per capita number. We are more than cities around the country. We are very similar to Colorado per capita. So the level of service we provide for parks and recreation is similar to what other cities that we benchmark ourselves with in Colorado, such as Fort Collins, Westminster, South Suburban.

[85:19] So on a per capita basis, we're we're very similar to other cities in Colorado. Thanks. Heather. Yep. Any other questions. Okay, we're going to put it to the Recreation Activity Fund. This is our quasi enterprise fund, where all of our recreation services are charged. Can I ask one more question? Just real quick. Is that 1,500 include police? Yes, it is police, fire, open space utilities. It's all standard benefited positions. Okay? And so anyone who has 2030, or 40 h position that is ongoing and gets benefits. That's what that number represents. It does not include the non standard employees that we hire, they are not. They are not tracked in that same fashion

[86:03] like an hourly lifeguard. and we have about a hundred 80,000 h worked a year across those 600 or so employees. 90 ft. Yes, it's ballpark, 90 ft. Alright. We will bring some of the fte comparisons back with budget. So thank you. This is the nice little precursor as well. This slide really goes over the Recreation Activity Fund Recreation Activity Fund is called the Raf. It's our Quasi Enterprise Fund. It's where user fees go for providing our services. And then all of the direct expenses are charged there as well. The green line indicates the revenue that's been generated. The blue line indicates the expense by year, and then the gray line at the bottom is the amount that we've received from the general fund in our annual subsidy. You can see that that amount has remained relatively unchanged at about 1.6 million a year. Despite our expenses increasing

[87:03] in 2021, and 2022, we did receive one time funding through Arpa, and that revenue is denoted in a darker green just to call out that this was really one time funding that we benefited from Federal government, passed through to the city, and the city chose to invest in recreation programs to ensure that people had a safe spot to recreate. In 2024, we did a both an ongoing and a conditional one time subsidy that supported the community benefit programs and the Recreation Activity Fund. This really pays for what the General Fund subsidy cannot fully support. So it's our financial aid program, our expand program and the discounts that we give to youth and seniors, you will see that our revenue was significantly higher, and part of this is we needed to increase the reserves as a dollar amount to align with the percentage. As we shifted more programs into the Recreation activity Fund, we had shifted the expenses for the sports program used to be on the point 2 5 cents sales tax fund into the Recreation Activity Fund, just to make sure that the revenues and expenses for providing sports fields are an apples to apples. Comparison

[88:16] you will see 2025 budget is generally slightly more on expense side and less on revenue side. We expect that to hold true. We are continuing to see increases in expenses, and then, on the revenue side, we are starting to observe some plateauing of revenues. and we aren't counting on the one time funding that is denoted in the dark green. There the increase in recreation to refund. That is what people pay to use the recreation centers. It's both the price people are paying as well as the volume. Recreation as a whole is a volume based business. So so did you find? We increased when we increased the recreation fees last year. That was for 25. Correct. The revenue projections do include the fee, increase. But we are observing it at a slower pace. Okay.

[89:15] but that really goes into your next question. We do track all of these different metrics. Once again, we're going back to 2019 as our baseline year. I'm very hopeful that we can exit 2019 and have a 3 year look back, moving forward on the right hand side of the chart. We do compare both 19 to 24, and then also 23 to 24 for recreation Activity Fund earned revenue. So this is the user fees that you mentioned, Jenny. We did see a 16% year over year growth. I will say that there weren't substantial increases from 23 to 24. This is predominantly driven by volume, and you see this volume across the Visitation of other aspects. Recreation centers. Have increased visitation 20 plus percent

[90:01] from 23 through 24. We're still slightly behind 2019 visitation at this point we did see that Q. 4. Visitation was at or above 2019 Q. 4. Visitation so I think that we have played catch up and we're very hopeful that 2025 we do. Just observe that, continued trend back to the baseline or continued growth outdoor pools. Visitation. I wouldn't really compare the 19 to 24 numbers Scott Carpenter Pool was closed for construction back in the summer of 2019 but to have 10% growth year over year is phenomenal. So just want to highlight that the reservoir visitation has been fairly slow compared to the other growth areas. So this is part of the reason that you will hear more about the reservoir management plan and what we're doing to invest in that space with the restaurant space and the partners out there and then. I think all of you are aware that golf has just gone crazy since the pandemic started. This was

[91:07] a legacy of a golf course. Director. Just 46% growth over 5 years is phenomenal. But to see that sustained during the middle of the construction of that clubhouse. Is pretty amazing. So Scott has some exciting news to share about the golf course. Yeah, absolutely record. By the way, I liked golf before the pandemic. We're really excited. We'll have a new director of golf starting with us later this later. Here in April. David Dimartino comes with great experience in the municipal golf courses and tons of energy and passion, so he'll be starting with us here in mid April. I think my team very exciting. The key takeaway on this slide is, we are just seeing growth across the board. We're back to 2019 levels, with the exception of the rec centers. And then we have just had almost double digit growth across the board for the key metrics and the

[92:12] this is one more fun way of looking at it. This is the earned revenue. I you can see. The blue line was 2019 numbers. The dotted orange line was the bottom of 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, and the red line is where we're at. We do see just very consistent trends year over year with our revenue collection. Registration and keep fitness starts in January. We do have incredible usage over the summer months, and then oftentimes we have a sale in November, December the sale that we had this year was phenomenal, and we saw just a significant increase in total number of users as well as earned revenue. Sure. So this is just another way to look at it. We did come in over budget on the revenue side. You will see that our General Fund subsidy has remained relatively flat throughout all of these years.

[93:07] And then there was the 3.3 million dollars of transfers from the point 2 5 cent sales tax fund to support those community benefit programs that I touched about earlier. Those that are free. Key takeaway here is, I think, that we do have a new normal and stabilize revenue projections within the graph. We're very excited to continue to cleanse the programming. And you'll hear more about that as we get into budget development. I purposely kept this only focused on 2024 tonight. We are in the middle of 2025. We'll provide quarterly updates. We're not going to board the 3 of you exiting the board with 2026 budget development tonight. But we will go over our sources and uses at the retreat and then dive right into budget development, and that will parallel the long term financial strategy.

[94:00] although never for budget. So how do you gauge just the financial help. Generally speaking, of the Department, I mean, I've been here for 4 years like we've been through the pandemic. how do you like. It seems like we're doing well. You know, revenues exceeding expenses or aligned. Seems like we're spending more money in areas that we weren't, you know in the pandemic. But I'd love your just your overall thoughts on, like where we are now and where we're going like financial health. It's interesting. Looking back at, probably used to do the financial health and outlook for each of the individual funds. I'd say collectively, we're still in a fiscally constrained environment and cautiously optimistic. I think that as a department we benefit from so many different funding sources which puts us and the ability to stable things a little bit more than a department that's dedicated off of one fund. Obviously, there's some uncertainty with our expenses, just with Federal news tariffs cost escalation that continues to happen. We're seeing that predominantly on the cip side of things. We're being told to factor intense 20% price increases for

[95:16] cost escalation. There. There's been pending legislation at the state level that changes property tax that there's obviously concerns with that citywide. We are seeing flattening to slightly decline that sales tax that there's concerns there. So I don't want to say it's all rosy, and it's going to be an easy budget year. I think what we do have is a very strong story, that we spend our dollars responsibly, that there are going to a higher and greater need that supports priorities that this community has. And I think that the long term financial strategy will really further the work of areas that we're underfunded. Thanks. So it was awesome. I thought that was perfect. I would love to add just one caveat. Because I you know, I see our we, we get our recreation team does an incredible job with monthly reporting on visitation and what's you know? Missing? Because this is a financial report. But you all have seen, I mean financial aid and access. And the way we are serving the community is on this incredible upward trajectory. And I'm having flashbacks, Bernie, to your 1st year, and like.

[96:19] what are we doing to get people back? And these numbers are scary, right? We are in a different place today. And so you know, I see the revenue. And I'm like, yes, we're gonna be able to add some services this year, and it's so exciting. And then the reality check is is 2 things that I just I wanna double click on one of them, Jackson said. Cost escalation is outpacing our revenue growth. Our our fee increases are problematic because public recreation is supposed to be accessible, and we don't want to be a private recreation department. So I am concerned about cost escalation. What it means for the cost of services without additional subsidy. The other concern is just the incredible cost of our infrastructure and taking care of it. We are seeing initial costing on Recreation Center maintenance. You are seeing costing on our park projects.

[97:02] and there is not enough money to take care of what we have. And so, thank goodness, I mean, the optimistic part is that we are having the long term financial strategy conversation. This is an out, loud conversation we're having with the community around. What do you? What do you want? And are you willing to pay for that? Because right now the 2 do not align. During the 2026 budget development strategy and the long term financial strategy. Will we talk about the potential bond measures great. This chart on the right goes through 2023. But it shows our financial aid. number of participants, not total visitations. Total visitations now account for over 15%. So just huge kudos there and it's amazing seeing the growth of the program. And that's with no additional funding just to be clear, right? So that so those we're absorbing those costs. And it's part of the fee increases. It's part of we're also seeing a significant growth in older adult utilization, which is excellent. We want our community staying healthy so they can age in place. They can be independent. Those visits are highly subsidized. We've had no increase in funding.

[98:11] I was at South Pole directly there were a lot of older neighbors there. Do we have any data about the 2,008 economic downturn and the impact that it had on this department. Yep, obviously it was in 3 financial systems ago. I think the highlight that came out of that was the city manager's office commissioned a blue Ribbon commission group that really looked at the sustainable funding of recreation. It had a slightly better terminology than that. I want to say we have done every single recommendation from that plan, with the exception of one but that is something that we regularly revisit and share with our Finance office. So I I think that there was a lot of lessons learned at that time. And a lot of the key recommendations really carried forward

[99:04] in Council's Memo for Thursday night. There is a summary of those Blue Ribbon Commission reports. They are really good analysis on both the city's revenues and our over reliance on sales tax over reliance on dedicated funding sources. There's also a list on the expenditure side. What do we need to do to make sure we're spending money really well, and there's a line by line list of what's been implemented, what's in progress. And it's it's it's a good read. We can link it in your April packet as part of background. If you're I find Budget the most wonderful time of year. It's it's a big joke in our department. But this is I mean I. I am a firm believer that budgets are where you put your money where your mouth is, and do you? You say you want to be accessible? And as you're increasing recreation fees, what are you doing to make sure that they're not a financial barrier. What are you doing? Our National Association has put out the goal that 63% of kids are participating in youth sports by 2030. This is what? The best. The countries in the world that have the best youth sports programs. They make it accessible. They make it

[100:05] at the local level. And that's something I'm hoping, you know, as part of our community access framework for those other projects. But it requires money. I'm off topic now. So would polling like a lot of the neighboring cities have. The sports programs run by the city themselves is to buy 3rd party providers like for basketball, soccer and stuff like that. So to would that be something that would be like a loss for you like? Does it cover the its own costs and require a subsidy to run those type of programs. Yeah, it just depends on how you do it. for a lot of communities. They they don't run them at a loss. They are not subsidized, and they are at market rates and can get full cost recovery. And it just depends.

[101:02] Yeah, yeah, I I know that's not an answer, but it it really depends. I mean, there are places in this State and in this country where you can show up with your 3 year old, and pay 20 bucks and get a T-shirt and shin guards, and they run around and play soccer, for you know, for 8 to 10 weeks. There's other places where you're gonna pay $150 for that service, because that's the market rate. Yeah. And it's it's a community choice. And it's a budget. It's a financial choice. I'd also say that there's opportunities we have as a department to influence. How 3rd parties provide these services. Could we subsidize field access for rentals to encourage more youth participation? That is a budget choice to make but it's not always the Department's responsibility to provide the programming if we can do it in a different way. But I think your point is spot on. How do we make it affordable for youth, for everybody like

[102:02] not just subsidies. But I mean, what's interesting is when you pull the community. If I look at the last 2 to statistically valid surveys. They think the taxes should port should support 50% or more of the cost of access for everybody in the community. And and we're not, I mean our since 2014 we've incrementally been getting to a place where adults pay full cost recovery so that we can provide that subsidy for the the priority populations. The community has said, people with disabilities, older adults, young people, and people who benefit from financial aid. But now, if you want to send your kid to Soccer Camp for a half day for the summer. It costs $4,000 a regular family without that's not fair. you know. I mean she's not mean volleyball for 5 months shouldn't cost somebody $5,000, and that's what it costs for everybody else. So I just those are the impacts of the you know, we are trying to

[103:00] carefully in these long term, financial strategy conversations. Talk about the ramifications of the policy choices that Boulder has made over the decades. So as we make a really great choice to increase our minimum wage, that is a great choice. We want to increase the minimum wage in boulder. It's not funded for recreation. So we have to increase fees. We've implemented a living wage, excellent choice for our community, unfunded mandate for recreation. We have to pay for it through increasing fees. So all of those same policy choices have have led us to a place where, yeah, our fees continue to increase if we're going to provide any services, and and they do create barriers, it's a concern. It's a concern. But the the privatization of youth sport thing I do want to call out. The cost of competitive sports is related. But and it's different. There's a a nationwide concern you can. There's a ton of research from the Aspen Institute and our own. Our own association underpas put out a great framework for you supports that I know our team is looking at to see. How do we support that? 63 by 30 goal?

[104:01] I think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that it just became financial burden for cities to run a lot of those programs. And so I ended up going private. I mean, even when I was little soccer programs were all. They're all private, but like right now, if I go onto the Recreation Guide for for our Recreation guide for spring, there's no mention of soccer at all, but private. It's all the private. But lacrosse is in there, and there's some other things in there. But soccer is not there in the Recreation guide. And then if you go onto the website like, then you put in like youth soccer boulder and you go through and you click like the program you want under youth, you you still end up with the adult soccer page. And there's like some reference. But I I knew it was bis, so I could go there and see it. But it's still just hard to find. That's part of the partners project that Brian gave. I think in February you got that work? One of the map? The initiatives in the 22 plan is, how does Bpr serve as more of a connecting place and Clearinghouse? We don't have to provide everything for everybody. But how do we help people find those services? Yeah.

[105:01] And gymnastics looks great and dance looks great and all that looks great. But there's a lot of the ones that there's consulting or there's contracting, there's they're missing. So just, I'm just curious about the increase in number of seniors using the facilities is that due to the increase in number of seniors in our community. Or and the fact that they're subsidized is that that's not need based. It's just age per the agent. And are they ever asked like. do you need the subsidy and want it? Or would you con contribute, you know, like round up when you're at the grocery store like, would you consider just paying the normal fee and knowing that that's going to youth programming, or like. I just can't imagine that there's the number of seniors who are taking advantage of that like an opt in. Yeah, like.

[106:01] I I don't know. I'm just guessing they could afford it, and I don't know if we ask them if they would say, Don't ask, because it's part one. It's been the policy of the city for as long as I've worked here so for decades that that there's a senior discount, it's also been affirmed in every planning process. We've had that seniors are priority population, that that we want to support their healthy aging. And so that would be a policy question to be raised during the next planning process, or as part of a financial strategy. Just even the question when they're signing up like. Do you wanna round up? Do you? Wanna do you want? You know, if you don't need this discount. it would support such and such program, voluntary for free. which to a lot of I just have to guess. It's not going to be a big burden to a lot of the seniors. I just want to say I love your graphs, and I promise we'll get rid of 2,019 to quit talking about 2019 as our baseline year.

[107:09] We're close sorry talk to the privatization of recreation. Well, we you know we have this list of 15 pro partners. Do we know, and we may not know. But do we know, like how many of these are nonprofits versus nonprofit organizations for the people that we partner with to provide. So yeah, we have partners for flag football, for ultimate, for senior softball tennis like like mountain biking are. Those are those nonprofits that we're I was. Gonna say, I think every every group is a little bit different. And it really depends on the organization. But nonprofit doesn't mean market rate or not chart right? Like. So I think your question is, is, it goes back to what Jackson was sharing earlier is, how do we incent these groups to align with community values around access and serving? And that's what the community access framework project is working on. There's really great models. The one I keep touting is out of the city of La and County of La. They have created a tier where?

[108:09] You know, if if your program is recreational and the more people it's it's accessing and the more financial aid you are providing. The lower your fees are. And so it's incenting groups to align with those values without us having to do anything. And so these contracts come up for renewal next February. They're all at different stages of renewal. What's the Army General? I was. Gonna say that my impression from having worked with the Soccer clubs here in boulder is that like, bis is now the recreational side, and then East United is kind of growing, and I'll be in, I guess. No, yeah, I'll be in is trying to grow in the competitive space. And my impression is they've not really interested in the record. They say very little resources to it. If they don't feel the team in an age group. It's fine. It's just like we did what we could. And it just doesn't seem like the

[109:15] access for everybody is their priority. They're trying to get winning national teams. So very excited about the community access framework project. Yeah, I think it would be hard to reach that goals of the 60% with organizations that without changes to our structure, right like. If if your fees, I I have no idea what it might look like. But if for a competitive team that is serving people, I mean, it's similar to what? Unfortunately, you know. Unfortunately, we have had to make changes at the reservoir around rowing that folks have heard about. That serves a very small group of people. It's a very elite activity, and we are not subsidizing it at all. and and there's ways to expand that to use sports appropriately

[110:08] meaning in the scholarship. They fit the team like a full cost $4,000, and they give you they're like, Oh, we have scholarship at 50, right? Well, and the other thing we know, I mean, I just know from my own personal experience it it's not just financial barriers. What are organizations doing to address transportation barriers to address language barriers? And so access is about more than just waving a fee or discounting it and discounting it up. Yep again. We're real. I I am very click over here as part of this project, and I see her smiling. This team is doing really great work, and I'm not sure when it's coming to you all. I think it's sometime this summer. Maybe. It's they're doing really good work. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll have more information for the 2 of you in April.

[111:03] It's different. Great. Okay? that is it from matters from the department. So now we'll move on to matters from the board. Got a couple of items here. So the 1st is on proud recruitment, orientation and departing members. I. When is this the portion of the meeting where we like? I think we're just going to give updates on recruitment. I want to appreciate Rosa for updating your packet. Friday, after council had made their selections. I also want to flag. I meant to do it earlier when I actually had the opportunity to speak. But this is Rosa's last meeting with you all, and supporting the prep. Rosa has taken a different role with the city and the community vitality department and carissa, who's been our backup. We always try and make sure we have been strength in the department. She will be supporting prep and through the transition. So for you all, you'll keep using that Pratman email address. Stay tuned for additional staffing updates. But just really appreciate that. Rosa put out a packet Wednesday and updated it Friday, so that you all have the information on the new board members and his supporting and actually was offered this position in middle of March, and asked if she could not take it until middle of April, so that she could support us in this transition phase with the board.

[112:14] really appreciate Rosa's support in that way. You've been so great. Thank you. So I'll just start off with the prime recruitment part. So let me just go to page 7 here. So just to no, this is in the packet, but we've got 5 new members coming on. And Jenny and Bernie are staying, which means the rest of us are being jettisoned. But you know, just looking at the list of people coming on. I know some of these people personally, and just really excited about the future of this board. I just have some really great people coming on. One of my colleagues, Michael Shriner. is gonna be joining the board, and he's gonna be doing a full 5 year. So he's really great. I know Robert Kaplan, Yvonne Castillo. So I think we're gonna have a really great

[113:10] board and you guys are. Gonna have your hands full. Getting them up speed, but it'll be fun. There's apparently an orientation for them. On Saturday, April 5, th or on Wednesday, April 16, th from 6 to 9 or 9 to 12 and then you guys will do your onboarding as part of the prep. Retreat on the 14.th Right? Okay, so that's really awesome. The get back to this agenda. The other thing is you know, just to recognize departing members. I mean, we've got. You know me. Sunny? Yeah, Eric's not here, but he's parting as well. Wayland parted some time ago.

[114:02] But so yeah, it I just wanted to, you know. Take some time to just recognize you guys, and if anybody has anything they want to say before they leave. I know I do. But I want to go last, because I'm the least important. But yeah, do you have anything you want to say? Now is your time start over here. I did write out some remarks because I didn't want to forget anything, and I didn't want to ramble on which I can do. And I didn't wanna get emotional, which I do sometimes and unexpectedly but I just wanna you know. take a moment to express my deepest gratitude to the dedicated employees of boulder parks and Rec. Your commitment to this community is truly remarkable. From maintaining our parks and open spaces and creating programs that bring people together.

[115:04] You've made Boulder a more vibrant, inclusive, and healthy place for all your hard work does not go unnoticed, and I want to personally thank each of you for your role in shaping the city's green spaces and recreational opportunities serving on this board has been an incredible journey. I've learned so much. not just about policies and logistics that go into maintaining our parks. But about the heart and passion that drive this work. I've seen firsthand how these spaces are more than just landed facilities. They are places of connection, healing and joy. whether it's families gathering at playgrounds, individuals finding solace in nature or community members coming together for events, the impact of your work extends far beyond what can be measured. And you went emotionally. I just don't get a chance to speak from my heart much. Usually it's like trying to fit in a question and figure out what's going on in real time. So it's nice to really reflect and think about how this really has affected me a lot. You know. I came in. I came in with some skepticism and a lot of questions, and and you know, as I said, it's just

[116:17] you've shown me. That you are just an incredibly dedicated, intelligent, hard working group of people who have a lot of constraints and a lot of people to serve, and it's tricky. But as I step away from this role, I would like to offer just a few thoughts. First, st let's continue to prioritize accessibility, inclusivity. Our parks and programs should serve all members of our community regardless of ability, background, or income. Second, let's remain steadfast in our stewardship of these natural spaces, balancing recreation and conservation, so that future generations can experience the same beauty and benefits we enjoy today. And 3, rd let's not underestimate the value of small improvements. It's awesome to see these big plans.

[117:06] but I would love to see thought going to just small improvements that can make big differences like comfortable seating that invites people to pause, reflect, take in the view, and enjoy meaningful conversations that can have a profound impact on how people engage with and grow to value these spaces. 4, th I encourage the addition of food and drink options in key park areas. Not only would this ease the logistical challenge of providing nourishment in between activities that many community community members face. But it could also provide sustainable income streams to support the parks and rec budget. 5, th I encourage actively seeking and fostering public private partnerships to enhance sustainability and impact of our parks and programs. And lastly, I strongly advocate for reimagining and renaming the South Boulder Recreation Center, Bailey, Lake, Harlow, Plattes Park Area, with its proximity to multiple schools, densely populated neighborhoods. Public transportation and awe-inspiring natural beauty. This site is primed to be transformed into a dynamic multi-use hub, fully realizing its potential as the heart of activity, arts, and culture in South Boulder.

[118:20] That is sort of what I can encapsulate. I've I've learned in the last 3 years, and I I truly will miss you guys. And I feel like. you know, very privileged to to know you all now know how to get in touch with you all. Now know how this whole system works, and I think you're probably gonna see more of me now that I'm on the outside and can really just use my own voice personally to advocate for what I see you know, is is needed, and I will say I took a personal field trip to tunnel tops. Park at the Presidio this past week and it just reinforced all of these, you know, things that, like a few big, plastic.

[119:03] hard, plastic lounge chairs spread out on the lawn can do wonders for just creating an environment where people want to sit and enjoy the view and talk and eat and and you know, I just feel like little things like that is what I would love to see more of it so, and and please do reach out to me too, like I I feel like you know, as a as a community connector, or somebody who can just offer insight. I'd be really happy to be called upon. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that that's awesome. Yeah. I didn't write anything but I guess I would just like to echo a lot of what Sunny said about meeting everybody who's behind the scenes working to make parks and rec

[120:02] special than what it is here in Boulder. And there are amazing, very talented, hardworking people in the department that I've come to know over the past 2 years, and I'm amazed at Jackson's brain, and how many facts and figures he can store up there. and just thank you all for the opportunity to serve this morning. Yeah, I wrote some things down the personal. Sorry I stopped you earlier, Jenny. I'm looking forward. We'll have more snaps. It'll be fun. I looked it up Rosa. Thank you for everything you've done for us for last years of my existence. But before that as well. You've got this on track. You've you've been steadfast and getting us all the information we need for these meetings, which is a lot of information. So thank you so much for your hard work and dedication. We'll miss you. And I. Congratulations on the on the new job. Sounds like a needed change.

[121:20] or at least a exciting change. Eric's not here tonight, but just for the record I thought I would mention that I'm very sorry to see Eric leaving. I enjoy his his passion and the and the fact that he did step up for this one year commitment. We all know that one year is nothing in in government time, so the fact that he took the took the job and and was here every month. And I can imagine that he's probably feeling disappointed. But nevertheless, I appreciate the chance to work with him. And to to to receive his perspective on the stage. which is different from my own. But that's very valuable. Anna, you

[122:06] You got those folks on recreation in a way that was very helpful. And you you also kept us focused on equity. And I think that you know we talk a lot about equity in this room and in this city, and we have a harder time putting it into practice, and it is harder to put into practice, and I appreciate that you were one of, if not the leading voice on this body who really made sure that we're always thinking about it. And that's something that I hope we will. Well, something I will do my best to carry forward. And I think it's, and I also hope that more voices speaking to that in the next iteration of the prep. And I know that you, your intention is to find ways to support recreation outside of this body, and I think that our committee will be well served by your efforts in that. So thank you for that. And I did just also want to mention that I appreciate that you brought your family to these meetings. I thought it was neat that we had the from the next room about who who this is for, and and what we're why we're here. So thank you for involving more than just yourself, and thank you to your sons for their service.

[123:18] Sonny, sure, I'll see around the neighborhood. you and I took a walk, and I think it was in the spring. And it was really helpful to me to just kind of like see things through your eyes, even though we do live just down the street from each other, like I. I see these parts differently than you do, and I really I love your perspective. And I love that. You know your idea about what we can do, what we can do to activate space better and what we can do to make our parts more more about community and less about individual recreation, I think in boulder there's temptation for this to see an adult playground all the time. Everyone's off in a little bubble doing their own thing, and that's filters to community and society at large.

[124:07] And I'm glad that you have a different perspective, and I'm glad you share that with us here over the last 3 years that you've served I know you as you just said, you have plans to serve the city beyond Crab and I'm sure that we'll be talking extensively about supple Rec and Arlo plots. And yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Look forward to continuing to work with you. Elliot. Thank you for your steadfast leadership last year, and before that you bring a certain gravitas and gravity to these to these proceedings. I appreciate it. As Jenny and I become senior members of the app, we'll have to try to emulate your your focus on on process and on I don't say to core of it all we'll say on the agenda, which is, as we all know, we'd like to. So so thank you for doing that for us.

[125:09] I admire the fact that you were so inspired by your time here in city government that you stepped up and have run for and been elected to stable office. That's a huge commitment, and if we're all here because we love the city of Boulder to me that shows the State of Colorado so much, sir, so I wish you the best of luck in your new office, and I'm sure we'll see you around in April, too, and I don't hope that you'll make a lot of time for for parks matters. It's really consumed by larger things. But nevertheless, we'll always welcome your. Input so thank you. Yeah, thank you for everything. Thank you very much. And I appreciate that. Yeah. thanks for taking the time to make those notes about everybody. That means a lot.

[126:06] 3 of you, 4 of you 4. so I'm super excited to keep working with you in other capacity. well, I did write down some notes, but it's just like scribbled down. It's not going to be as significant or thoughtful as anybody's remarks, but I just wanted to say a couple of things. One is just thank you. So it has been such a privilege to serve on this board. I remember, you know, having that initial conversation with Jason Unger when he was on the board like, Hey, how do you like this board seems kind of cool. And he was like, Yeah, it's great you should join. And then there I was getting selected to join, and then, man, we were just throwing the fire right away, like we had this crazy situation at the reservoir. We were in the middle of the pandemic, and it was a real privilege to

[127:01] kind of go through that journey with this department and to see how everybody in this room has really like stood up to the challenge and gotten us through some pretty challenging times. And we're in a really good place right now. That's amazing. And I wanna thank I wanna echo Sunny's comments. You know about just how hardworking and intelligent you all are. I mean. Just your you remind me about like just what it's what we should be all striving for as organizations to have the right people on the bus trying to solve big problems. And like, I'm just so grateful that our city has gotten you to join its ranks and that you're still here, and that you're working hard every day to be great stewards of not only taxpayer dollars, but also just our public health. And that's amazing. And so I'm just so impressed by that. And then, Allie, I mean, I think you're the the best director of any department in the city. And I'm not the only one in the city that shares that view.

[128:05] I've just been so incredibly impressed by your leadership the past several years, and I know you know, long before I got here, but just unbelievable to work with you, and I really appreciate all your your guidance and your friendship. While I was on this board, and I hope that continues after I step step down, and to all of you I mean, you've all been incredible board members. Each of you is your own superpower in a way like Sonny I just you are so your passion for South Boulder and just families in general. We're kind of in similar positions as parents, you know, living in South Boulder. And I just I really appreciate your advocacy in those areas. And I'm really glad that you're going to be kind of changing your position, you know, not on the board, but like in the community. But you're going to be advocating for the same thing. I'm really excited about that and let me know how I can be helpful with that. Because I share a lot of your opinions and goals and all that. Jenny.

[129:06] you are so unbelievably incisive and thoughtful with your questions like, whenever there's a There, we're talk talking about a topic. You have this like policy lens on those topics. That I think, is really incredible. And I'm really impressed every time you you ask questions and engage on a topic. You you clearly do your homework, and you think about it. And I'm I'm excited to see what you do in leadership hopefully on this board, but also just generally in the city. So it's been an honor to serve with you. Bernie, you bring a journalist's eye to everything you ask really good questions. You cut the Bs. Sorry. You you are really good at just getting down to the nuts and bolts. and the meat of an issue. And I really appreciate how thoughtful you are with with your engagement on topics, but you've been such a a kind and genuinely just

[130:08] You're just a genuine person, and you you're just a very friendly person, and I know that you have this incredibly a big heart, and you want the city services to be the best they can be. And I just love that lens on everything you know you want this, you want our services to be serving the people of Boulder just better than they are. And you ask your questions in a very thoughtful and polite way, and we know that you're trying to push the conversation in a in a position of or a direction of equity. So I really appreciate that about you, and I'm excited that you're going to be hopefully in leadership on this board, because I think you're going to be tremendous, and you have been a great partner for me as vice chair in our agenda, setting meetings, and just in these meetings in general. It's great having you here, and so I'm excited for the next chapter for you. Thank you. Anna.

[131:02] You are. Your passion for equity and youth are unbelievable, like your your questions whenever you open your mouth and are about to ask a question on something I'm like. I'm listening very, very intently, because I know that it's coming from a very authentic place for you. And I'm just so. I'm sad that you're leaving the board. But I'm excited that you're going to continue that advocacy in another place in another position. And I know that the youth of Boulder will benefit from that. And I I do wanna also echo what Bernie said about bringing your kids to the meeting. I really love that. I absolutely love that as someone who is constantly trying to juggle like, what do I do with my kids with stuff and someone who brought his kids to a bunch of campaign events? You know I I can. I can share that perspective. And I really admire that. So. But so thank you for your service, and thanks for being on the board with me. That's critical.

[132:02] I wanted to also recognize just a couple of things we've we've been through as a board. I mean, this predates many of you, but you know I've been to 3 different ribbon cuttings. You know, one of the 1st things I did was we had a ribbon cutting at the reservoir for that awesome new facility. And I hope that that's fully realized in the coming years. Because I it's an incredible place. You know we had that crazy situation with the neighbors that thankfully subsided. The court plan, I mean, just thinking about like a couple of years ago. We all we heard about was the lack courts in the city. and you know, from certain groups, very loud, consistent, and because of their advocacy, but also because of just the diligence of staff. We are in a place where we've got this amazing plan in place to meet the demand.

[133:00] And I'm excited about the partnership with Cu in their athletic department to help realize that. And I'm hoping that Cu can continue to work with the city on projects. And please let me know how I can be helpful with that in the future. And the the big thing we're doing right now is the facilities plan with the Rec centers. And like, I know that this is a really tough topic for a lot of people. But I know that we're gonna get through it, and we're gonna be stronger on the other end. And I'm excited to see what we do. And so I just I. And I know that because I've watched us go through like some pretty significant challenges, and we have come out on top, and we've come out in a better place. So I'm excited for that. And then just the last thing I'll say is, I'm pretty optimistic about the board and where it's going. I mean. we're, you know, having 5 new members come on is kind of a scary thing, but I'm really excited about the people that are coming on. I think it's gonna be a good group. I'm excited about the 2 people who are staying. I think you guys are going to be tremendous leaders. You've already demonstrated your leadership. To this board while you're you know, as vice chair, and also kind of you know, leader and waiting. You know, I think we're in good hands. And one thing I'll just leave you with. This is

[134:20] when when I was being sworn in as Regent, one of the things that the chair of the Board said was, you reminded us that these are not your seats. They're the people's seats. and you hold those seats for a certain amount of time, and then you pass it on to someone else who holds it. And I. You know what you want to do during your time is, do the best you can to while you're holding the seat. To make sure that you leave in a better position than you found it, and I hope I did that on this board. I know you all have done that, and I'm excited to have the new crop of folks come in and hold the seats.

[135:01] So thank you all very much. It's been an honor on behalf of our staff. I'll just say a few things, and then we do have just some recognition for you all. I I tell our team on a regular basis, and if we were in the private sector we'd be sending you to Hawaii and thanking you for your service and your excellent performance. And and that's just not how the public sector works. Right. One of the things that Jim Collins said, just that that working in the public sector means working tirelessly with an incredible humidity, that humility that your work likely is never going to be recognized in the way that it should. And and these roles in particular, when you've been giving up a Monday night once a month. sometimes more. Not being paid. You know the role. I understand. It's a little murky sometimes. But we take your input your questions so seriously, and each of you has made our work better in in your own way. And and you all have highlighted that so well in your comments about each other, and just on behalf of our team. I thank you all. I get emotional, too. It's it's something that started in the pandemic, and it hasn't gone away. And I I just it just is, I am so grateful for your time and for input, because you'd help us make better decisions.

[136:14] On a regular basis. People ask me what makes a good board member. And I say, it's 2 things. It's that you know how to and care about what we're doing to ask the questions and the things that we're not thinking about, or from a different perspective, and that you recognize we're we're people who care a whole lot about what we do, and do it with kindness, and each of you has done that also, and I am grateful. We are grateful for your partnership for your help you have each of us gotten us through, you know we've had a lot of hard conversations just not just in the last year, but certainly in the last 4, and I am very, very grateful for your volunteerism. I do hope you stay engaged with the community. It doesn't need to end with your time on, Prab. We always are here every Monday night, 4th Monday of the month, and the prab is interested in your feedback, and I hope we hear from you. I hope you continue to offer us your input as community members on how we can best serve you.

[137:08] And so I know you have a couple of others matters of business. Maybe we should have reordered these, but we do just have a token of appreciation on behalf of the City of Boulder for your volunteerism and your service, and just know that we are incredibly grateful. Do you want to do that now? Or should we do that? After? Let's let's do the next 2 things, and then we'll give our things and wrap up. Does that work? So chair vice chair selection process. Do you want me to go over that? That'd be great. Okay, so really, basic remember, from when I was elected someone has to nominate the chair. And then there's a second, and then there's a vote for that. Then. So it's done via email. Is that considered a nomination that. Well, you'll be here in April. That was your last meeting, so nominations are due on Friday, the 11.th I'll still be here, so I'll record all the nominations, and then I'll send out an email. And I'll say you've been nominated for chair by so many people. Do you accept? And then your acceptance goes into that

[138:12] the 28th of April packet? Yeah. And then so part of our policy is that you? The nominations are set in advance. But then, at the meeting you still have to vote to elect the chair. So thanks for asking the question. Someone's got to run exactly. So the vice chair. The current vice chair was what I did last year, so Chuck was the chair. I was the vice chair at the meeting where I was elected chair. I started the meeting. So you are we gonna be on the hot seat? And then when the chair election comes. you will. You'll call for the election of the chair, Rosa. Whoever's here? I forgot to thank you especially. Thank you so much. And, Charlotte, before you for your amazing stewardship. But that item will be called. She'll note, or he will note, you know who the people the names are put forward as chair should be one person.

[139:18] And then you'll call the the nomination or the motion to elect that person as chair, and then you'll vote, and then you are elected chair, and then the vice chair role is then elected. And it's the same process so, and I believe that the process is laid out in the Handbook, and if it's not I'm happy to chat with anybody about the process before the meeting. Yeah. And you've got a really good play by play of how to elect the chair and vice chair so that should be provided to the 2 of you before the meeting. But it's like emoting on it's it's it's like having any motion except your electricity.

[140:04] And is it? Does it have to be roll call? Or is it just I? It's just I. Okay, so and then, as soon as the chair and vice chair are elected, the meeting proceeds. yeah, okay. And then, protocol for Bpr calendar engagements. Did you want to mention something I I had just asked. I'm I am a person. I think I'm not alone who like really lives and died by my Google Calendar. So I I just asked Rossa like when there's, you know, an engagement touch point for area, or there's a ribbon cutting, or there's I don't know an activation at the north boulder like, can you just send out a calendar, invite on obligation to attend anything? And also this only impacts Jenny. But like it's, it's It's helpful to me, just like, get the calendar invitation and just say, yes, no, maybe so thank you, Rosa, for your help with that.

[141:03] Yes, thank you. And I think we'll make a note. We have an internal checklist with new member onboarding. We can ask them if they want to opt into that or not, if they want to calendar for themselves so that we can. You're deciding for them. All right, I will tell you. As as a region we get invites to like everything. And it's our choice as to whether we opt in and I like that system. So okay, anything else on that? No. Okay. So then we've got grab matters. We may not need that this week since we all just talked for a while. But does anybody want to share anything? Kind of? Bpr related where we get our special prices? Sorry. I know we're all sick of me, but I'm just gonna say one more thing.

[142:00] There is a gentleman whose name I don't know who works at the top of the Rec center. Who really impressed me. The other week I was in there doing a workout and he I was. I have another annoying injury. So I was on crutches, and he saw me, saw me come in, and he was ready with the elevator key, and then, as I was kind of waving him off, saying, It's okay. I'm not going downstairs. He was already engaged in a conversation with another patron using sign. And I was like, Wow! What a what an impressive front desk staff at the South little rec center. So I just, I wish I'd gotten his name. I will get it next time I see him. But shout out to that person, maybe you can give Megan a physical description. I'm gonna have a guess, but it would help. We'd love appreciating. When we hear those stories, I'll take it offline. Yeah, I've been because of this injury. I've been in there more. And the south wall Rec center is a wonderful facility. And it's it's gonna be exciting to start to think about what's next? Yeah, and make it more accessible. Yes. anybody else. There's not from play, you know. We have

[143:06] a couple of good things going on, I think. here we've been talking about the courts for placemaking courts and Bill Bauer and the Expand program. We're working on a lot of internal stuff there. We're doing recruitment there as well. The tree tender workshops went really? Well. There's a couple coming up in Louisville and Lafayette in in April and the golf voting is coming up. So we're working real hard on making sure that that is a big success. September. It's gonna be a flat irons. Right? It is good for you. It was in the last minutes. Jenny, just transcribe it over. Okay, yeah. I think I put it on my calendar.

[144:01] So I should know the date for like 17th or 12, th or something cool. Yeah. but it's in the last minutes, if you need it. So okay, which you do because you have to. And that's it for me. Well, I think that's that's all. That's all she wrote. So so we we have a tradition where we try, and I mean it used to be a 19 seventies style wooden plaque, but we try to get a little warning and then sign in. and then we will get Eric his. Yes, that's really important. Yeah. 2 notes. Okay?

[145:01] Oh, my gosh. yeah, I will tell you. We did this for Jeff last year. If there's a Parker site that's super meaningful to you, we're happy to trade out that at the reservoir. Hmm, with my son. Oh, yeah.