August 19, 2025 — Planning Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

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

[0:00] We have all planning board members present, 5 of us here in the room, and George and ML are online, and we will begin… with, … Vivian. I see Vivian online. I'm glad you can join us, who will, give us the, … are… it's funny, I always say, rules of engagement, and of course it's not that. There we are, okay. All right, our, public participation guidelines for, city meetings. So, Vivian, if you'll walk us through that, we will, Move on to the next item after you're done. My pleasure. Good evening, everybody. My name is Vivian Castro-Woldridge, and I help facilitate public participation in planning board meetings, and so I'll just read out some of these, rules of decorum, or rules for participation in these particular meetings.

[1:04] So first of all, just wanted to let you know that Citi has engaged with community members in the past to co-create this vision for productive, meaningful, and inclusive civic conversations. And this vision that was co-created supports physical and emotional safety for community members, staff, and board commission members, as well as democracy for people of all ages, identities, lived experiences, and political perspectives. And we have much more information about the vision on our website. Next slide, please. And I'll just share some examples of rules of decorum that are found in the Boulder Revised Code and other guidelines that support this productive atmosphere's vision, and all of these will be upheld during this meeting. All remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person. Obscenity, racial epithets, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited. And we ask that all participants speaking in open comment section or later in the public hearing part of the meeting, identify themselves using first and last name.

[2:12] Both online and in person. So, we have in-person participation and also online participation. If you're online and want to let us know that you would like to speak, please raise your virtual hand by finding it on the menu bar. If you're joining by phone, you can dial star 9 and it'll raise your virtual hand for us, so we know to call on you. And here's just another way to get to that raised. Hand icon, by clicking on the reactions, and you should get this little menu that pops up. And you can click on the raised hand button. So… Next, we have open comment, which is a part of the meeting where members of the public can speak to the planning board about matters that are not related to the public hearing item on the agenda for tonight. Seems like we have nobody in person, so I'll just wait and see if we have

[3:03] Anybody online who would like to participate in open comment, each person has 3 minutes to speak. And I would, need you to raise your virtual hand. So that we know you would like to speak. Just wait a little bit longer before we move on. Okay, looks like we don't have anybody who wishes to speak for open comment. Back over to you, Chair. Wish you a good meeting. Great. Thank you, Vivian. So that closes public participation. We move on to Agenda Item 3, approval of minutes. Does anyone have any comments about the August 5th, 2025 draft planning board minutes? Any questions, any edits, any changes?

[4:00] Kurt? I'll just say that I submitted a request for changes. Thank you. I submitted a request for changes to Thomas just about the notation about who was in person and who was virtual for that meeting, and that has been reflected in the current posted minutes. Great. Thank you. Okay, how about, … Motion to approve those minutes. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. Okay. August 5th, 2025. August 5th, 2025. Great. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Okay. Any discussion? If not, we will… Vote. Mason. Yes. Laura? Yes. Claudia. Abstain, I was absent. Okay, thank you. Kurt? Yes. George? Yes.

[5:00] and ML. Yes. Okay, and I'm a yes, as well. Okay, the minutes are approved, … We have no call-up items to discuss or consider, and we will move right into Agenda Item 5A. Which is a public hearing and recommendation to City Council regarding Ordinance 8713, amending Title IX Land Use Code BRC 1981 to adopt transportation demand management requirements for new development Including related amendments to Chapter 2 of the City of Boulder Design and Construction Standards, DCS, originally adopted pursuant to Ordinance 8986, and setting forth related details. So, that opens the item. We'll have a, … staff presentation from Chris will have clarifying questions, from the board, then we'll have another public, opportunity for the public to comment, and then we'll go to board deliberations. So…

[6:15] Chris? Take it away. Thank you, Mark. Chris Haglin here, Principal Project Manager for Transportation and Mobility. I'm joined tonight by Hela, who has worked as our City Attorney on this project, and Ulla Hester is here, who is our consultant on the project as well from ALTA. The purpose for tonight is to make a recommendation to City Council on Ordinance 8713, which is the TDM Plan Ordinance for New Development. As you remember, this is part of a kind of a three-legged stool of the Access Management and Parking Strategies Program, better known as AMPS. In June of this year, Ordinance 8700, dealing with on-street changes, was adopted.

[7:04] By City Council, and then later in July, Ordinance 8696, was adopted by, City Council, and this was the elimination of our parking minimums in our parking code. So, TDM represents the third leg of the stool, which we're bringing, here to you tonight. We brought this item to TAB last Monday, and then we're scheduled for City Council on, September 4th for the first reading. So why a new ordinance? We have a current process, that requires some TDM elements for new developments, but we're really looking on improving that process. Providing greater clarity for both developers and property owners, as well as the tenants of these properties, and also to provide a mechanism to both monitor and enforce the TDM ordinance, which currently we do not have.

[8:03] So we're really looking at improving our process, and… Making sure that… The tenants of new developments, whether they're residents or the employees of companies leasing the space, have access to TDM programs and strategies that we know have been proven to change travel behavior in our city and to help meet our city and climate goals. As we've been going through this process, I think three fundamental Factors have come to our attention that really kind of set the stage for the development of this ordinance. And it's really based on our experience of providing, and reviewing TDM plans, over the many years. And we've certainly, come to understand that developers can provide infrastructure. They can provide amenities. But when you look at TDM, Plans and the elements in those things, things like eco passes, vanpool subsidies, parking cash out, access to micromobility benefits.

[9:08] Those are TDM strategies that are implemented by tenants. On those sites. And the third is that all of those TDM programs and strategies and the benefits and the incentives, they generally have annual costs. So when designing the TDM ordinance, these three factors were very important, because If we're going to require properties to provide these types of benefits, one of the key questions is, you know, to which developments, and then who's going to pay for these things, these ongoing programs that have these annual costs? As we've moved through boards and council and through our community engagement process, we identified four different main purposes, that this new ordinance would fulfill. First and foremost, this is intended to mitigate the impacts of new development.

[10:05] on both our transportation system, adjacent properties, and the surrounding neighborhoods. And that's… you could see that clearly in those three parts of the AMPS project, where we looked at both the off-street, the on-street, with the TDM. The second one is really to enhance access, to our multimodal infrastructure that we've invested in, and to provide increased access and use of those TDM programs that have been proven to change travel behavior that help meet our city goals in reducing single-occupant vehicle travel and, mobile emissions. Third, it's, you know, as part of that three-legged stool, it's really to complement this elimination of parking requirements for new development in the city, and so thinking about what is the role of TDM when you have a new environment without those parking requirements.

[11:01] And finally, we really wanted to create an ordinance that can contribute to city goals. Now, development is a small part of everything that's going on in our city, but it's critical that we can take this step To see how we can provide these types of ongoing TDM benefits to the tenants of these new developments, and that… Access to these benefits is going to make a difference in travel behavior and meeting city goals. As we've developed this TDM ordinance, there's also several policy questions that we had to confront and think about. What are the range of options within each of these policy decisions, and we frequently use this metaphor of a policy dial, where you can turn that dial up or down. Based on the input that we've received from boards and council and the engagement with key stakeholders, you know, we've set the dial in this draft ordinance, but really, it's still a dial that can be turned up and down

[12:07] By boards, and then later by council as well. But we really set those things at… at meeting the core four purposes of this project. Some of those policy questions include, well, which developments would this new ordinance apply to? Would it apply to every single one, or would we use some type of system to limit how they are applied? And, you know, you could use an approach where you limit it by size, so the smallest ones aren't required to do anything, and the larger ones are. So that was one of our key policy questions. Another one is. well, what is going to be required? What TDM elements, programs, incentives, are going to be required? And in looking at this policy dial, we could take a very agnostic approach. You know, if you have a target that you want to meet.

[13:01] We could say, we don't really care how you meet it, just try and meet it. Or we could take a very prescriptive approach, where we say, this, you know, here are A, B, and C, these are your requirements. Or you can dial that in the middle. And I think that's kind of where we've landed. I've often found that a very prescriptive approach is… Not always the best way to go, especially given how much developments differ. the types of tenants they have, and it's hard to have those hard, prescriptive requirements. You want to have some flexibility and customization. One of the biggest questions we had to ask ourselves is, who pays? As I've mentioned, all of these TDM programs and services have annual costs. We know what those costs are, so who pays for them? And really, when you think about the dial, you can have the developer and then the property owner pay for these. The other party to pay for them are the tenants themselves. …

[14:01] Finally, if we set a rate of what someone has to pay, you know, how do we set that rate? How much do they pay, and what does that funding cover in terms of the TDM plans, the services, and the programs that are provided to those tenants? And then lastly, how long? You know, if we're going to require TDM, services provided to these tenants of new developments. how long are we gonna do it? You could crank the dial that… This requirement goes on and on. The impact of the development is forever, therefore the requirements should be forever. Or, they could be dialed back and limited. You know, in our current situation, we often limit our requirements to 3 years. After 3 years, it's really up to the tenant to do it. So where on that dial are we gonna turn that? Well, what I'd like to go through is now kind of where we landed on each of those policy questions, but still understanding that there are dials that can be turned. So when we looked at what developments would be needing to comply to this type of ordinance, we chose a tiered approach.

[15:12] We chose a three-tiered approach, where the smallest tier, which we refer to as Tier 0, are exempt. These are small properties. gonna have a small impact. Let's have staff focus our time and energy on medium-sized and larger development. So those are the Tier 1 and Tier 2. We felt this would be the best way to really pay attention to our largest ones, put the efforts into those. But also, any type of new program like this is going to cost more staff time and resources. So how do we also manage that, being fiscally responsible? As a government. … with the two tiers, Tier 1 and 2 tier, because the Tier 2 being largest, they would have some additional requirements that Tier 1 wouldn't have. And this is part of that ongoing monitoring. It's about having a trip generation target.

[16:07] That they need to hit based on limiting their vehicle trip generation. But all of them You know, the plans would provide infrastructure and amenities, there would be a financial guarantee that pays for those TDM programs for the largest ones, a second one, a remedial financial guarantee that's kind of used as a backup in case they're not meeting their goals. They would also have that trip generation study. All of these plans would be approved. We would kind of move the responsibility of approving TDM plans would, really fall on transportation and mobility staff. Once we have tenants there that we can really work with to develop a plan that fits their needs. using the funding that's provided by the owner or the developer. We would look at the exemptions of being the smallest tier, or Tier 0, and then we also have 3 land uses that currently are tied to a different TDM ordinance, one that originally

[17:04] Was, placed in Border Junction, so this is for MU4, RH6, and RH7. zoning. Throughout the process, we often talked about what are we going to do with affordable housing, and we really debated whether or not The costs and the benefits, you know, we know that any requirement like this is, in the end, going to increase the cost of development, the cost, to leasing property, or renting property. … But is that outweighed by the benefits of providing access to these great programs, to people in those affordable housing units? Where we landed is saying, like, we'd like to continue the subsidy that the city currently provides to 100% affordable housing. So currently, in our TDM program, if a Boulder Housing Partners project is required to provide EcoPasses, the city provides a subsidy right away

[18:03] ongoing subsidy of 39% to those, units. So we propose continuing that so that Affordable housing projects will have these requirements, but the city will subsidize those requirements, such as, like, the neighborhood ecopass, for example, as we currently do now. And so this should help kind of balance that equation between cost and benefits. One thing we also looked at was what is required, and as I alluded to, we really dialed that into the middle. We didn't want to have a completely agnostic approach, and we didn't want to have a fully prescriptive approach. So, the middle ground, what we chose, is kind of a package approach. And we develop these packages based on what we know works. And so the first package is kind of what we refer to as our EcoPass Plus. This assumes that the EcoPass would be a required element, the EcoPass has to be purchased for every employee or unit in residential circumstances, but then we'd pair that also with

[19:06] Bike share memberships, car share and vanpool benefits. participation in the Dr. Cogg's Way to Go TDM program, which is called Way to Go, and then also a list of responsibilities for that property manager or that employee transportation coordinator. We base the cost of these things based on assumptions of what you could call pickup rate. You know, for the EcoPass, you have to buy it for everybody, so that's 100%. But if we were to offer a vanpool subsidy, you know, maybe 2-5% of the employees may take advantage of that thing. A B-Cycle membership. higher percentage, maybe you're in the 15-20% range of people who would take up those benefits, and that's how we ended up getting to that cost level. The second package is kind of a flexible approach, where it's a transportation wallet, or oftentimes referred to on the commercial side as a parking cash-out. This is essentially where you're paying people not to drive. That is the classic parking cash-out amount.

[20:02] The transportation wallet ideas allows that flexibility where you can provide a tenant or an employee with cash that then they can spend on their own choosing of whether they want to buy micromobility rides or join a vanpool and use that money towards their vanpool fares. And then there would also be requirements for the property manager or the employee transportation coordinator. And because once in a while we do get very innovative ideas from developers, we did want to have a third package, which is kind of our custom package. That would really allow us to use the money provided by the developer or the property owner to develop a very creative TDM plan. And so we did reserve kind of a third approach, being the custom approach. Now, I've kind of mentioned the financial guarantees. This is really one of the key linchpins of the ordinance, where, as I said, all of these TDM programs and services, generally, they have ongoing annual costs, so the key is who pays for those.

[21:07] We settled on the developer, the property owner, paying those, financial guarantees, which will then be held by the city. As they are now in our current escrow, account system that we use for our current TDM program, and then those funds would be dispersed to the tenants once there's a TDM plan that's approved so that they can implement that plan. … For the largest, developments, the Tier 2 ones, there's a second pot of money. This is what we refer to as the remedial financial guarantees. This second pot of money would be used if that property after a year in operation is not meeting its trip generation target. A portion of that remedial fund would be added to the annual fund. That would boost the amount of money, and therefore we could modify and enhance that TDM program to provide more,

[22:02] services to those, either employee or resident tenants. This was modeled after a successful, program that's used in, the state of Virginia. when we looked at how we set the rates for financial guarantees, on the commercial side, it's really based on what we estimate the cost of those TDM programs, along with some of those assumption rates, or those pickup rates I referred to. Not everybody's gonna take advantage of a vanpool subsidy, not everybody's gonna take advantage of a micromobility membership, but a certain percentage will, so we used… Some of those average pickup rates, to determine, you know, and kind of spread those costs across. We also have an understanding of how many square feet per employee for the different types of land uses, so that is factored in as well. But ultimately, we have to translate that to kind of a cost per square footage. So that it's very clear to developers immediately what their cost is going to be based on their land use and their size. There'll be clarity on what they're going to be

[23:11] putting into those financial guarantees. On the residential side, we've talked about different methodologies, whether it's by bedroom, by size. We still think that using residential units is the best way to go for this type of ordinance. And really, you know, one of the key things is that RTD's Neighborhood EcoPass program, which is one of the main programs that we often require now. is based on a unit price. That's how they do it. They have certain size thresholds for entering the program. So we felt that that was the best way to do that. This slide gives you a taste of some… what some of those, what the thresholds are that we chose for the different tiers, and with some of the annual rates. We just kind of selected a few of those to just show you, at Tier 1 and Tier 2,

[24:08] the thresholds, and then what is the cost per square foot for the residential. As I mentioned, this was based on an assumption of what we would be spending kind of per employee to implement these different package approaches to TDM, where Tier 1, kind of around $200 per employee per year. For Tier 2, $350 per employee per year. Again, on the residential side, we had a threshold of 40 units for Tier 1, 100 units for Tier 2, and then you can see that we've set the annual financial guarantee rates at 180 and 280. One thing to remember, that remedial financial guarantee is really a one-time payment until it's exhausted or used, whereas the annual financial guarantee is an annual financial guarantee ongoing.

[25:01] Just some examples, our Transportation Advisory Board asked us to come up with some examples, so we thought we'd share these with you as well. You know, just to kind of give you an idea of what some maybe known properties, in the City of Boulder would be paying as a result of this TDM ordinance. So, Timberlofts in Boulder Junction. They're in the Boulder Junction TDM district, but… I had to find a good example, but at 150 units, they would pay approximately $42,000 a year in their annual financial guarantee. That equates to $280 per unit, and then that money would be used to purchase Eco Passes and provide other benefits, like memberships to B-Cycle. those types of things. On the commercial side, I have a variety of examples there, showing both Tier 1 and Tier 2 to give you an idea of how much is paid. For, these financial guarantees, but remember, that money goes directly to the tenant to be used to implement those programs that we're requiring… requiring in their TDM plans.

[26:07] … For many people, it seems like a lot of money. I know personally that the City of Boulder, every year prior to COVID, when, you know, we had our price, we were spending way over $100,000 a year on EcoPasses for our employees, so it's not unheard of to spend money on these types of programs. One thing we've been looking at is, as we were looking at these three parts of the AMPS project go together, with the elimination of our parking requirements, we see that there can be a potentially a tremendous cost savings. For developers and property owners. … When we look at the estimated cost of construction in Boulder for an underground space, I have here $60,000 to $100,000. Many of the developers I've talked to said it's much closer to $100,000 a space. Most of our projects enter site review, looking for parking reductions, when we had…

[27:03] in our past parking system. And so, one of the equations we're looking at is, you know, if a development can build less parking. That equates to significant cost savings, and what we're asking is some of that money to be reinvested into the property in terms of transportation benefits for those tenants of those properties. Ongoing maintenance is also a key, and you can ask our colleagues in Community Vitality how much they're spending on maintaining old parking structures in our downtown. It is not a joke. In terms of the TDM plans, once we have the TDM plan in place, and they're a Tier 2, they would be, provided with a vehicle trip guarantee, or vehicle trip generation target, to hit. And we hope that we've designed those TDM elements and set those annual financial guarantee rates at a point where they can implement a plan that will be successful in meeting these trip generation.

[28:09] targets. For the Tier 2, they would have an annual trip generation study that would look at how many vehicle trips are taken. Now, we do know that, as some good feedback from Laura and Planning Board, some of those times, we may not be able to do a vehicle trip count, so we have developed a backup survey for employees as well that can be then also used as a different way to get at that trip generation. measure. Again, this would only apply to Type, Tier 2. The vehicle trip generation requirements are based on ITE, or the Institute of Traffic Engineers, commonly used in other parts of our code to evaluate trip generation. We're looking really at, in general, a 30% reduction in ITE

[29:01] From IT rates. Now, one thing that's really important to know that… is that the money from the annual financial guarantees is really… it's meant for those residents and employees. And so, in a retail situation, you're gonna affect the employee and… travel, but, you know, we don't want to penalize a business for being successful for generating, you know, having customers, come to their business. So, the trip generation rates are specific to those employees or residents of the properties, and not the property as a whole, because that's really where the money is targeted. And so we've developed different trip generation rates based on those assumptions. We would have this study done for Tier 2 annually, and it would be conducted by a third party. The developer owner would pay for that cost. But staff, in our development, toolkits would provide the methodology for them to follow in order to conduct that study, whether it's a trip generation study or the backup survey.

[30:10] In terms of the monitoring process, something that we don't have, currently, again, this would apply to our Tier 2 projects, our largest projects. They have that trip generation target, and they would produce that annual report with that study. If a property is in compliance three consecutive years, then annual monitoring ceases. It can go to a 5-year cadence where we'll check just to make sure that they're still performing well. Again, the annual financial guarantees continue. to pay for those ongoing TDM services. If a property is out of compliance, they're exceeding their trip generation target, that's when we take remedial action. A portion of the remedial financial guarantee is used to augment and increase the funding levels so we can adjust the TDM plan.

[31:08] provide greater pro… more programs, greater incentives to those employees and residents, and hopefully change their travel behavior to meet those targets. once we have that additional money and we work with them, we can come up with a TDM plan that is at that new funding level. And that becomes the new annual funding level. And then a new 3-year cycle starts, so they'll have to go back to that annual monitoring. Again, hopefully, 3 years in a row, they're successful, and we can, change the cadence of that monitoring to every 5 years. So that is a basic overview. You know, I will say that this TDM ordinance, it's brand new, it was written from scratch. It is fairly complex, there's a lot of parts to it. I commend Hela and Lisa from our Planning and Development Services team for developing this ordinance.

[32:03] And we look forward to hearing your comments on it. In terms of the next steps, we're scheduled to go to City Council on September 4th. for the first reading, and then, the second reading would be September 18th. If this ordinance is passed in that time frame, then the focus of the work will shift. We will shift to developing those internal procedures, that's needed by, people in Planning and Development Services with the development review process, adding this new TDM, plan element and application into the process. We'll also work on developing the toolkits that are used by developers and property owners to understand the process, to understand what their requirements are, and then to help them and their tenants develop TDM plans and implement them. We'll have a special toolkit just for tenants to help them with the implementation of those. We anticipate that, you know, if all things align, we'll be able to implement this in the second quarter of 2026.

[33:10] And, and begin, having our new developments that meet those size thresholds, Be introduced to this new program. And, we do have some suggested motion language that we can put up later, but happy to take any clarifying questions now. Great, thank you. Chris, that was, … Masterful. So, now's the time for clarifying questions. I anticipate we have Lots of them, and I see, I see two virtual hands up, Right away. So, George, it's unusual for you to go first, so let's, let's hear…. Yeah, just a quick question, around the AFG and the other fees.

[34:00] What is the built-in escalation factor, when you look at these fees and how they're proposed over time? How does that work? We have not built in any indexing, you know, over time, but I think the whole spirit of this is that we know we're gonna have to dial it in, we're gonna have to collect data over the next, you know, the first few years of implementation. We have put all of the numbers in the city manager rules so that they can be more easily updated. By staff, but I think we'll have to take, you know, we'll… we're gonna take, you know, an approach to change those fees when circumstances arise, like RTD raising the cost, or vanpool prices going up. So, we're going to look at it more on that basis, rather than a strict indexing of the rates. Well, so, clarification on that. So the, the…

[35:04] Is it called the AGF or the AFG? The annual financial guarantee? Yes, yeah. AFT? That one. So, so that's an annual cost, right, to the developer or owner? And I just… why… why didn't you guys make the decision to go ahead and propose at least some kind of CPI? I mean. We're, you know, we've been facing, you know, inflation at pretty extreme rates almost every year, and I just… I'm concerned that the program might get underfunded rapidly. Rather than what you just said, which is, like, we'll see what happens, and then we'll adjust. … have you thought about just putting in a CPI mechanism or something to make sure you've got, you know, a rising tide as we fully expect, you know, some kind of inflationary pressures to continue over the next few years?

[36:03] You know, honestly, we did not consider that, but I think it's a great idea that we can go back and do that, and we can go back and look at our best practices report to see if other communities that have these similar types of ordinances have that type of language. Yeah, because I, I know, like, with our, with, with, with, like, development fees. and even, like, the things that we tie to development, we now have some kind of CPI or a 3% escalator or something in, for, like, those commercial attachment fees, etc. So, anyways, I'll save it for comments, but I was curious what the philosophy was there. That's… that's it for… for now. Thank you. Thank you. Great, thanks, George. Ml? Great, thank you. Thanks, Chris. That was, … very concise and complete and orderly. Thank you for your… helping keep us, organized here. So, it…

[37:06] So we're going into somewhat unchartered territory with the no parking minimums. And, I'm… I'm wondering how this ordinance addresses projects Such as student housing, With the number of residents. Being many times more than the number of units. So one of the biggest impacts, with… that we hear from the community with, student housing, because they're generally going into neighborhoods, right, is the impact to existing neighborhoods. So how does this ordinance manage that. I'm guessing they might be tier… one, rather than Tier 2. Yeah, well, yeah, ultimately, that would depend on the number of units. You know, I think luckily for us, you know, a lot of those students already have access to TDM programs. That's… that's one thing. When you look at CU, they provide

[38:14] Eco Passes, college pass, but Eco Passes to all their students, along with B-Cycle membership. So, one, those are already provided, right now through that ordinance. Based on input to look at, bedrooms, we did, with, through support of our consultant, we did create a second methodology that does have bedrooms. as a way to look at it. So, I think that we could, in those circumstances, such as student housing. you know, we're prepared and ready to switch to a per-bedroom, methodology, if, if, you know, the feedback from boards and councils to, to go that route. But we really decided that the…

[39:00] Per unit basis, in general, for most land uses, was the better way to go. So could that be an administrative decision? ML, hold on just a second, Hela wants to…. Oh. Break in here for a second. Sorry. Hi, Hela. Hi, yeah, I wanted to add something to what Chris said, but I also wanted to make another comment that, I wanted to say based on what George said. The financial guarantee is determined based on unit numbers, but the TDM benefits have to be provided to each resident. So, even if there's a higher number of residents, and maybe the financial guarantee seems lower compared to the number of residents they have, the benefits still have to provide… be provided to every single resident that's there. So the benefits should be the same. If in a high resident, 4 bedrooms per unit, 5 bedrooms per unit, which seems to be becoming norm in student housing.

[40:04] Why not just base it on bedrooms or residents versus units, right? Yeah. No, I think that's why we came up with the second methodology. To be prepared for, switching to that bedroom one for that particular type of land use. Chris, is there a pathway, with that second methodology for it to be, an administrative option? When those projects come on board, or would it… or are you thinking it would just be a requirement in the ordinance. Right now, the way it's drafted, so you probably noticed that we have an ordinance, but also a proposed city manager rule, and the triggers for when, TDMs are required are established in the rule, so the city manager rule amendment could change what that trigger is, and could change it to bedrooms. That wouldn't be a big problem.

[41:05] Right. Okay. And then I wanted to say one more thing, just as you guys talk about this. what we're proposing is a financial guarantee, not a fee. And legally, there are differences between those. A fee is paid for services that the city provides, but this is a financial guarantee that the city holds to ensure that there's funding for the TDM measures that are then implemented later, so it's being held and then given back to the development. Yeah, and I was about to as well. Go ahead, and I'll see if you… So, ML, we're not hijacking your time, but we're focusing on Hela's comments about this, and so we will return to you if we… if your question… No, I think I'm good. That was my point. Alright, go ahead. I just wanted to colloquy on this idea of units with a disproportionate amount of bedrooms, and I think I read in the ordinance that if the resident is already receiving the TDM benefit through another mechanism, like through the university, then the developer or the, …

[42:10] the tenant is not required to provide it. So that… that seems to go to your point that… the annual financial guarantee would be sufficient, because they wouldn't have to provide it in duplicate. Yes, yeah, for example, you know, for a regular market rate, you know, it's… for a neighborhood EcoPass, it starts at $120 per unit. You know, if, student housing does not have to provide that, because all students already have that, that provides additional funding that can be spread out amongst, the other… residents for other uses besides the EcoPass or the B-Cycle memberships, which they already received. And so that goes to my next question of, on this subject, the colloquy here, of, are we seeing a lot of projects that have that disproportionate amount of bedrooms that are not student housing?

[43:01] developments. No. According to Charles. Okay, so we're not seeing, like, this is worker housing that has 6 bedrooms and a shared kitchen. Barista housing, or, you know, okay. Alright, thank you. Okay, well, still on this financial guarantee subject, … I would like to ask, I don't understand the mechanics of… At the beginning of the year, I, as a property owner. I have to provide a financial guarantee, annual AFG, to the city. So, I walk into the city with a check that's calculated based on residence or units or whatever, my building size, and I give that to the city. And then the city then spends that money for those… or do I get it back? No, it's dispersed to the tenants who actually implement those programs. So the tenant is going to have the contract with RTD,

[44:07] to provide the EcoPass, and so the financial guarantee is released to them to pay for the cost of that RTD contract. Similarly, if they were providing monthly $20 a month vanpool subsidies, that would also come out of those financial guarantees, but it's dispersed to the tenant who's actually paying for those things. Okay, great. Let's… I have… there's two scenarios that I want to ask about. In the case of a, … of a… I'm a commercial property owner. And in the beginning of, 2025, I signed a 10-year lease. With a… with a single tenant. Specifying. Rates, escalators, everything, okay? Now, the city in 2026 implements this TDM ordinance.

[45:01] am I funding… This annual financial guarantee to the city. And you're giving it to my tenant, And I have no recourse for the next 10 years, because I've signed a lease. With this tenant. So, is that the scenario, and is there any relief for me as a property owner? It should be… by the way, Mark, just FYI, I mean, that should all be covered in triple nets, right? I mean, if you have a… if you're a sophisticated property owner, no way is that not covered in your triple nets. That would automatically be passed through to the tenant. Well, I mean, in our leases, we specify taxes, insurance, common area maintenance, but I don't say… and should the city dream up a program of…. You should, you should. You should hire an attorney who does that, because mine do. Okay. Anyway, so, could you address my question? That's, that's, …

[46:02] Yeah, I think what we're proposing is to apply the requirement only to new floor area that's being constructed. So you… Probably wouldn't have a tenant already for that space that would be subject to it. Would there be a threshold for a remodel No new floor area, but a remodel. I think we've limited it to new floor area only, only, yeah. So you have to be adding. Okay. If you're just taking a building and refurbishing it, that's not gonna trigger. Okay. And then, under the slightly different scenario is… I am a multi-state student housing owner. My tenants I sign individual leases with each of those tenants. Even for a 4-bedroom unit, I've got essentially 4 leases, right?

[47:03] So, and you say, well, the, the, benefit I'm the owner. I come into the city, I give you my 100 grand. and then you say, I'm giving this benefit to your tenants. So. how… who administers that? Who actually does that, benefit distribution. Yeah, so that would be, you know, in a residential situation like that, if you're dealing with a large residential property that's gonna have the amount of units to trigger this ordinance, you're gonna have a property management company. And so that's who we deal with all the time with our EcoPass program and other things like that. We deal directly with the property management company. They're entering into the agreement with RTD on behalf of their tenants, and then, you know, once they had a contract with RTD, then that financial guarantee money would

[48:03] would be used to pay RTD for that contract. So, it's, you know, I don't think you could have any multifamily residential of that size without some type of property management structure. And I also want to point out Chris says it'll be given to the tenant, but the… The rules actually say that it will be released to the property owner or a person designated in writing by the owner for the use of the guarantees to implement the TDM measures, and then one of the mandatory requirements for all TDM plans is to have a transportation coordinator who implements the measures. That's more what I was expecting as a… if I'm a multi-state student housing property owner, and I manage the properties, I have a team of property managers. They work for me, so as an owner, I come down, I give you my check, and then you give it back to me

[49:03] Yeah, to, like, your surrogate. To my surrogate, right. Okay, alright, okay. Yeah. Yeah. See, thank you, Hello, for the legal clarification. All right, that… I'm gonna stop there and go back to, other board members. So, who is ready with, Questions. Kirk? Well, I just… I still have a follow-up. I have other questions, but I just want to follow up on this. I'm still a little unclear. Going back to the residential case, for example, you've… there's a new residential development, it's got a bunch of units, it's got a bunch of people in it, most of them maybe are students, maybe some aren't, right? And so, the property owner pays the city a bunch of money, and the city then gives that money to the property manager, that much I get.

[50:00] And then, say, Most of the students already have Eco Passes, so they don't need another EcoPass. But maybe some of them want a Lime membership instead. I don't know, are there Lime memberships? Yeah. Anyhow. Yeah. Is it the property manager, then, that's going to have to be dealing individually with every single tenant about what they want in order to give out The right amount of money? That part is not clear to me. Yeah, so I can, you know, provide an example that hopefully will… Illustrate how it might. happen. So, for example, in Boulder Junction, where we have a property taxing district that collects money and then is used to buy TDM programs and services for everybody who lives or works in Boulder Junction. So, it's just a different mechanism, but we're collecting money.

[51:02] And we're using it. In the example like that, we offer a B-Cycle membership benefit. to those residents or employees. The way we do it is we work with B-Cycle to create a special, like, QR code, coupon code, that the resident of that property can use themselves to access the benefit, and B-Cycle knows, based on the person's address, the code that they use to acquire either their free or their subsidized membership. So. we've developed relationships with these service providers to provide that, so the property manager is not having to do that for each individual thing. It's kind of setting up a system to do that, to provide access to those things, and then, you know, then the money is used to pay back. Like, in Boulder Junction. we pay, you know, quarterly invoices to the transportation service providers, from the pool of money that we collect through the property tax. So, just hopefully that…

[52:10] maybe illustrates, you know, how the actual mechanism for how those benefits would be provided to them. So it's not, you know, a property manager going to each apartment and saying, what do you want? It's… there's a variety of programs that are offered that they can take advantage of. So, okay, that does help, but I still have a question, sort of, about the budgeting, which I think applies in both cases. In Boulder Junction, you've got a certain amount of tax that you're taking in through the bid, or whatever it is. And if everybody goes out and uses B-Cycle like crazy, all of a sudden, you're gonna run out of money. So how do you limit that? Or… In this situation, If it's a Tier 1 project, they've got a budget of $180, per… Unit. Unit, right.

[53:05] And if they decide… I mean, they're not going to want to say, oh, you know, here, free B-Cycles for everybody, because they'll run out of money. How does that kind of budgeting happen? Yeah, so we came up with the budget numbers based on some assumptions of what those pickup rates may be. You know, we don't know exactly how many people would take advantage of each different benefit, so we had to make some assumptions, at least to set the financial guarantee someplace. But as Hela said, you know, the guarantee is one thing, but the requirement is that these benefits are provided. So that there may be a case where additional funding is required to fulfill those requirements. Okay, so it is a little bit different from Boulder Junction in that here, legally. They are required to provide whatever benefits they may… are stated in the plan. Yeah, and we're providing an estimate of what that cost is likely to be.

[54:10] But it's difficult to estimate, you know, what those you know, how many people take advantage of different things that are offered to them. Right. But, you know, we have to establish At least that guarantee. And, you know, the whole reason we… started the guarantee, you know, for, like, the EcoPasses and our current ones, is to really make sure that it happens. You know, it's essentially part of the monitoring process, that that financial guarantee is put in place and used. But yes, the requirement would Could be above and beyond that. Thank you. Laura? Thank you. So… One thing, as I was reading through, that was very reassuring to me was to see, is it correct to say that this ordinance, this TDM ordinance.

[55:05] only addresses those programmatic elements that cost money annually, and that things that are infrastructure-based, like… hanging bicycle racks or moving a bus stop, those are still the purview of Planning Board and Site Review in terms of the infrastructure provisions of site review. Correct. Okay, and then the same thing applies in form-based code, that there are requirements to provide infrastructure that facilitates bicycle use and pedestrian use and micromobility that is separate from this TDM ordinance. Yes. Yeah, I'm gonna have to take a look at the ordinance, because the discretionary aspect is not… Part of the… of the form-based code. So let me take a look, and then I'll provide an answer. Okay, I did… I did see on… Let's see, which page was it? …

[56:05] I think that this is, … well, I think it is in the packet where it talks about both with site review and form-based code, that there is a line that talks about the infrastructure elements as well as this TDM ordinance, but I don't have the exact language in front of me. But I found that very comforting, because I think that when we, as a board, think about TDM, we think about more than just Eco Passes and B-cycle memberships and van pools. We also think about those structural components, and it's nice to see that those aren't… those aren't going away. Yeah, this is really focused on those ongoing programs. Thank you. I have a… I think Claudia has a colloquy on… Could I colloquy on this for a second, Laura? Just, if we're having Hela look some things up, I had a similar question, and maybe can ask this for some of the same… Yeah, so I saw the language in the proposed ordinance that, adds requirements to concept site review and form-based code review that developers somehow have to show infrastructure and improvements. I think that's the language that was used.

[57:03] In their applications, but then there's also, a strikethrough Of the TDM requirement in the site review criteria. That's 9-2-14H2A3, that's proposed to be struck from the site review criteria. And that's the TDM requirement, so I'm also curious, like, what aspects of things we still have. review power over. Yeah, and then the purpose of the strikeout is to move the programmatic requirements into this site review independent requirement for TDM plans that would apply Based on building permit review, whether a site review is required or not, whether form-based code is required or not, or maybe it's just a building permit that's required. It would just apply based on the size of the development. And yeah, the strikeout basically removes the programmatic elements, because that'll be taken care of through the separate program.

[58:02] Okay. I think I'm also, like Laura, trying to clarify where… where the city can still address these hard infrastructure components in the review process. Yeah, and that's definitely the case in site review. What I wanted to look at, and I know we put it in the form-based code review, at least in the application requirements, to get applicants thinking about it. But, what can be required there then depends on what the form-based code standards have in terms of, transportation requirements and so forth that have to be provided, so it depends on what's in there, and it's not a discretionary process, but it has to be consistent with the transportation Connections plans, and so forth. Yeah. So I, like Claudia, would appreciate that. Thank you for looking that up, Hela, and helping us understand how that looks in both site review and concept review and form-based code. It seemed to me that the intent was to say. We're separating out infrastructure elements and programmatic ongoing annual cost elements, and that the programmatic stuff goes in this TDM ordinance for everybody.

[59:08] No matter whether it's site review or form-based code. Correct. And that the, infrastructure development is still the purview of either site review or form-based code. Okay, but not this ordinance. Which I think is a little confusing to me at first, because I think about TDM as being both of those components, and you've separated them. Yeah. And I think, you know, that's really looking at what our current process is, and trying to think of how we can improve it, because that was always one of the most difficult things of reviewing a TDM plan that has all these things proposed. Three years before the project is even built, before we know who the tenants are, and they're proposing to provide fan pool subsidies. It's like, you know, it seems so… the cart's so far before the horse, where this really gives us the opportunity, you know, to provide the infrastructure and amenities up front, and then, okay, now…

[60:04] We're at certificate of occupancy. We're getting tenants, alright, now let's really devise a TDM plan using that money that really helps those tenants. travel differently. In a programmatic way. Yes. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Okay, so I had a question. My next question is about… there's a line in here that says, staff are working with the Boulder Chamber Transportation Connections, BCTC, our local transportation management organization. to develop a membership program requirement for Tier 2 projects in which BCTC will provide ongoing technical assistance for TDM plan design, implementation, and adjustments. Can you explain that further? That sounds to me like we're requiring all big projects to become members of the Chamber, and then work with the Chamber instead of the city, or in partnership with the city? Like, how does this work? Yeah, so I think this is really, you know, part of our best practices evaluations of looking at

[61:04] these types of TDM ordinances across the country, many of them require that large developments become member of transportation management organizations, or sometimes referred to as transportation management associations. So these are TDM groups. Boulder Chamber Transportation Connections is our local transportation management organization. They received funding from Dr. Cogg, to implement Dr. Cogg's regional TDM program. They also serve local businesses. The city has an annual contract with Boulder Chamber Transportation Connections, which is a wing, kind of a wing of the Chamber, to provide technical assistance to Boulder businesses currently. So we have an annual, contract with them, like, so, for example, if a business wants to purchase an EcoPass, they, you know, they find me, I talk to them, I tell them all about it, and then I usually hand them off to Boulder Chamber Transportation Connections for them to help them with the technical aspects of actually contracting with RTD,

[62:12] getting the Eco Passes, and then providing that ongoing support for their employees to actually take advantage of those. So, working with the employees of that businesses to let them know about, here's… you have access to an EcoPass, here's how you use it, here's how you ride the bus, and those types of things. So, … Many TDM ordinances across the country require that the largest developments become a member of a transportation management organization so that they can receive that ongoing technical assistance in implementing their TDM program, and essentially marketing those benefits to their employees. And so, we have a great relationship with Boulder Chamber Transportation Connections, and so we, you know.

[63:01] essentially are considering, you know, is this something that we want to do? You know, whether it's a requirement that they join, and for that membership fee they get, you know, maybe 50 hours of technical assistance per year, or is this more of a voluntary? system where, hey, you know, I know you just, you know, got your TDMA plan approved, and you have your money. would you like some assistance from Border Chamber Transportation Connections to help you implement and market that program to your employees? So, it's something we're considering. Boulder Chamber Transportation Connections does not currently have any membership structure. So it's something we couldn't, you know, just put in, but it's something we're evaluating and considering of whether we did it, and whether there's a real value add. for those large developments to have someone provide that technical assistance. I mean, the city can provide some, but Boulder Transportation Connections, that is what they do. They provide TDM service to our employers. Okay, so the TDM plan would still be worked out with city staff.

[64:11] And then the BCTC's role would be to help with just understanding how to implement it, and a little bit more hand-holding in the implementation and the marketing and things like that. I often refer to them as my soldiers on the ground. Well, I think one of the concerns that some… I've heard raised about this is that, you know, it would require a lot of staff time, and so this sounds like a way to use that partnership. To reduce the time that you're answering questions about Yes, exactly. Things that are more detailed. That's exactly how I use them right now. You know, our TDM program is 2FTE, At the city. But Border Transportation Connections, through their annual contract with the city, provide TDM services year-round to our employers. Okay, thank you on that one. I might have a suggestion about the language, but, but thank you for answering the question. In the memo, it talks about the city manager's rulemaking, mandatory versus permissive rulemaking.

[65:12] And there are only 3 things that are listed as mandatory for the city manager rulemaking, and then there's a longer list of things that I think probably all of us are very interested in seeing be in those rules that are listed as permissive. And can you just help me understand why those are broken out between mandatory and permissive, and why so many important things are listed as permissive, and… Help assuage my fear, and reassure that those things will actually happen, even though they're listed as permissive. Yeah, we discussed that as well. Oftentimes, rulemaking authority actually does not have a lot of detail at all, because we're proposing to move a lot of things into the rules. I created a mandatory section. Of what has to be in there, because those seem to be key things that had been represented as part of the idea of this program.

[66:03] By also having permissive sections, that gives the city manager some flexibility as we work with the program, figuring out what works. And it's more intended to create very clear authority that we can do those things without requiring them to allow for flexibility in amending that program in the future. Okay. The things that are listed as permissive include things like setting trip generation requirements, methods for determining the trip generation requirements, methods to conduct a vehicle trip generation study, mandatory and optional components of a TDM plan. If those things are not in the rule. How do they get done? Like, who does them, and I guess I'm just under… those seem to me to be essential things that the program has to do, so if they're not in the city manager role, where are they?

[67:01] No, they would have to be in the city manager rules, but you could… I guess I forget whether our mandatory requirements require trip, generation targets, for example, but you could have a program that doesn't have that. … I think we just wanted to have flexibility in terms of how it might be changed. But… some of those could be moved to mandatory, if that's your recommendation, and Council agrees with that. Wouldn't be a problem. Okay, it's good to know that we have the ability to make that recommendation. I guess I still don't understand the difference between the mandatory rulemaking and the permissive rulemaking, because it seems to me that all of the things that are in both of those sections are going to be needed. And so, if it's not in the city manager rulemaking, does it live somewhere else, or is it just that those things wouldn't… Happen, because the mandatory stuff just says. Thresholds to identify which projects are subject to the requirements.

[68:02] a tiered system and methodologies for determining the annual and remedial financial guarantees. Those are the only three things that are listed as mandatory. And everything else about how it's done is listed as permissive. Yeah, that's not unusual in creating rulemaking authority. Rules do not have to be created, but in this case, to properly implement the program, I think you would have to… have to have rules. It just gives us more creativity, I guess, in the future on how to implement it if something doesn't work. Okay, so… Maybe some things could be moved to mandatory. I think we're definitely open to considering that. Well, I guess I'm just trying to understand, and I'm sorry to keep belaboring this, but if it's in that permissive section. Does that then mean that you can change it without changing the rule, the city manager rule? Or what is the flexibility that that gives you? No, it allows the city manager to create standards for it, but… Doesn't have to. So it gives the city manager authority, and if the city manager creates a rule, like we're… we've drafted one, to change that, the rule would have to be amended then.

[69:12] Flora, could I… Yeah, go ahead. Okay. I wanna… Using an example, would… The fact that these are in, … permissive. Let's say, Google. comes and says, A, Look. We have facilities all over. We have TDM experts on staff, here's our proposal for you. And, in fact, we're going to use our own methods to, you know, we actually don't like the ITE study, we think ours is better, here's why we think it's better. Consequently, and… City staff, at their discretion, says, yeah, we think this is great.

[70:01] So, if a rule for determining trip generation requirements in a trip generation study was up in the mandatory, and it applied to everyone. And Google came with a better system. Does this provide us the flexibility to adopt, to allow. Google's preferred method. Is that… is that what the permissive… Or… or not. Once a rule is adopted, it is a law. So… it's not to adjust the requirements that exist on an individual basis. It's to create a law in a different way, essentially. So if Google comes in with a different proposal, then maybe we could use the… You know, the alternate method.

[71:02] The property owner can create, can propose, … a TDM plan that's not one of the pre-established options that would be subject to staff review, maybe that could be used, but if you want to do something completely different, the rule would have to be amended for that, and it would have to follow a process to adopt a rule. you first have to draft it, and then it's published, and there's a time for the public to provide comment before it can be adopted. And generally, when you file your application, it determines Whatever rule is in place at that time is what would apply. Okay. I… I just… I'm trying to understand… your question, and so, would this be an example of what you're saying? Is, like, if we established a methodology for the vehicle trip generation study that included cameras, or tubes on the road, but Google said, you know what, we have secure parking facilities, we can provide you the gate.

[72:06] data that tells us exactly, and the only people parking there are our employees. We know exactly what our vehicle trip generation is. is your question, like, can we use that as the methodology instead of what the city has estimated? Is that, like, an example? Yeah, that's an example. My, my, really, more of my question is, is that why… We would put the, … … the study under permissive rulemaking so that we have the flexibility, but I think I just heard Hela say, well, once we've established The study methodology, even though it's under permissive, it's the law. And… it applies. Did I misunderstand that? That's correct, except your example is actually possible already, the way we've drafted it. That's what I was… and I was just wondering what his line of question was. Yeah, it's more… we learned that the trigger threshold that we set

[73:14] is too high or too low, then the city manager could amend the rule and set a different trigger threshold. And because, you know, this is new, what we're doing. … That's why we're proposing to have that flexibility to be… to make it easier to amend those standards if they're not working. So the practical effect of permissive versus mandatory is the ability to adjust. Once… let's just say this went into effect, As it reads right now. You would not have the ability, without an ordinance change, to adopt… you couldn't eliminate the tiered system of TDM requirements, because that's mandatory.

[74:03] Without a code change. However, if… we can start tracking vehicles via GPS signal. And we want to use that as the methodology for trip generation versus our current one, which is tube and camera. Then that's why that's under permissive. Because we could change… the methodology. Yeah, we could easier change the rule. To require or allow for a different methodology. I guess I don't understand why… changing the rule would be different for something that's mandatory versus permissive, right? If it's mandatory, that just means it has to be done. There has to be a rule about that. If it's in the permissive rulemaking section, that means there doesn't have to be a rule about it. You could adopt a rule about it. But you don't have to.

[75:01] But if you want to change that rule, you still have to go through an ordinance change, whether it's permissive or mandatory, right? If you want to change the rule, you have to go through the rule amendment process, but not an ordinance change. So you… the rule would have to have a I think it's a tiered system of TDM requirements, so it would always have to have that, but we could… Change, for example, in the rule, and only allow One true reduction. measure, and no other options. And right now, we're creating a menu of options. So those… Those details could be changed as we learn what works and what doesn't work, what programs that… bus passes might not be available in the future. It's those kinds of changes that might happen that, we're hoping to be able to respond to quickly by setting it up in this way.

[76:02] I'm… I guess I'm still not following, because the permissive section says things like, Setting trip generation requirements. So… The rule doesn't have to have trip generation requirements, is what that says to me. And the rule does not have to have methods for determining trip generation requirements. And the rule does not have to have methods to conduct a trip… a vehicle trip generation study. Like, all of these elements appear to be optional. That's right. Okay, alright. Thank you for answering that question. Okay, I think Kurt's got a colloquy on that one. Yeah, I just had, sort of a more basic question about rulemaking, and you kind of answered it before, but… I've never dealt with this before, so I'm trying to understand the process. So… The city manager, at any time, Can change a rule.

[77:02] Or decide to change a rule. You… the city publishes the rule. if I understand correctly, there's public comment And then… the… I guess the city manager can consider the public comment or not, and then it goes… potentially goes into effect? Is that…? Is that the process? Yes. Okay, so there's no board input, there's no council input, anything like that? That's right. Okay. And what… Well, I guess the… The public input is just for the city manager's edification, sort of. To allow them to change. But… they can… yeah. Yeah, and if the city manager makes significant changes because of feedback that's come in, then there would be a new publication period with the revised rules. Yeah. But it's up to the city manager whether or not to implement what the public might propose.

[78:07] Yo. Okay, thank you. … Okay, we're gonna go to Mason. So, I have a couple questions, hopefully I can draw them off quickly. I think they're a little more straightforward than what we've been discussing just now. So these are annual fees. Are they considered on a pro-rata basis? Like, what if a project is completed in December? Do they pay the full annual? … It applies per use, and… It's established at the building permit process, so if there's a project that has several buildings. it would come online… it would be determined for each building as it comes online, and that building permit process. So it's not pro-rata, so depending on when that happens in the year, they may pay a full year for a partial year.

[79:04] people. Oh, and … No, the year… Sorry, I misunderstood your question. Payment is due… … I think payment is due prior to building permit issuance, and then the TDM is finalized prior to a certificate of occupancy, and then I think within 60 years of certificate of… 60 days. 60 days of certificate of occupants issuance a year later. it has to be replenished. So, each project has a different start date for that year, depending on when they go online. Okay, great. For each building. That makes sense. … So… I have to stop myself from always thinking my questions are gonna make me sound dumb, because I think that's just how they are. So, does the staff see a centralized TDM fund as an option rather than project-specific escrow accounts?

[80:07] … I guess what I'm trying to get at with this question is, like, how significant is staff time burden expected under the current AFG structure, and is simplification worth exploring? So, certainly any new program's gonna have some additional staff time requirements. Sure. You know, for the transportation and mobility staff. you know, when I look at my work program, I would say I, you know. You know, currently spend maybe 5-10% of my FTE time on development and review projects and reviewing TDM plans. you know, … I think I'm estimating that… you know, after a few years, because the first 3 years are kind of going to be the same as what we do now, in terms of escrow accounts coming in. It's really kind of year 4 and 5 and 6 that you have the accumulation of projects that you need to monitor.

[81:02] But I estimate, you know, when this program is fully functioning, probably, you know, a .25 FTE total would be required to manage this program. I think, you know, a lot of that could be… done under our current staffing situation. I think that, you know, the finance department, in terms of the number of escrow accounts that they manage, will have… also have an impact long-term as they manage more and more, and they, you know, they used to stop after 3 years just for those DBM requirements, but those will continue over time. You know, they're receiving money, they're holding it, and they're dispersing it, so, but there's likely to be a FT impact down the road in finance as well. I'm really hoping that for the Planning and Development Service frontline staff. that this is a simplification process. You know, they're no longer having to deal with the negotiation back and forth of DDM plans during site review. When a project comes in, it's like, okay, what's your land use? What's your size? Okay, your tier this.

[82:05] here's what your annual financial guarantee is, you know, and then the rest of that work comes on to us. So hopefully, you know, it's a simplification for the planning and development services, but it is, you know, there's certainly gonna be… have a need to reallocate our time and what we do. To manage the programs, but, you know, in the future when they start accumulating and staying. That's where we're gonna see it, but it, you know, hopefully Way further down the road. I just wanted to make sure I heard correctly. Did you say a .25 FTE, not 2.5 FTE? Okay, I just wanted to clarify that. Now, go into the exempt… groups, so… Tier Zero. Rather than being exempt, have you all considered a lightweight automatic measure, like requiring unbuttled parking, or a nominal fee in lieu to the TDM? …

[83:02] I would say we… we did not spend a lot of time thinking about those options. We were, I think, most concerned about setting up a system where the smallest projects don't require any staff time or resources. Let them… let them be exempt, and let's focus our attention on those. So, that would be kind of the reason why we haven't. You know, it's certainly an option, and then, you know, some… ordinances across the country have some of those very minimal requirements that we could do. And I think the other part of your question that I think I failed to answer is about, kind of, the pooled program. So there are TDM Ordinance programs, in the country that instead of, you know, like the property owner, developer. having money go directly to their tenants, it goes to a pooled fund, and then those pooled funds, you know, in the case of the city, may be used to augment our EcoPass subsidy program, or the business ecopass rebate program. I think, you know, when we looked at…

[84:07] The desire to… … Create behavior change and have an ongoing contribution of this ordinance to meeting goals that it really required that… direct, … program. access to the tenants of that new development, so… but we certainly considered it and looked at options. Okay, thank you. … So, I saw that RH67 and MB4 are exempt and governed by a different TDM code section. I read that TDM code section, and it just seemed standard, what I'm used to seeing. Why are those areas exempt? Why is that area not being updated? I feel like we've covered this, but I don't remember hearing it today. Yeah, you know, we have in the… we have border junction going, we have, I think, a successful TDM program occurring in that area with those lands. So these are all just those special areas? Those are those special areas. We are seeing some of those uses being used in other areas.

[85:11] And, you know, it certainly is an issue that we're wrestling with, as it's… As those land uses are being, you know. Propose for another… for other areas, because… I think the reason why the Boulder Junction approach works so well is because it's the district That does it, and we have a clause that's like, well, you have to meet these requirements, and you can meet them two ways. You can do it on your own, or you can join the district, and the district provides the benefits and the means to meet those requirements, and … I guess part of me didn't want to… mess up the good thing we got going in there. Follow-on question. Great questions, Mason, thank you. My follow-on question is. the, … and I should have looked up the three zones, but do they apply to, … and again, the nomenclature here keeps changing. TVAP1, and not to TVAP 2.

[86:08] is… or… Or would those three zones, their current TDM plans, apply as TVAP 2 is developed east of the tracks? I think if, in TVAP 2, properties redevelop and change into those new land uses, then It would continue… Yeah, if the properties in TVAB2 would rezone to one of those zoning districts that is subject to those requirements. So MU4 is one of them. It's probably likely that some properties there would change to MU4. And I would hope that they would join the district. Okay, thank you. Great. So… I was reading up on ITE, definitely not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I was wondering if you all have considered other metrics other than ITE trip targets, like mode share.

[87:08] You know, certainly we looked at a variety. There's different ways to measure success, as I put it. you know, vehicle trip generation, I think, is a, … A very quantifiable number. That can be seen and observed. Surveys? Less so. And so I, as a, you know. I'd like to err on the side of having Direct, observable, quantified information. Rather than a survey, but we do know that, you know, we need a backup plan, so we have developed a survey methodology for that. You know, and we used… you know, ITE in the Boulder Junction ones and our ordinance. We've used it in, I think, the Alpine Balsam area as well, and so it's also kind of that continuation of that. So my understanding is the ITE

[88:11] … data is really structured around suburban, highly trafficked areas. Are there any adjustments being applied to that to meet our specific conditions? Yeah, so we certainly understand that Boulder travels differently from ITE. And, you know, we under, you know, the 30% reduction, if ITEs were… Completely accurate. 30% reduction is a huge achievement for TDM. So, what we understand is, and this is based on years of looking at traffic analysis, and with consultants that we've used for years, and, you know, people like Bill Fox, who have worked in the city of Boulder for years, I guess he's retired now, but, you know, he often said that…

[89:01] Border travels differently. We have a lower trip generation than ITE. generally around 20%. It varies by land use, some 10, some more, but, you know, you can pretty much take a 20% discount off of IT. So we kind of build that into our assumptions. Of trip generation reductions, knowing that on its own, 30 would be a significant change, but if you're going for more, like, a… maybe around a 15 or 20 to a 30, it's an achievable goal. Great. So I'm hearing there's, like, a little bit of sandbagging, it's just really, we're shooting for 10 to 15, maybe? But, yeah, according to the IT, it would be a 30% reduction, yeah. Before, Mason, your questions are just so good, I have to chime in here, so if you'll allow me, … Okay. In the case of ITE, we have, we're applying a 30% reduction as the goal, regardless of, kind of, the situation. So, two, two things come to mind. A, a student

[90:09] Housing. That is literally one block away from campus, where a 30% reduction is kind of like, I can… do that with both hands tied behind my back. And it's not even a particularly meaningful amount of trip reduction From what would be the natural usage for that population in that location. Versus… a medic… a 30,000 square foot medical center, which would put it in Tier 1, I believe, right? So, a 30,000 square foot medical orthopedic surgery center. in East Boulder, on Pearl Parkway. Poor access to transit. a clientele that drives to get there because they're not allowed to drive home, I mean, etc. And so suddenly, 30%

[91:05] Especially if it's a county-wide draw, or even broader. 30% might be impossible. So why wouldn't we, under our permissive rulemaking, not be more situational? Well, I think that's why we have it to be able to be adjusted within those city manager rules, so that we have some flexibility in adjusting just for that reason. I think another example is retail. Like, the money from the annual financial guarantees is targeted to the employees of that retail. it doesn't affect the customer travel, and like, in your case, the clientele of a medical office. It's focused on those employees and doing that, but, you know, we have those numbers in the city manager rules so that we can make those types of adjustments to targets, because we definitely understand that. I mean, we know if every Boulder citizen traveled like a CU student, we'd meet every one of our TMP goals tomorrow.

[92:12] Okay, thank you. Okay, Mason, sorry. Yep. Okay. Since we're on… okay. Is that right? Yeah, go ahead. So I have two questions. First of all. I don't have a copy of the most recent ITETG to my… You have to be a incredible dismay. My wife happens to be a member, but she still doesn't buy the… Manual. But I… my understanding is… is that it actually has gotten much more granular in terms of the location, so it's not… it's no longer strictly suburban. They have it broken down based on suburban, urban… Yeah, they have, like, a central business district type thing. Right, yeah. But… Our numbers, like, for residential, we're saying 3.95 per unit.

[93:03] Where is that coming from? Is that… is that some average across land uses within… ITETG, or is it… Did we choose a particular one? I'm just trying to figure out how we got that, because… It is much… it is more complicated than that, I think, currently. Yeah, I mean, we were looking at trip generation rates by land use, and then thinking about what that reduction would be based on that, but I don't know. Yes, I'd welcome Ulla Hester from Alta. Press the button… there we go. Yep, there you go. Thank you. I can speak to that. So we did, try to look at the most commonly… They lean in and speak loud. We did try to look at the most commonly, … referenced or… or… the, the types of, of housing, that's most commonly developed in Boulder. So, here we're looking, for example, at multifamily housing, low-rise and mid-rise,

[94:04] And we… it averaged out over different types of categories that were most comparable to the housing that's being built here. So, … you know, trying to adjust as much as possible. I should also say that, one of the reasons… we didn't necessarily go into so much detail to set very specific differences, in the trip reduction targets is because, to some degree, it's baked into the different land use, categories that we've chosen, right? So, you know, the, like, the medical center is, you know. has a baked and different trip generation, you know, anywhere in the country, you know, that's… that's reflected in the ITE generation rates. Housing is slightly different because, you know, you can, like you said, you can have housing right next to a university, or you can have housing out, you know, in the middle of nowhere, where, you know, it's much, much harder to… to get to, and it has a different interpretation rates. But by

[95:04] narrowing it down to multifamily housing, you know, that's comparable to what's being built here, it's kind of baked into that. The other reason is we just don't have any better numbers, you know? Like, IT is pretty much the standard that's out there, and, by allowing us to, Have it in the rulemaking that allows us to collect the data, that we'll be collecting through the monitoring process, and then make adjustments in the future, to those trip generation targets. Is that helpful? Yeah, that was helpful. My other question on this subject is… so, ITETG He's just talking about trip generation. It's not talking specifically about vehicular trip generation. And yet, that's what we're focusing on here. And so

[96:00] sometimes it feels like sometimes we're talking about trip generation, where we really mean vehicular trip generation, because I think… If people go out and walk. someplace, and then they come home, and then they go out and walk someplace, and then they come home. That's not something we're trying to control for here, right? Exactly. We're looking at… So it really is vehicular trip generation. Okay. And so, when we take the 30% off, That's the… that's off. the ITE total Trip generation number. Is that correct? Because they don't… they don't do a mode split. In ITETG. The ITE trip generation is vehicular trip generation, so it does not take into account anybody who walks up, or… Oh, the actual measurements are only vehicular? That's correct. I see. Okay, they should rename the book.

[97:02] Yeah, yeah. True. Okay, okay, that's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, okay, that helps. Thank you. Mason, back to you. … Where was I? … Yeah, just two more. So, my understanding is that it's the property owner or developer who's paying for the trip generation studies or the survey, correct? Correct. Do we have a sense of how much a survey versus a trip generation costs? who was familiar with trip generation studies? So we've been looking at, for the trip generation studies, probably $2,500 to $3,000. It depends on the size of the property, the number of entrances, you know, it can be less, it can be… probably not much more than that. Surveys are relatively inexpensive, because we're probably just talking staff time. We… the city would be providing, really detailed guidelines on what that survey needs to look like, so it's, you know, a little bit of staff time for the property manager, or the employer.

[98:15] Yeah, thank you. And then my last question, … I saw that there's specific language around who can do trip generation, what kind of qualifications they have, but there's not any language around who can do a survey. Is there any reason for that? Yeah, I don't know. We've discussed it. Phrase it better. So, … No, we're… lights on. There you go. Okay, sorry. … Because we will be providing, the actual survey questions, we will leave it up to the property manager and the employer to implement the survey, so, they can do that in a paper format, or they can do it in an online format, but it has to comply with the, you know, exact

[99:04] specifications that the city will be providing. Great. Yeah, and I believe it was a comment from TAB to have a certified person do the trip count. Okay, Claudia, I think you're up. So the vast majority of my questions have already been asked. I appreciate my colleagues for being so thorough. I actually just have two left at this point. One of them has to do with, actually, the, the first set of proposed rules, so not the ordinance, but, what that city manager draft rule looks like. And that is… I saw that unbundled parking is proposed as a specific requirement for Tier 2, but only for Tier 2 projects, and I wondered if you could say a little bit more about that decision? Yes, I wrestled with, … planning board memo deadline of whether or not I should have HELA change that to both Tier 1 and Tier 2.

[100:04] Because I thought the same thing. I thought, currently, right now, if a TDM program came by and it was, like, a 50-unit thing, I would be like, yeah, we should have a bundled parking. So, that is something that I… Wanted to do, and we were just up against the deadline, and we said. we would offer that we would certainly make that change, and we think it's an appropriate change. Okay, thank you. I will return to that in my comments later. My other question was, building on this discussion of the rulemaking process, and thank you, Hela, for laying that out for us, what recourse is there for the community? If city rules at some time in the future, turn out to be too laxed, or they're unenforced, whether due to leadership changes, staffing changes, budget constraints, etc, like… How do we get this thing back on track if we're doing this outside of an ordinance process?

[101:13] Feedback to your elected officials. Okay, so that's it. Like, is there… Yeah, I had some questions. I think you answered some of this about the city rulemaking process. Like, when rules are changed, etc, that does go through at least some public visibility. Yeah, there has to be a publication about it, yeah. Okay. But otherwise, just up to folks to notice, like, hey, this is not working. Yeah, and of course, people are always welcome to contact staff directly if they're seeing any issues. Okay, thanks. Okay, I'm gonna ask one that's a follow-on, and then we'll come back to you, Laura, okay? …

[102:00] The follow-on to the, sump or unbundled and paid parking. Back in May, so in preparation for this, I watched Parts of the… August 24, it was almost exactly a year ago that we were here, at our first discussion of this, and then in May, we really dealt with the parking aspect of it in Ordinance 8696, I believe. In the May meeting, this… Board voted 6-0 to recommend that… And with a great deal of discussion and wordsmithing, that… Anytime We mandate unbundled parking. that the city consider… my word was shall, but it was toned down to consider. … an NPP zone. Around that property.

[103:03] did that go to Council? Was that… Part of the modified ordinance based on our recommendation. Or did that disappear into the ether? No, I would say that… With the third… with the other leg of the stool being the residential access management. plan or program. That's where that type of thing is now… we have the ability to look at and propose changes to public right-of-way in those areas that are adjacent to new development. And one of those tools Could be a neighborhood parking permit program. So that was, like, … the… one of the other legs of the stool to deal with that situation if there were, you know, negative impacts on the surrounding neighborhood, that the… those types of tools can be used.

[104:03] By the city. So, I feel that we followed through on the spirit of that as best we could. Okay, thank you. And I, like Claudia, have had lots of questions answered, and so if you have unanswered ones. Your turn again. Thanks, just a couple. So, so one is… … When it talks about the different packages. One of the packages, it says, … the measures in the option chosen must be offered to all residents, or to all employees. Does that mean… so, for example, in the EcoPass Plus. if I'm a resident, I get offered an EcoPass, a B-Cycle membership, a Vanpool subsidy, and a minimum of $180 a year flexible subsidy that I can get reimbursed for qualifying expenses. I could have all of those things.

[105:07] And every employee could say, yes, I want all 4 of those things. Potentially, yes. I think yes. Yeah. Okay, alright, so everybody gets offered them, and they get to say yes or no to every single one of those. Okay, alright, that's great. And I think, you know. the TDM plan that we create you know, for those tenants, you know, for example, like, vanpooling is more of a commercial side, an employee side, not necessarily a… a resident site. So, there's some… strategies that are more appropriate on the employee side versus more appropriate on the resident side, but I think we'll have the ability to say, look at that situation and say, alright, these are the types of benefits that should be required in this situation. So it may not be the full laundry list. Gotcha, and I apologize, I misspoke. I think the vanpool was offered for employees and for residents. Instead of a vanpool, it says a car share application fee. It's kind of, yeah, the analogous side of things. Okay, alright, great, thank you. But where it says they must… I was just curious about this language.

[106:18] the measures in the option chosen must be offered, and so that means they all must be offered. If they choose that package, every person has access to each of those things that are offered. Alright, thank you. And then… On, page 76 of the memo, which is page 86 in our packet. It talks about the three kinds of packages. And there's, like, the EcoPass Plus, the parking cash out, and then there's this custom option. And each one has kind of a dollar value assigned to it, and the custom option looks like the dollar value is a lot lower. And I was just curious about what the thinking was there, because then, why wouldn't everybody choose the custom option that's a lower value? A lower cost? Well, I think, you know, one staff has to approve it, so not everybody can just

[107:08] do a custom option. I think that custom option is there, really, for something very creative and innovative. We don't really have… hard costs of TDM programs or services to… use for that one, but I think, you know, really it's the case of, you know, it's a stat… staff approves the TDM plan, and, you know, the customized Option is really saved for. Those really special circumstances of… You know, clearly something that's innovative and something we haven't done before, but we would be willing to try. I might… I might add on to that. I read the custom option as something a property owner can choose, but it would be reviewed by staff against whether or not it would result in a generally equivalent reduction in estimated trips. So that's the standard that would have to be met and is reviewed by staff. Yeah.

[108:08] Okay, thank you. And then my last question… It's about the Boulder Junction exemption. that this ordinance doesn't apply to those land use zones, why not just specify Boulder Junction instead of specifying the land use zones? the zoning. It… We have those zoning districts in other locations, and we recently adopted to production standards for the Alpen-Baltimore area and east. East Boulder. Those are under those standards if a property has that particular zoning. Okay, so those… those zonings also apply in places that have these innovative parking districts like Boulder Junction. Is there something similar in Alpine Balsam, and something similar in East Boulder?

[109:02] Well, I think when we first started the Alpine Balsam Area Plan, we were… Envisioning that a district approach could be used. And I think as we… Went through that process, we realized that maybe a district approach would not be a viable way of doing things, and… But, I bet hella speak. I think that's correct, and I think… there's maybe still the hope to potentially do a district in East Boulder. At some point, too, but that's kind of how it developed over time. I think those standards were also… developed at a time where there were no minimum parking requirements and maximum standards, and those ARs still have maximum parking, limitations, I guess. So that was always different. in those districts, and played into how those requirements for those districts were created. And we just let it stand on its own for now.

[110:04] Okay. I'm not as familiar with all the details. I guess I was just wanting to put the question out, would it make more sense to make that exemption specific to areas that have their own parking district, rather than to the land… the zoning? I think it's a good question, that it could be… Tied to the actual use of a general improvement district. with those land uses. That's something we can… Think about. I'm not going to propose a change on that, because I don't feel like I understand it well enough, but I just want to put the question out to you. Yeah, no, it's an interesting concept. And the other thing that just occurred to me as a difference. We don't have the… I think we have different triggers for compliance. probably lower in those areas. Yeah, in Boulder Junction, the… We mean the size, like, size or trip generation?

[111:04] size, for when you have to comply. And, and then trip generation. differs based on the location. Boulder Junction has much higher trip generation requirement than the other areas that have less connectivity at this point. We are anticipating a train. Okay, well, if it makes sense to you all to do it by zoning, I'm not going to push back on that, I just wanted to ask the question. No, it's an interesting question, thank you. Kurt, you've got a follow-up? Follow on. Follow-up, yeah, and then some other questions. Okay. I don't know. Let me do my… I guess it's… it's sort of a follow-up, it's more of a tangent, I guess, but it is still on these three… our MU4, RH6, RH7. You said that that was… that program…

[112:01] in operating in the General Improvement District, in… Boulder Junction is very successful, right? And really, the program, as it's being envisioned here, the BCTC would kind of take the role of… the General Improvement District in terms of Managing things, is that right? Well, it certainly is a possibility. I think we're looking at whether or not, you know, they don't have a membership structure, as I said, so that's why we're investigating that. But currently, as part of BCTC's annual contract with the city. is, a task to help manage the day-to-day operations of Boulder Junction. And so, like, if a Google employee who works in Boulder Junction, you know, when we used to have physical Eco Passes, would have lost theirs, you know, they would go to BCTC. They're providing, kind of, on-the-ground service in that area. They're also working with the property managers to make sure that when a new…

[113:07] resident moves in, that they get their welcome kit that shows, hey, here's how you get your B-Cycle membership, how to get your car share membership. And so they have a role right now in Boulder Junction, kind of providing some of that, kind of operational assistance to implementing that program. And that's why I think, you know, when we thought about this program, is there an analogous role that they could play providing that technical assistance in the implementation and operation of a TDM? program. Okay, thank you, that's helpful. But really, fundamentally, the question is, if that program is successful, which it sounds like it is, then why aren't we just duplicating that citywide? Well, I would certainly say that, in… our TDM program, expansion of the district approach, is in our toolbox.

[114:01] I would love to see. more… general improvement districts in our area, because we know it works. It fulfills the same function of providing the money to pay for these annual programs. It's just a different mechanism, property taxes versus these guarantees. But, you know, for a district to really function… you need a sizable amount of properties to get together to do it. RTD has specific thresholds for establishing master contracts. Which is really the foundation of the district approach for providing things like eco passes. You know, we have a master contract in downtown, we have a master contract in Boulder Junction, we have one on Uni Hill. But yeah, I think, you know, over time, when we thought about, like, East Arapaho and all the work in, I guess, the East Boulder Subcommunity Plan, that, like, this would be another great area to have a district approach.

[115:04] that has a general improvement district, collects property taxes, and fulfills the same function as this. So I think it's certainly, you know, part of our plan. I would love to see more districts. Being created, but it does take a certain size. It takes property owners also voting to tax themselves. So it requires that. Okay, so you're saying that the system that we have that's associated with those… zone districts only works in the context of a general improvement district? Yeah, the master contracts. Okay. But, like, in terms of the code, the actual code, in 9921, or whatever that is. I guess the question is, why can't we just use that same code instead of this completely different code.

[116:01] Right? Why can't we just use that same code? To apply to all the other new projects that are coming up. New land uses. Yeah, because that doesn't talk specifically about the General Improvement District. In the code, I don't think. Yeah, it was a more complicated scheme. It was all set up when the TVAB area was developed, and… the way it was set up is very, very high trip generation requirements were established, and you either had to meet those on your own, or you joined the district. So that was the incentive to join the district, because it was going to be very, very hard. to meet the trip generation requirements. So it was just established under different circumstances, and I think everybody who would be subject to it was upzoning. So… you got more development potential, and that this came with it. But it also applies whenever additional floor area is added. Then the development has to comply with it. So, if we applied this everywhere, I think we would have to…

[117:10] Add a significant amount of staffing, because every development that would come through and add any kind of floor area would have to comply with it. Are you… Finishing up. on this question? Okay, alright, okay. Can I keep going? Yeah, keep going, but we've gone for 2 hours now, and, … Anyway, just… Yep. Okay. It's getting close. … Do you have this Exhibit A, which is the changes in the DCS, Can you talk about what the intent Of that is… It changes, I think, 2.03i. In the DCOs?

[118:03] Yeah, I think the intent, that kind of went hand-in-hand with the changes that we made to site review. The traffic studies often, or typically have to be done in site review, and we… Wanted to create a parallel That that would be based on… Infrastructure improvement versus programmatic approaches, because The programmatic approaches would not be considered in site review anymore. Okay… I see, so… And we simplified the language. What's that? And we simplified the language a little bit. Right, yeah. Okay. Okay, thank you. … My next question is a specific one about the numbers, the requirements for residential uses, and you specifically call out attached residential, ELUs, something else. You don't include detached.

[119:07] But sometimes there are projects that have a mix of attached, detached, various kinds of uses, like the Mapleton Academy, whatever that project is called. up on 3rd and Mapleton, right? That has detached units. It also has a lot of attached units. So, would the requirements not even apply to the attached portion? That part's not clear to… the detached part portion, sorry, yeah, that's not clear to me. Yeah, the requirements apply by use. So it would only apply to the attached. And it actually… the requirements apply by use and by building. And we talked about that aspect of it, and part of why we ended up doing it that way is

[120:04] Because this also applies outside of site review, and… if you have a bigger site review area, it gets a lot more complicated if you have different users and different ownerships to manage one TDM plan, so we created a basic requirement that applies by use, but also created some, flexibility to allow for the creation of a bigger TDM plan that addresses several uses, but the base requirement is by use and building. Okay, so if I understand correctly, if a project includes detached presidential. There's no… There's no requirement at all with regards to those. That's correct. Even though they probably have the highest per unit. Trip generation, right?

[121:00] Okay. … Okay, and then I think my last question… You'll be glad to know. Is, in the different options, so… the… under Tier 1, for example, there… there are different options. There's the… The main option, and then there's the parking cash out, and then there's a custom. But the parking cash out just applies to, it seems to me, to whoever uses it, right? And so, if… For instance, you have a Tier 1 project, And it's got… A small amount of parking, and nobody uses the parking cash out. then… They would have to… they would have zero… AFG requirement, is that correct, based on that?

[122:07] Parking cash out as a… Good sick. We have some parking. Cash up. So… Only a small amount of parking. Probably. Excellent.

[123:04] So that, that's happening. I don't think your mic is on. I apologize, sorry. What I was saying… should I repeat myself? Yeah, if you could. Thank you. Yeah, so a parking cash-out program is essentially when an employer provides employee parking. And an employee has the option of using that employee parking, or taking a parking cash out. And they're not using that parking, and they use the money that they receive in the parking cash out to pay for other types of… however else they're getting to work. They could buy transit passes with it, they could buy a B-Cycle membership, they could use Lime scooters. to get. So, I think in the situation which I thought you described was that

[124:00] A small amount of parking. At a development, they would probably very aggressively want to use a parking cash-out program, so that small amount of parking would work. for their employee base. Okay, yeah, so I probably shouldn't have said small amount of parking. That part was a distraction. Really, the question was, the payment, it seems like, is based just on the number of people who are actually using the parking cash out. And if For whatever reason, few or none of the employees want it, then… the AFG number would be very small. Or you could offer higher incentives to those that do use it. So it could cover… fully cover the cost of their transit passes. For example. You're, … I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name. Just to clarify, so the AFG will be set on specific uptake assumptions, so not necessarily on

[125:02] the actual uptake, particularly at the beginning. So we'd be saying, well, let's assume 50% of employees will, you know, take the employer up on this offer of parking cash out. That's what the AFG will be set at. There will then likely be some assumptions in the future based on that, but… if it turns out that nobody takes up their employer on this offer, and they don't meet their trip generation targets, then they're going to have to figure out something else, right? So, there's an adjustment to the TDM plan that's kind of baked into the process as well, to make sure that, you know, those trip generation targets are going to be met. Does that make sense? Okay, yup, thank you. You're welcome. Okay, last call for any super important critical questions here, and then we'll go to the public hearing. Anybody? Great. Okay. I don't mean to be quick, ML or George, if you have…

[126:03] Shout if you have any final questions. … Okay, I'm gonna suggest we go to the public hearing, and then, we'll take a 5-minute break, and then come back and, deliberate. So, Thomas, I assume Vivian's gone, and you're going to do our public hearing, moderation, and, … Do we have anyone online? We did have one attendee up until now, but actually we have nobody in the attendee lists online, and I don't believe we have anybody here from the public to speak in the room, so… Okay. … I think we can go ahead and proceed. I'm going to officially open and close the, public hearing, and, call a break. … to, 8.

[127:02] 8, 15. Fine. Okay, we'll see everybody back here at 8.15.

[135:42] the, … Meeting back to order here at 8.16, and, we are… And we've concluded. with, … everything in regard to this agenda item, with the exception of board deliberation. And so, I think before, I'm going to suggest that, if board members have

[136:07] General thoughts that would… help inform a motion or modifications to the suggested motion language. Anyway, I think a quick round of Thoughts about the ordinance would be in order, but again, the focus would be on, If, in fact, you Support the ordinance. If you have changes that you're considering proposing. etc. So, but I would like to see us, get this… concluded within a half an hour or so. So, does anyone want to begin with general comments, or… Thoughts? Mason, you raised your hand. You're ready, this is good.

[137:03] General thoughts? So first, thank you for the work that's gone into this ordinance. The framework is thoughtful, aligns development costs with transportation impacts, provides clear tools to move Boulder toward its transportation and climate goals. I especially appreciate the tiered approach and the focus on measurable outcomes. The area I continue to wrestle with, something I think staff are wrestling with too, is how to balance flexibility with enforceability. It would be ideal if the rules were comprehensive and clear. I understand why that can't be, why the flexibility is needed now, but I think we should strive to move towards that direction as the program matures. These are… these next comments are what I… what I would like to see changed. I'm not going to propose a motion on these, but these… I think these should be considered. The tiered focus on large projects makes sense, but accepting small ones risk cumulative impacts slipping through. Light touch requirements like unbuttled parking requirements could ensure smaller projects still contribute without adding heavy burdens.

[138:03] I'd also like to see language around how surveys can be administered, when rigorous surveys can provide information nearly as reliable as an ITE study, while also capturing other useful metrics such as parking utilization and mode selection. Finally, I'd caution against a per-bedroom methodology, since it penalizes housing types with more smaller units. The square footage basis offers a more consistent comparison across developments, and the current methodology seems to strike that balance. Excellent. Thank you, Mason. … Anybody else with… comments or thoughts? Kurt's pulling his mic down. I know. Mark, I have my hand up as well. Oh, I'm sorry, ML, I'm gonna go to you. Kurt go, I'm fine, just… next. I'm in line. We'll go Kurt and ML, okay? Great, thank you, ML. Sorry to, …

[139:03] cut in front of you. So first of all, thanks to staff and the consultant for all the work on this. I know it's been a really complex thing, and obviously a lot of Effort has gone into this. … And, I think, you know, in general, having a robust and effective DDM plan, obviously, is very, very important, and so there's a lot here that I like. There, there are a few… I'll focus on the things that I'm concerned about. … The first one is just the overall complexity. There's a lot going on here, and it's difficult for us to understand. I think it would be difficult for a developer, an applicant to understand, and so that definitely is a concern.

[140:01] … Mason was just talking about the… and this is kind of a detail, but the per-dwelling unit… measurement for residential, that, is not something that I support. I definitely think it should be per square foot. I think that that is where we've been going with other measurements, and should be the way we have… are here. I'm concerned about the lack of a sunset for this program. I raised this when it came to us before. I'm concerned about it from a number of standpoints. One is just that Forever is a long time, and to say that people are going to be required to make these payments indefinitely, regardless of, you know, what might change in the world, seems odd to me, and I also, concomitantly, I have concerns about the ever-increasing amount of enforcement,

[141:08] or verification requirements on staff. So, I think you talked about .25 FTE, but it seems like that's just gonna increase over time. And eventually, I could see it becoming a really big endeavor, keeping track of all these things. And so, I don't know… I'm just… I'm worried about it becoming this… this… big bureaucracy. … And the sunset would be one way of addressing that. You also mentioned something very interesting, which I had been thinking of as well. You talked about a pooled fund. And I was thinking of it as sort of an in-lieu alternative to some of these payments, where… Instead of trying to get

[142:05] A particular… a project's particular demographic, whether it be employees or residents or whatever. to change their behavior, to think more holistically at the big picture level about how can we use money in the city most effectively to reduce VMT, for example. The transportation report on project just went to TAB, And the… one of the points where there was not progress, there has definitely been regression, is on transit service. There's a… from 2019 to 2024, there was about a 25… no, a 33% reduction in transit hours. transit service hours in the city. Well, that… That makes it hard to get people to ride transit, EcoPass or no EcoPass, you know, whatever kind of incentives you give, if there's not enough

[143:06] frequency of transit, if transit lines are being cut, and so on. … then… It just is not gonna work for a lot of people. And so, I could imagine that a lot of the money that, under this proposal, would be going to try to sort of desperately convince people driving in from Erie to work in Gun Barrel, or whatever, to change their mode could be used way more effectively to, for instance, add transit service in the city if there were some… this sort of pooled fund Option? … So, I would really like to see that considered. And my final concern is just about the rulemaking in general. I appreciate the flexibility that the rulemaking provides us. You know, we have seen

[144:11] How incredibly difficult it is to change even some of the simplest code in… in the… in the Boulder Revised Code. And I'm not sure why it is that way, but it's the way the city operates, and so I like the idea of not having that Huge… impediment. On the other hand. I am very much concerned about the lack of public process. in the rulemaking procedure, I mean, just publishing a notice, and then letting people Comment or not, and then… potentially just going ahead, it doesn't feel very responsive, so I don't know what the solution is to that, but…

[145:02] I would love if there were a mechanism that allowed for more dynamic, more nimble change, but also that gave more of a mechanism for public involvement, for public input, for not necessarily planning board, but Some sort of board-level review or council review, to specifically, you know, provide a forum for people to give their input on these kinds of changes. So, those are my concerns. As I said at the beginning, overall, I'm really grateful for all the work that's been done. and the direction that things are going, but I do have substantial concerns around those items. Kurt, that was great, thank you. ML? Thank you. I would like to, again, thank staff for this, and I appreciate this as a starting point to trying to both understand and manage a world with no parking minimums. I think that is

[146:10] You know, the brave new world that we're staring at here. My significant questions have been addressed, and given that TDM benefits are mandatory, as, Hela, clarified. It's kind of irrelevant if you count units versus bedrooms, right? They're mandatory for all the… all the… either workers or residents. So the… the one thing I would like to do is to… is to formalize planning board support of the two tab recommendations. And I'm not sure if that, would show up as a motion, or how that would show up, but, I would like to lend this board support, if we have it, to the two recommendations that TAB, added to their motion. And… that's it. Thanks.

[147:03] Okay. Who else is… Laura? So I, too, want to thank staff for all of the work that went into this, and … I want to acknowledge, I was surprised to see how complex this was, because usually staff are trying to simplify and not take on additional complexity, and so I assume that all the complexity that is there It's because staff feels that that is useful for the administration of what you're trying to do and the goals that you're trying to achieve. And I was initially concerned about the fact that a lot of this was being pushed to city manager rulemaking and taken out of our oversight. I was much relieved of that concern. seeing the distinction between the infrastructure improvements that we still comment on, and that this is really just those programmatic elements that we really don't have much influence on anyway, right now, to date, as things are. Like, we don't… we don't say, you must have ecopasses, or you must have a vanpool, or you must have… like, parking cash out. We can suggest those things, but we don't require them in site review, and so I'm comfortable with

[148:06] staff's intent to formalize this, and to use the money for good, and to cover more things than just the eco-passes that are currently, required. So, I think this is a move in the right direction. I am curious to see how it will play out. and how staff may want to adjust in the future, but I am comfortable with staff taking that on and saying, we know this is probably going to need to change. It might not be forever, you know, like, if the world changes. and everybody's riding Segways, or Lyft and Uber become the thing that everybody does, and nobody owns a car, or there's some new technology we can't even fathom. I'm sure that this will get revised. So I'm pretty comfortable with it the way that it is, despite not being comfortable at first. I have been very assuaged. I think you've been very persuasive, Chris, and the other folks who've worked on this. And I appreciate that work. I have a couple of very small comments. That I would not make as motions, but I do think that membership in the BCTC would work better as voluntary rather than mandatory, if people want that level of technical assistance.

[149:11] I do agree with Tab that the way the cliffs are designed is a bit steep, and if that could be smoothed out somehow, so there's not this huge jump between You know, 100 units or less than 100 units, that would be good. But I don't know exactly what that looks like, and I don't know if tab's specific suggestion is the way to go, but I think that that should be smooth, if possible. And I do have a little, very small comment about on, page 62 of the memo, our packet, page 72, There's some language there that feels like it excludes micromobility or other un… yet as known alternatives to the single occupancy vehicle. It says, encourage transit use, ride sharing, and pedestrian and bicycle transportation to minimize single occupancy vehicle trips. but nothing else besides those four things, and so I might want to suggest a change to make that language a bit broader and more inclusive on memo page 62.

[150:08] And those are my comments. Great, thank you, Laura. George, you're back visually. Is this a good time for you? Oh, yeah, I, I, you know, I don't have any comments. It's, … this is a hard one, and there's a lot of devil in details, and I think to what's been said already, I think a lot of it has to be played out. This is certainly, one way to tackle it. I don't know if it's the right way, but I can't think of a better way, given what's been presented to us, so I appreciate that. My one comment, and the one comment I'll be asking is, I do think Whenever we put any kind of financial program in place in the city that's on an annual basis, it needs to have an escalator. It needs to have an escalator to capture inflation, to the point of even FTEs and city staff that's managing this. You guys, I would…

[151:11] think want raises every year. And so if these things are not keeping up with things, then more money is going to be going to city administration and less to the programs. And so I… and I would assume the programs will escalate over time as well. So that would be my one comment, as sort of a general comment. But outside of that, you know, I don't have… you guys have studied this much harder than I have, and so, … I trust that this is a starting point, and we'll go from there. Thanks. Great, thank you, George. Claudia. Okay, thank you. I want to start with the big picture here, that is that it has been a long process to get here with amps. I really appreciate, how over time, though, the rationale for this ordinance and all of its associated content

[152:07] Has evolved to include changes to travel behavior, contributions to the city's transportation and climate goals, in addition to just parking and traffic management. I think it's really important that we're doing this in conjunction with parking reform a few months later. But still in conjunction, and I'm looking forward to having that whole package implemented. We're not there quite yet, though, so I have a couple of comments. … First, I want to say I appreciate the choice that you're making to deal with most of the details here in a rulemaking process. It does come with trade-offs, hard trade-offs in some cases, but I support it. In the hopes that forward-looking best practices continue to inform city staff's work, and in the hopes that the flexibility that this provides will help us to find the right set of triggers, benefits, prices, etc. In a new approach, I really don't think we can spend another decade litigating changes if we actually need to update TDM in the future, so being able to make those updates is important.

[153:07] given the scale of our transportation and climate issues, I would always prefer to see more projects in the Tier 2 category, I just want to put that out there, to see higher financial guarantees required, with some exceptions, like affordable housing. But that obviously has to be addressed through rulemaking, so just a comment for the record. I'm not gonna try to put that into any motions. There are two specific things I'd like to capture in our advice to City Council. The first one, Chris, it sounds like, might be in process, but it matters to me, so I'm going to put it out there anyway, and that is I would like us to recommend that the proposed rules add unbundled parking as a requirement for Tier 1 projects. I don't see that as creating a significant additional financial or administrative burden for property owners. It's in line with other updates that we've made to parking policies, and I think it has the potential to multiply

[154:00] The kinds of financial incentives for individuals that we're trying to create in some of these other programs, like parking cash outs and transportation wallets. The second thing that I would like to pass on to City Council, as alluded to some folks here tonight, is to consider some kind of contribution to a pooled fund for Tier Zero developments. I think, especially as we're leaning towards encouraging more middle housing development in the city, things that are going to fall under some of those thresholds, we should still be thinking about transportation impacts and benefits for folks that, live in those places. And there may be other mechanisms other than TDM to do that. I know the city's had some thinking about something like transportation impact fees, etc. Maybe that's the place for it, but just to carry that idea forward, that we are trying to encourage more Smaller-scale housing in particular. Where it might be useful to have some of these programs. And then finally, I want to zoom back out to some of our questions that we've had about the balance of, programmatic versus infrastructure components in this measure.

[155:08] This particular board here has talked a lot about site-level transportation infrastructure in the 18 months that I've been here. We are consistently asking for tools to encourage things like best-in-class bike parking, pedestrian-first access points, usable transit facilities, etc. And I totally understand the logic of excluding those things from this TDM approach that you're proposing. But it's a big piece of the transportation puzzle, and I am afraid we're gonna lose it, at some point here, so… What I see is that programs, like we're talking about in TDM, they require ongoing commitments from both property owners and the city, right? Administrative burden on both sides. And that feels complicated, it feels precarious, and it feels expensive, and we're dealing with financial constraints right now. So I just want to make sure that even if we go forward with this policy, we're not giving up on infrastructure and the built environment, like, things that we can put in place when development happens, and it just stays there.

[156:07] And especially hope that we don't lose sight of that if we're hoping to put this kind of parking and transportation demand management discussion to bed for another decade, or hopefully longer, right? Like, let's make sure we address that piece, too, at some point. Great, thank you, Claudia. I'll just conclude by making a confession. Maybe it was the heat today, but as I really delved into my packet, I really walked right up to the ledge of… really opposing this. I found it complex, hard to, understand, it looked expensive. And I give a lot of credit to staff and my fellow board members for, Asking such great questions, and you having such great answers that, you know.

[157:03] I step back. So, and because this is a subject that I have been interested in now, going on 4 years on tab and 4 years Here on Planning Board. So, anyway, so, I continue to be impressed with my fellow board members and their, careful study of this kind of important ordinance, and I concur with every remark and suggestion that has been made. And I'll only say that, A couple, three things. The loss of discretion, and Laura, you're correct, we haven't had an ability to say, you shall do a parking cash-out. And so forth, but… I consider this a loss of discretion by planning board without adding certainty to the code. You know, developers come to us and say, gee, I wish I had more certainty. Certainty, to me, comes from

[158:08] more clarification, In the code, and, and a clearer code. This… this particular ordinance, and by moving it From a discretionary, not particularly effective planning board tool to a to a staff. tool doesn't… it's a discretionary staff tool, and it doesn't really make it any more clear, but as Kurt says, and others have pointed out, it does remove it even more from the public process. And so, I don't have a solution other than… Whether or not there should be, in essence, a planning board call-up process in-site review for a TDM plan. That, you know, that it gets submitted, here's the TDM plan, do you guys want to review this? Takes two members, something like that. So, anyway, some consideration.

[159:06] That, if we're going to keep this discretionary, move it to a more public process versus entirely behind the curtain with staff. And not that I'm distrustful of staff, but The public process is an important one. I also… I really hate it when people present you with a problem but don't have any solution, but I'm going to do it. And this plan has a heavy reliance on RTD when we have just almost no control over RTD. We can talk about reductions in service, we can talk about fares, we can talk about all sorts of things, and we really have Almost no effect on… on… on RTD, even with a great local representative, etc. It's just one of those things. So, anyway, it makes me concerned. I have no particular solution.

[160:01] And I want to concur with a couple board members. that in a subsequent, revision, I really think Tier Zero is an opportunity, and we've… I… as I reviewed the prior meetings, Tier Zero was brought up in those prior meetings. Is a significant opportunity. As, as we, get… modestly more dense, and we change our land use code to allow some greater flexibility. You know, gee, I would love to see a 4 or an 8-plex in North Boulder between Broadway and 19th. There's a lot of land up there that's still within the city limits, and so, I think they represent an opportunity To show the way for how infill development Can also be less impactful to… Neighbors, in terms of parking and so forth, and, …

[161:04] And help us reach our climate and equity goals. So, I think a project to take on Tier Zero in a way that encourages small development, would be a great next project. In general, excellent work, and and I commend staff and, board members for being so thorough and level-heaved. So, there we go. Okay. So now we're into, now we've done with all our comments. Does anyone want to make a motion And, in this case, I suggest we go ahead and start with a main motion, and then if people have specific amendments to make, they can, or we can rely on staff to, acknowledge our thoughts and comments and Go from there.

[162:00] Would you like me to put that? Please. Yes, that'd be great, thank you. May I ask a question while that's going up? You know, in reference to Mark's comments about, and some of the other board members' comments about this being less in the public view at Planning Board, I did notice that in the ordinance, when it talks about things that are included in a site review application. It does talk about infrastructure and improvements that support and encourage walking, biking, and other alternatives to the single occupant vehicle, and, if applicable, a preliminary intent statement of how the development will meet this TDM ordinance. And I guess my question for staff is, will that be something that you ask us to discuss in a site review? Is that somehow related to the site review criteria? this TDM, you know, this, … preliminary intent statement of how the development will meet the requirements of the TDM ordinance. Understanding that…

[163:00] We don't know who the tenant is, and that this will be tailored to the tenant, and that comes after site review, you know, long after site review, but… Is there something that can be included in the site review conversation to help us feel better about Our level of involvement. Yeah, that's a… that's a good question. We… we put that in there. There is no corresponding site review criterion related to programmatic elements, but… We put that in there so that developers would start thinking about the requirements they have to meet at a later time, and it might cause them… To consider putting in more infrastructure that might help them meet trip generation requirements and so forth. And just have a more holistic. approach and start thinking about it early on in the process. But it's not meant to be a requirement to be met in the site review. I think that's really helpful in terms of us thinking about how it relates to infrastructure, which is something that we do comment on. So, thank you so much.

[164:05] So I'd like to make a motion, … I'll just read the language. Planning Board recommends that City Council adopt proposed Ordinance 8713, amending Title IX Land Use Code BRC 1981 to adopt Transportation Demand Management. Requirements for new development, including related amendments to Chapter 2 of the City of Boulder Design and Construction Standards , originally adopted pursuant to Ordinance 8986 and setting forth related details. Second. Great, we have a motion and a second. Mason, as motion maker, any other, comments you'd like to make? None that haven't already been said, honestly. Okay. Alright, Claudia? All right, any other board discussion or deliberation on the motion?

[165:00] Did we want to add the amendment that Claudia proposed to, formalize what Chris was talking about? Which is slipping my mind, but Claudia… It was, SUMP and Tier 1, right? Sump and Tier 1, yes. Correct, that was my concern. I think that would be appropriate as a formal amendment to the suggestion about the ordinance, to say we recommend amending the ordinance, you know, we recommend to Council an amendment to the ordinance to do you know, the unbundled parking in Tier 1. I think the issue, and I'm not sure how to address this in motions, Laura, is that that was actually in the proposed rule. I mean… So we're making a recommendation here, at least in the main motion, on an ordinance. And we were given the proposed rule as an attachment, I think, supporting material, but… Not sure the best way to go forward with that.

[166:01] Perhaps a recommendation on staff as… from staff as to whether that should be a formal recommendation, or just something that you're gonna do anyway. I was just gonna say, you know, we can just plan on doing that for the City Council ordinance version. That's on tape. Okay. I wanted to do it, we just got pushed up against the desk. I'm satisfied with that, and also recognize, like, we're not going to see that in a proposed ordinance, we're going to see that in a rule. Yes, in the rules. That's a separate process. Thank you. Okay, I don't see any other hands raised, and, unless someone wants to Make one final comment, we'll go to a vote. Okay. Mason? Yes. Laura? Yes. Claudia? Yes. Kurt? Yes. George. Yes. ML. Yes. And I'm a yes. So, you have a 7-0 vote tonight on your, … moving this to Council.

[167:06] Thank you so much for your time and input. It's been invaluable to help us really craft this. As you said, complex ordinance, but… You gotta think of all the details, so I appreciate all the time and effort you put in reviewing it and providing feedback. Before we move on, ML had also suggested, like, a formal show of planning board support, if we so choose to do, to support the two tab recommendations that they made as separate recommendations. And that was… around… ML, do you want to remind us what were the two tab recommendations that you wanted us to perhaps officially support? I… … seem to have… Closed… That packet, let me open it.

[168:03] Laura, were you…. They were pretty simple. One was they were… they were recommending, I think somebody else spoke about the, tier… …. Tier Zero. No, it was the graduated…. Facilitating course. Graduated rates, so you don't have a… as big of a jump between the Tier 1 requirement and the Tier 2, so they asked us to look at, like. Right. Is there a way that we could have the rates… more gradually increase, I guess? I think they were… what I wrote was they would suggest, now I'm remembering, that the higher rate for Tier 2 only applied to the additional number of units, right? So only for units above 100, for example, would you pay the higher rate, and you would still pay the Tier 1 rate for the… Up to 100. There are languages on page 7 of 89 of the, … Nope.

[169:01] Of the packet, and there are two recommendations. One is that staff explore additional graduated rates based on marginal increases in dwelling units and square footage above tier thresholds. That's one of the recommendations, and the second one is that, TAB recommends that City Council direct city staff to analyze whether and to what degree expansion of the TDM program to existing Tier 1 and Tier 2 developments outside of existing special districts would be legally viable and help the City meet its goals in terms of reductions in traffic and parking requirements, enhanced access and use of multimodal investment, and greenhouse gas emissions. So both of these are recommendations. For staff to look into. …. Kurt. these enhancements. Just a clarification from staff, so this second one is basically retroactive application of this? Correct. They wanted, I guess kind of an analysis of what it would take to require

[170:07] tedium… elements for existing businesses and resident… and, I guess, multifamily residences, outside of existing districts. Right. Chris, what is… what is… what was staff's response to that second one? Well, I think we can… we can certainly do the study. I think there… part of it is, kind of, like, a legal analysis. of… whether it's possible, and maybe, if so, how we would do it. So, I think there's a… I want to make two points. I'm going to interject here. We have, … We have adopted a motion, and… The time for analysis and debate. It has essentially ended, and if we want to make some casual… note of support by individual board members for TAB's recommendations, but I… I don't… Think that we have given

[171:07] These, these are… these are big recommendations, and that without some careful study and deliberation, I'm… I'm just ready to let TAB's recommendations stand on their own, and would recommend unless someone's making a motion, I suggest this is… this is… we just let TAB's recommendations stand on their own. Okay, I'll go ahead and move that, Planning Board supports the two tab recommendations. No, we just concluded, and we've adopted, we've adopted this motion. So, I'm sorry, Mel, I didn't mean to interrupt you. But if… so you move… go ahead, please. I just did. I move that Planning Board support, the two tab recommendations to this, to this ordinance. Is there a second?

[172:00] I second. Okay, motion and a second. ML, would you like to speak to your motion? Well, I think that in reading the information, I mean, TAB took a very long and deliberate process to review everything, as did, of course, Planning Board, and I think if Planning Board lends its support to the recommendations that resulted from that. I think it would… it would, just add some weight to the work that TAB has… has brought forward, and I… … am not… in disagreement with, either of these, so I think that if we can lend our weight to it. I think it could enhance the recommendations. Kurt, do you want to speak to it as second? Sure, yeah, I agree with what ML said, and I think, speaking specifically to the recommendations, I think that the first one

[173:03] you know, it avoids this jump from going from 99 to 100 units, for example, that was bothering me, so I think that that's a… it would be a positive step. The second one, one of the fundamental things that bothers me, I guess, about TDM or that concerns me about TDM in general is that it's only applied to new development, and… And yet, addressing our Transportation Master Plan goals, our BVCP transportation goals, really should be a project for all of us, and we shouldn't be imposing the entire duty of that on new development, especially when, you know, we just… we need more housing, for example. And so it's… it's harmful, in a way, to apply these particular, burdens upon new, especially residential development, and so I think spreading the burden more broadly by potentially, if it's possible, applying it to… retroactively to existing projects would be a positive step in terms of,

[174:15] Achieving our goals and also making it more equitable. Any other… Laura? Yeah, just briefly, I agree with ML and Kurt. I think these are recommendations that are worth, our support, and I feel… I also was bothered by the big, jump. and I look at the actual language of this recommendation, just says, for the first one, explore adding graduated rates based on marginal increases in dwelling units and square footage. So it doesn't dictate exactly what that looks like, it just says, explore, is there a way to do it? So I think it provides appropriate flexibility to explore that. And then the second recommendation feels very similar to the conversation that we had about bicycle parking requirements of, you know, we should at least look at, is there a way to bring this, bring existing development up to the same standard? And I agree with Kurt that it's more equitable to spread that out, and maybe it will.

[175:11] you know, lend itself to a more citywide approach. So I think it's worth exploring, and so… and that's all that these recommendations say, is to explore. So I'm… I support. Okay, I'll, … counter. this, and I'll do it… on the basis of, you know, this is the 35th year of the, Celebrating the Americans with Disabilities Act. And, certainly, the ADA has improved. life for a broad swath of Americans, and it's a model piece of legislation. But it is based on… … you know, … when a restaurant remodels. It's based on thresholds, and it's based on triggers, and it did not…

[176:06] it certainly would have never been passed, I don't think, had it just been said, okay. As of tomorrow, everyone has to, create. accommodations for folks with disabilities, all at once, all together. And I know no one's proposing that, but at the same time, it's also similar to our wildland-urban interface discussion. Of, okay, gee, we all want to be safe. But there is a whole contingency of Of, folks that happen to be in houses that are very, large and are worth a lot of money, but are cash poor. And so, to say, we want you to modify, when we talk about equity, we want you to now modify this home.

[177:05] Regardless of your ability to do so. in a way that's more equitable, in a way that's highly inequitable as well. And so, our… our… Progress comes, on issues, and they're… it's usually triggered by, changes, new construction, things that… that… Are indicative of of a person's ability to change to accommodate a WUI regulation, an ADA regulation, or in this case, a TDM regulation. So, I think, … and I think just… The study of it, okay. But… but I don't want to be glib about what it is we're asking to evaluate. Which is a monumental, huge thing. When you look at, the number of buildings that are going to be built in Boulder versus the number of buildings that are here, and suddenly applying

[178:09] a very important, but large and complex set of TDM regulations to existing buildings without modification. It's a huge deal. So, that's my counter. May I say something? Let Gore, and then you. And Kurt also had a hand up, and I suspect we're all gonna say the same things, which is, Mark, I absolutely relate to what you're saying, or similar things. Absolutely relate to what you're saying. I think we would all share that concern if this were being proposed to be retroactively applied tomorrow 100%. And I do think the way this is written, which says, analyze whether and to what degree expansion of the TDM program. would take into account your concerns. I would not expect staff to come back and say, yes, we can do this tomorrow 100% for every property owner. I think it could include things like triggers, like Hela talked about, how, some of the existing

[179:05] code, and I'm gonna get this, I'm gonna mangle this, but that it's based on renovation or expansion triggers, and I would assume we would make a similar analysis here. So I think your concerns could be accommodated. In this language, is what I'm saying. ML? Yeah, I would just, also liken this to the way we enacted, the energy code updates to, commercial buildings. And it was very thoughtfully done. It was, you know, done in… in… over time, and people had plenty of heads up, but the end goal was that we… Try to bring the energy use, in that case, energy use of the city up to… from the biggest users up to, a compatible standard. And, you know, this is… this is doing the same thing

[180:03] at least the potential to analyze it is just saying, hey, there's a lot of people contributing to cars on the road, and it's not just the new people, but it's a lot of the existing, so let's take a look and see if there's anything that can be done. I think that there's no harm in doing it, and we might actually come out ahead. Kirk? Thanks to my colleagues, and the other thing that I'll add is that my interpretation of this was that it was primarily oriented towards the programmatic aspects, which are not infrastructure, they're not the built environment like what ADA is requiring to change, or what the WUI ordinance would be required to change. This is a financial requirement, so it's similar to a fee or a tax. And so, from that standpoint, it's much easier to implement, it's much easier to comply with. It's a cost, but at least it's not, you know, pouring concrete, or ripping up concrete, or that sort of thing.

[181:05] Okay, so we've, we've, … Any other discussion? Okay. … Typically, the correct procedure is, I would read back the motion language. We have We don't have written motion language. I think we all understood what ML has… the motion ML made. Thomas will be able to look at the video, and so… Do people… are people comfortable? Ermal, do you want to restate it succinctly, please? Let's try that. stated, you're right, it's a simple statement. … I move that Planning Board support the two tab recommendations, that were made with their Motion on this ordinance. Okay.

[182:00] Alright, that's the… that's the motion as stated. We'll vote, and I'm gonna begin with Mason. Yes. Laura? Yes. Claudia. Nope. Kurt? Yes. George. Yes. NML. Yes. And I'm a no also. Okay, that passes 5 to 2. Okay. Anything else on this topic before we really… I'm really gonna close out 5A. Okay. Anything else? Okay. All right. Back to congratulations, thank you, and moving on to, Agenda Item 6. matters from the Planning Board, Planning Director, and City Attorney. We'll start with, the director.

[183:00] Present. Okay. Good evening. Thank you for, that thoughtful discussion about AMPS, and also just, for taking the time to recognize the multidisciplinary, multi-departmental. multi-aspect of the larger AMPS effort that this represents, and we've, in that larger context. you know, reflected on the fact that this has actually been a work in progress for over 10 years, so this is a big evening for us, and for you, and for the community, so thanks for your time on that. I… was able to participate in yet another outreach as part of the comprehensive plan this evening. That's why it was a little late. We are hosting… I'm not sure what the final number was, but maybe 20, 25 simultaneous virtual meetings, where folks throughout the community, anybody, really, was invited to host, you know, a house party, if you will, to talk about the comprehensive plan using some

[184:04] prompts and things like that, so we were able to introduce them, or I was able to welcome them, and… They are off doing their thing, probably done by now, and giving us just… More and more great, feedback as we coalesce all the thousands of comments and ideas that have been brought together, synthesized those. And now at this third stage of the fourth stages of the Comp Plan, start to distill them down into potential policy items, … … rules of the road, that type of thing for the comp plan. So, lots of good progress happening there. I'll reiterate that you're gonna start to see a lot of this, so the docket remains full. Thank you in advance for your time. Thank you for recognizing we're gonna be nudging you along on things, so… Please bear with us as we barrel through the end of the year, and then go into a very busy next year, too.

[185:01] I think that's all the comments I have, Mr. Chair. Great. Oh, okay. Thank you, Brandon. I have a question regarding… Thank you. Regarding the comp plan, I saw something that I think indicated that public change requests were due by October Third, or something like that. Are… is Planning Board gonna have the opportunity to submit pla… Change request, do we have a different schedule? How does that work? … Well, let me back up and just, speak to what that is. So, the land use map change… future land use guidance map changes and policy changes are traditionally part of the overall comp plan update process. Historically, and again, this time around, individuals, groups, people. Can submit, those for consideration, and there's a…

[186:04] Basic template for winnowing that down based on various criteria. Pretty much at the staff level, and then those get brought forward for consideration. In January, do you know, Charles? I can't remember. And then I think we bring it to… Council in early 26, yeah. And do we bring it to Planning Board at that same time? Yeah, so you'll see, you know, the list of proposed changes. That is a new question to me about whether you, as individuals or a board, can make changes. I mean, ultimately, you're the One of the four bodies that… Reviews and approves the document, which includes the map and the policies, so… I'm gonna look to Hello for… either an interpretation or an opinion. I guess my opinion would be that it would not be…

[187:03] appropriate or necessary to do that as a board in advance of the process. The process is designed to get Input from anybody that wants to submit, and you as… One of the four privileged bodies, if you will, getting to make the decision, get to… You know, make those final decisions and recommendations. Hell, I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I don't know if you've got any specific insight into… Yeah, there's a process procedure that talks about… then use map changes and how that's being brought forward, and I don't remember the details right now. Yeah. We can look into that more, but I… I will say intuitively that Feels a little unusual that the board would consider something before they consider it. If that makes sense. Okay, well, it would just be interesting to know if we are somehow…

[188:00] Also bound by that same deadline. That would be good to know, preferably prior to October 3rd. Can you help me with a tickler on that? Talk to KJ. Thank you. Fuck your bed. Microphone. Sorry. While you're there, and Charles is still here, and Thomas, … I… this is kind of a board and staff question. I was, … Thomas made me aware that, September 23rd, is Rosh Hashanah. And… Typically, we would not hold a meeting on That particular holiday, and, move it to the 30th. Is… does anyone have… any concerns about that, or scheduling conflict, or anything, or would that… be okay.

[189:05] Seems to be okay, and the 30th is the, Okay. with it. Are you saying September 23rd? Yep. And moving that to…. to the September 30th. So, from the 4th Tuesday to the 5th Tuesday. It just happens that September has 5 Tuesdays. This year. I will… say that my schedule doesn't matter in that decision-making, but I actually will be out that day on vacation, so… You know, carry on, please. Okay. So, I don't hear any objection. I'm gonna let you guys Decide on that, but the board sounds like we could do it And if that is…

[190:03] staff preference, Charles, coming up? And Hela could correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they need to take a vote to reschedule that. To reschedule? To cancel a meeting and schedule it to a different date. Do we already have items scheduled? We do, we have a significant item. It's the Williams Village 2 redevelopment item. Oh, wow. So, and then our calendar gets… sorry, Charles Farrell, Planning and Development Service, then our calendar gets really packed from there, and then November, we're missing some meetings because of holidays and the election, so… would be helpful if we could flip-flop those dates. Is there… I guess my question is, and I'm sorry, may I ask a question? Yes, please. Is there anyone either on the board or in… on staff who could not attend a meeting, or do we need to honor that holiday in case of public commenters who cannot be present that night? Yeah, it hasn't been noticed yet. It hasn't been noticed. The 23rd? Correct. Yeah.

[191:05] I guess, is there any legal issue? Like, if we… I don't have a problem with meeting on the 23rd, I don't know if anybody does. So, my only concern is, Rather than polling applicants about it, Is it… Is it typical city policy to … on our… certain holidays, Rosh Hashanah being one of them, and so rather than create an issue by, holding a meeting on the 23rd with a significant agenda item. Is there… is there any significant concern Or a problem, moving it to the 30th, and just… Doing… doing that. It's typical practice to not have, evening meetings, public hearings on, holidays. Okay. Then I… then, fine. I'll move to,

[192:05] the… September 23rd meeting. To September 30th. I'll second. Okay, so, any debate? Okay. We'll, we'll take a roll call vote. Mason? Yes. Laura? Yes. Claudia? Yes. Kurt? Yes. George? Yes. ML. Yes? And I'm a yes. Okay. There you go. Thank you for noticing that. It was… it was Thomas, it was not me. Oh, it was Thomas. Yeah. Thank you for noticing that. I believe it was Hela. Okay. Thank you, though. Brad, anything else? Nothing else for me. Thanks. Okay, Hela. Nothing from me, thank you. Okay. Any, matters for the board? Kurt. Just quickly, I wanted to report that, last month, I think it was, I got appointed as representative to TAB, liaison to TAB, and I reached out to TAB, and… well, I reached out to the chair, Trini Willerton, and the vice chair, Darcy Kitching.

[193:09] And, have been trying to set up a discussion with them, and so far have not been able to. So, I have not… I was not able to be at, or I was not at the tab. meeting, because we hadn't had this discussion. So, that, that whole thing is still in process. I just wanted to give an update. Thank you for that report. Anything else? Laura. Yeah, I wanted to ask a question of Hela, if I may. Ordinance 8696, which was the ordinance that did away with parking minimums, I think some of us on the board have had questions about what does that mean for previous site review? requirements around parking, and are those still enforceable by the city? I'm wondering if there's anything that you can tell us that would help us understand that better.

[194:02] Yeah, and under that ordinance, parking requirements imposed through previous… approvals… do not apply anymore, and they're not enforced. That is one of the requirements that was imposed by state law that, at a certain time, the city can no longer enforce parking require… minimum parking requirements. The… of course, the… Parking spaces are still shown on plans, so if something different was proposed to be constructed there, there would be a requirement to come in for an amendment to that site plan, whether it's through a minor mod or a site review amendment, depending on the scope of the changes and… Within what review procedure it would fall, that would have to occur for repurposing those areas. Okay, so that's any permanent changes to what that land is used for, but if people wanted to, you know, set up a picnic table, or have a pickup basketball game or something in those parking lots, they could still presumably do that without having to do a land use change? Or a, you know, a site plan change?

[195:18] I would say I'm looking to Charles to, to… disagree with me if he disagrees. Putting up a picnic table might require Going through a change if somebody I don't know, plays ball in that area. That's not a sight change. I suspect that nothing would be required for that. Let the picnic tables arrive. Okay. Okay, … Okay, any other matters from Planning Board? Okay. If I may add something after, Kurt talked about the liaison position, I just wanted to reiterate that the liaison position

[196:05] does not create a membership to that board, or an ex officio membership. You're really just attending like a member of the public, but you're there to maybe report back to planning board what was discussed. They don't need to acknowledge you in any way. It should not change the dynamic there, because it is not a board member position. Yeah, I'm certainly aware of that. I just thought that it would be, politic to… Wait until there was actual, sort of, A welcome and acknowledgement. Okay, I'm gonna close out item… 6 matters. We've done our calendar check, and unless I hear an objection, we are adjourned. Okay. Good night, everybody!

[197:00] Good night.