May 23, 2022 — Transportation Advisory Board Retreat

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] familiar faces that i haven't seen in a while and then i've gotten to meet everybody i think except trying to you and i didn't meet right but it's it's training but you're ready thank you i did that to i did that to tila too i called her tyler when i first met her she's like no so i apologize but it's so good to see everyone and i really appreciate everyone's time and oh we got someone else coming in um and and i'm just going to keep going ahead anyway um so i'm glad to have everyone here i i really i haven't worked with tab in a really long time as i've told most of you i think i'm getting old because i think it's been i mean at least eight years oh heidi froze

[1:00] does she freeze for others okay yes am i still frozen you're back oh gosh good okay i hope that doesn't happen again um let me just make sure i'm on the right internet i am yeah so it's it's been a while but it's been it's it's always a pleasure to for me to connect with people who are um working hard and volunteering their time to help um and advise our city council and um do what i think is extra and hard work for the community um so great to meet everyone i sent the agenda kind of late but did everybody get it so that you had a chance to see what we're up to and i know i got a couple of responses from it seemed like it was looking okay but our main objective tonight is to be able to connect together all of you have some some significant restrictions on communication for good reasons right so that you have the the um not as much opportunity to take a step back altogether and and step back

[2:01] from doing your work and actually talk about how you do your work and kind of line up and uh reconnect and i often call talk about mid-course corrections so what is it that's working and what adjustments we might want to make and how we do our work and so that's what this is all about and um and i'm and so there's a there's i hope an opportunity to have some conversations you don't normally get to have together and we might identify some up some opportunity or a desire to do more of that that'll that's really your call so i'm going to just work through the agenda i tried to be pretty liberal on the time slots so that it could be comfortable and there could be question and more dialogue around things and maybe something will come up that you want to you know think about applying something that we talked about or something like that so we'll just sort of see how it goes my job is to make

[3:01] sure we're not here till midnight so um i commit to ending ending by 10 if not a little bit sooner so i'll apologize in advance if i cut anything a little bit short and use a parking lot in case we need to to keep moving let's just start by having everybody introduce themselves and and just who you are and how you're connected to this okay you know i'm heidi and i have no skin in the game i'm the facilitator so um how about valerie since you're on my screen first you go next sure thanks heidi i'm valerie watson i'm the transportation planning division manager um and i started with the department last year and it's been a pleasure to work with all of you so far um here tonight to support natalie in our presentation later on in this agenda

[4:00] but i'm really happy to be here tonight thanks great thanks valerie and meredith do you want to say hi there you are hi i'm the tab recording secretary i'm doing action minutes tonight thank you thank you meredith yep um and aaron you're muted still okay uh hi i'm erin poe i'm a deputy city attorney and i'm filling in for janet michaels who's out of the office this week and i apologize i i i've tested negative for covid but i have something um so i apologize for how how hoarse i sound but it's nice to be with you all this evening you sound great so far thanks nicole

[5:00] hi everyone nicole spear on city council and i've sort of been watching and learning from you all over the last few months in my role as dr cog rep and as somebody who didn't come in with a lot of transportation knowledge so it's really an honor to be here with you all tonight thank you thanks brenda hi brenda rittenhauer um i've met most of you although it's um great to get to meet the new faces on tab i am um part of our communication and engagement department and i'm also working on a cross-departmental team team about in general board and commission process improvements as well as a diversity inclusion and equity strategy so natalie invited me to come here tonight to share some of the engagement strategies that we have created in support of boards and commissions as well as the dei work fantastic thanks brenda alex

[6:02] i'm alex weinheimer entering my fourth year on tab and serving as the tap chair okay thanks natalie i'm natalie stifler i'm the interim director of transportation great training i'm sorry i'm trini willerton and i am one of the newest members of town thanks ryan hey folks ryan stewart i'm on tab i am just uh entering my second year and i'm a i'm a digital only uh of the digital in the generation yet so i'm sort of a newbie because i haven't had any in-person meetings literally never been doing oh my gosh yeah we did talk about the possibility that this might be in person and then something happened to council and we yeah never mind yeah thanks becky i keep calling you rebecca do you you prefer becky huh i'm i'm uh

[7:01] i've been inconsistent so i apologize i'll just go by becky so i won't confuse anyone anymore um sorry about that yeah i'm becky davies and um i am the other new member we're glad you're here too i i was called heather by um somebody who i didn't think i would see again for a while and then i kept seeing them and then it got to this really awkward place where i never corrected them and i just was heather and yeah so i think you can be called whatever you want but becky sounds great i do respond to rebecca hi everyone thanks for coming tonight uh tila duham i'm about to start my i'm starting my sixth year on tab okay wow great and how so that it's a it's a second term then right yep okay welcome um so nathan just because you're up there kind of hanging out be good to be introduced yeah hey everyone uh nathan pope senior

[8:00] transportation planner i'm just here as your technical host this evening to make sure uh zoom works properly and to make sure that record button is hit and it has been hit yeah thank you so much and i see dave i see your name dk um are you dk is a member of staff but i don't believe he's uh participating in the meeting tonight so i think i just have him as a uh member of the gotcha okay he's i just saw i just saw his name so i wanted to check but it's there because he is staff but he's not participating okay good well welcome everybody um so as we go through tonight and i kind of laid out the objectives i would just like to ask what are your expectations and accountabilities for this evening in other words what kinds of things do you want to hold yourselves and me accountable to in order to for it to feel like a good use of time but you know if if we leave here somewhere around 10 o'clock and you are saying yeah that that feels like that was a

[9:01] good use of time what what kinds of things will have happened in terms of your expectations how we behave those sorts of things making my job really easy right now just keep going on like no assume positive intent give us breaks stick to the agenda have fun be engaged have an open mind i love those those are those are wonderful so being engaged means you're not just you know we we've all learned that we can we can kind of do the head nods and and keep looking at email or whatever else right when we're doing these things so being engaged really try to fully participate and the open

[10:00] mind i sometimes like to say um you know be curious right so that sort of listen listen and engage to understand rather than to respond those kinds of things am i putting words in your mouth it's okay cool thank you anything else i also i would love to add when you can because i know there'd be moments but you've all done that and maybe that's your habit is to have the video on i'm doing a lot of work right now with people that are still hybrid coming out of coba and one of the big things that i am finding when i have been asked to come work on teams that that are struggling a little is that they didn't necessarily have in place when they met things that helped cut you know fill the gap of not being able to meet in person during covet and part of that is having the video on right so that we at least

[11:00] we're not necessarily in the same room together we have a little more context of how to interpret each other and that sort of thing okay anything else that's pretty easy well if you come up with more let me know so i've got just being engaged having an open mind and using inquiry and then keep video on when you can okay so so sit back and think about when um one of the one of the municipalities i'm working with uh strategic planning for the city manager and and executive team have decided this is the year for organizational health and that's what they're calling it is the year of organizational health and then identifying what does that mean um and and how they came to it so there's there's a whole model of organizational health but what they really were talking about is we individuals need to have some good focus on um they're taking care of

[12:01] themselves and we haven't done a really great job of that lately and there's more need for it than ever and i won't go into all of that but i wonder as you all are working um do you know doing a lot some of it virtual some of it in person but everybody seems to have more on their plate somehow than they used to what are some things that you are doing to take care of yourselves so what what kind of self-care are you are you implementing and just have a moment to sit back and share that with each other so it may have nothing to do with the work that you do for the city or otherwise but how are you taking care of yourself now how are you ensuring your own balance and and self-care well i can share um i just as the weather is turning nice to her it is just such a joy to be able to ride you know just to anywhere just even down to get something at the store or just ride around i mean i just i find

[13:01] that to be so soothing and really it really helps me kind of like when i'm all hyped up i go out there and just ride for a little bit don't come back right on a bike is what you're talking about right getting out and and moving in for you it's it's on a bike and being outside really sounds like a big exhale when you describe it yeah who else alex this time of year one of my favorite things are all the running water and i've been fortunate to have a ditch through my condo's backyard and so i like sitting by that and reading by it and when it gets hot enough tubing in that and just the sound of it's relaxing i feel the waters relaxing so on a night like tonight before entering a four hour meeting i popped downstairs and stood by the creek for the ditch for a few minutes and it's soothing and relaxing and a good

[14:01] way of breaking up yeah that's otherwise spent at the computer for an unhealthy number of hours nice what you're describing there and there's something about the water in the running water it sounds like but not inundating your brain with more right so is uh there's some really good research that we can just not during our breaks check email or get on the phone or read something but you know you don't have to meditate you can but just to have let your brain have a break for even 10 minutes it increases your ability to focus and pay attention and engage with your brain by like 75 percent it's pretty huge yeah so that's also what a great example who else do you want me to do the call on the people thing

[15:01] i'm happy too um how about how about you ryan what do you do so um i don't know if this is important but like um just trying to turn an annoying little house projects and never get done like like organizing the kitchen drawer into something that i can do maybe on phone or not that this is meant to be about multitasking but but you know it's just like you have a few moments and you're at home and you have a bunch of crap that's stacked up you know yeah yeah i'm not sure if that's a very good one well there is i mean any way that you can trick yourself to get some of those little the things off your list like literally check things off your list is a is a good stress reliever so i think kind of making it more palatable that's the way that you do it is do do it combined maybe with something else right yeah that's that's great

[16:00] how about you becky um probably the one like sacred activity for me as i play soccer a few nights a week and i pretty much won't cancel for almost anything unless it's really important so really active yeah um yeah that's kind of like helps me if i have free time i might end up just doing work and stuff chores yeah tila thanks i think i've been just having trouble with the question because the predicate of the question is something i disagree with i suppose um well say more about that that's all right you can answer it you don't think i'm coping very well so you need more self-care uh yeah sure but you know maybe you're getting some ideas of things to try that was part of thinking about this yeah all these things are things that i'm like oh yeah that would be nice if i could just drag myself out there and do it i'm taking more naps i'm not avoiding my friends as much

[17:00] they're you know someone calls and says let's go for a hike or go for a bike ride i have a practice to say okay yes and i really did in the moment don't feel like it and then uh to ryan's point like a messy house is both unavoidable and really kind of depressing and so i've been um inviting people over for dinner parties or whatever we have my son's birthday party this last weekend because that's a great way to clean your house because you kind of have to i can't let other people see this so now i'm obligated yeah yeah i i i had somebody who once said in order to get organized this is and this is my thing and i've i started implementing this a little bit i think it's self-care because it gets things off my plate they would with a friend have a red box night and the red boxes were not that big they were this size but you had to fill it with all the stuff that needed sorting and they would once a month get together and split a bottle of wine and and do whatever was in the red box sort and file or dismiss whatever so sort of combining it both with another person

[18:00] and also with something you know conversation or whatever yeah who have i missed valerie i'm just going to go right through the thing valerie what do you do sure yeah i'll actually share an insight i had um i usually try to uh just if i don't have back-to-back meetings kind of get out for a 15-minute walk um all the things that others have mentioned you know clearing your head and i realized that i was treating it as this 15-minute burst of exercise and i just be booking it down the sidewalk um and then one day i decided to go a different way for whatever reason and a neighbor had put out a sign and as i got closer the sign said stop you need to smell this bush it's called a lilac fish please smell it and stand here for at least 30 seconds and then you can go it was some very personal message to any passer by

[19:00] and i don't know that i had really ever thought about how a lilac bush smells but it really changed my whole approach to my 15 minute walks and now i try to go all different routes um in case i might find some other just gem of humanity along the way um so that's been what i've been doing um just to kind of break up that afternoon but also just see new things in my little ecosystem nice yeah how about you nicole tila what you said really resonated with me um that's kind of the place that i'm into when things feel so heavy what do you do um so i have been trying lately to just kind of be in a place where if i can't find hope at least reach for joy um and so i've been trying to schedule in an hour in my my week every week that is just pure fun just light something new ideally that i haven't done before so a couple times i tried a

[20:01] hip-hop dance class that was really fun i'm not a dancer but it was still really fun um and uh this month i've been um doing a one hour spanish class from a person who lives in uh columbia and um that's been really fun as well so trying for joy great i did my first improv class last week or the week before and i think i'm going again on thursday if anyone wants to go awesome yes yeah how about you aaron i'm sorry i'm having trouble i'm muting tonight can you hear me okay i like getting outside if i can get outside i try for an hour a day and that just is a complete reset and it's like it's a different day when i come back um so i have a pandemic puppy who's two

[21:00] now so that's kind of our time to go out and explore that's great thanks how about you brenda yeah sorry i was wasn't sure if i was supposed to stay in the background or not stay in the background so so i couldn't resist tila's um improv comment so i jumped back out of the background um yeah i have two degrees in theater at sila which is why i'm excited for you um and improv is amazing and hard and takes courage so i'm also very impressed well done um i uh i have erin's same story about my pandemic dog so um instead i will talk about um just my i have a 10 year old and so just being really intentional about setting set a time aside for him um you know some days i get to pick him up from school and so that makes it easy and it's just built in the day and other times i have to really pull some time out of the evening to make sure i'm hanging out with him so

[22:00] nice thanks and meredith oh yeah well we currently have six grandkids and one more on the way wow wow and so that does some diversion but my big thing is getting up in to the mountains and currently the avalanche playhouse oh yeah yeah for more yeah yeah i'm not always finding that stress relieving but it is fun but i kind of i have discovered that i have to find out what the score is at the end of the game and i record it and then i'll watch it because otherwise i can get too stressed out yeah well in our whole life so wow wow and natalie i haven't asked you yet right yeah my i mean i feel like mine's obvious i have a two-month-old at home

[23:00] so yeah i mean anytime with her is pretty awesome yeah fantastic it is that's a great one all right so i think i got everyone right and i got some good new ideas i i need to shake it up every now and then so um i find that real helpful the one that for me really resonated was just exhaling like just stand by water or just get outside and not necessarily race for 15 minutes like valerie but stop and literally stop and smell the flowers right that's great thank you everyone the first thing on our agenda is to have a little time with aaron um just sort of a fair fireside chat sharing some of her experiences and and wisdom around boards and commissions and bylaws and all that fun stuff right i don't know about fun but that's what it is well now i think that i i added that i

[24:00] didn't tell you all i added that to the expectations and accountabilities have fun so it's there but anyway so um i i think you did it you introduced yourself already but it'd be really wonderful i appreciate your time with us tonight yeah thanks aaron and um yeah so we're super lucky to have aaron here and i really appreciate you joining us in place of janet um being able to tonight so um yeah as heidi said we're just gonna do kind of a fireside chat structure and so i'm going to ask some questions of erin and but feel free to kind of chime in with your own questions too along the way if anything just isn't making sense or if you just have a question for aaron too she's going to really speak to the role of boards and staff and how we work together and and her experience with other boards and commissions as well and so i'm hoping that will be valuable for us all um so with that i'll kick it off with the first question

[25:00] erin can you tell us about what roles you've had with boards sure right now i am the advisor for the board of zoning appeals boza and the housing advisory board the police oversight panel are all kind of my standard boards right now and when i've represented other departments in the past i have had tab and a couple other ones like the human rights commission but those are my three main ones right now and on uh on on the personal side my husband is actually on the downtown advisory commission so i get to hear from him as a board member also great thank you um so how do boards and commissions fit into the city's governance sure they're they're um a a kind of a great local government opportunity so we have some that are advisory boards and some that are quasi-judicial and some that are both

[26:02] so a quasi-judicial board sits as a judge and makes determinations on applications most commonly and then we have advisory boards such as tab that advise city manager city council and in tabs case also planning board on matters of policy um so can you tell us a little bit about what the roles of board members are sure sure and uh you know what one of the most important things that i think of the functions that boards can fit are are how they relate to the public and what an opportunity it is for public participation so if not for boards a lot of times members of the public would not be able to be involved in a matter or a project or a policy until it gets to a council meeting and at that point a lot of work has gone into it and it's pretty well baked

[27:00] and so by involving boards and commissions that you know also gets the board and commission members input and their personal experiences and what they hear from the community into it but it's also a forum that's very important for the public to be able to participate in and so so board members are appointed government officials they are not just volunteers we have a lot of great volunteers and even though they are not paid board members are official appointed government uh folks um you know whether the board is quasi-judicial or advisory a board member's everyday experiences are very important in helping form city practices and policies council sets the work plan for the city but staff and the boards are really how that work plan comes to fruition i just want to pause here to see if others have questions before i ask some

[28:02] more tila i was like looking for the chat just typing things in so just what aaron just said about how some of the stuff that comes through the boards offers a you know public participation it occurs to me that that the current board structure all of our existing boards were created and established before we as a city had adopted with a very fine-grained engagement network and i'm wondering i've been wondering for a long time do we have too many boards uh sometimes we have we don't have enough volunteers to fill all the seats that there are uh and so i'm just curious is there an effort on the city's part you know either initiated by city management's office or council to cull down or change how boards operate because now we have a lot more um sort of structure and expectations around public engagement and involving public in in process earlier on a number of different kinds of levels i've not heard of anything about culling wards down if anything i think there's been

[29:00] more in the other direction of wanting to get more board and commissions going so that the public can participate the police oversight panel is a very recent board hab is a very recent board um so so i so i think really actually there's there's more interest in expanding that opportunity because it really is the public's chance to get involved early on in a project versus hearing about it when a final vote is being taken at council and and i think that the communication um is is a great i'm glad you brought that up because one of the things that hab did when i started out with them is that they were very concerned about communication and in reaching a broader audience in boulder and they did a lot of work with the director of communication sarah huntley to look at creative ways to kind of get their message out there and get feedback from parts of the community that we don't always hear from

[30:01] so i think that's really where engagement is going is trying to hear from more people not necessarily cutting it away from boards and commissions i'm happy to jump in here too from our engagement team thanks tila that's a great question and i really appreciate the observation that you're making about our engagement work we are really trying to do many different types of strategies to hear a lot of voices as aaron said and i am part of a staff team as i mentioned that's looking at some overall process improvements for boards and commissions it's sort of on the horizon of a next topic down the road a little bit that we do need to look at the full landscape of our boards and commissions and really make sure that they are there for thoughtful and important meaningful reasons because we know that's why people become boarding commission members for thoughtful meaningful reasons and we want that to be true and we want that to

[31:02] to be a good environment for them so um so that is part of the long-term conversation is do we have what we need and do we have too much or do we need different or how should that look but that's probably a little ways away so um i thought ryan may have had a handle yeah brian do you still have something well yeah i withdrew the time maybe i'll ask it um because i i actually forgot the question was but i'm just feeling inspired now that we have nicole here nicole not to tweet too much on the spot yet and maybe you can answer this later but i'm just thinking like um from council's perspective i mean tab is one board that reports to counsel and ton of boards as we just mentioned and i'm just wondering if from um our from council's perspective is there anything we should know like is there any blown away or like i guess

[32:00] things that you've seen a council member from boards like something some relationship that's developed or some like initiative or like something that's like oh yeah that's a really awesome thing that board did or just any kind of reflection at this point i guess it's only been maybe what six five six months at this point for you um but i'd be grateful to hear if you have any feedback for us on like here's this template that you that you like yeah i'm happy to speak there and i just want to emphasize i'm here just as nicole the council member not as nicole representative of council so i'm just you know kind of here here to offer my observations and learn from you all um and and ryan and tila i love both of your questions and i think that this is something that i've heard some of my colleagues talking about um is how do we think about this and um so the short answer to your question ryan is is no i i don't really i haven't quite seen enough um to to sort of get there um

[33:00] what i personally [Music] nicole i don't know if you can hear me you're a bit choppy and now you're frozen so probably can't hear me at least it's not a bad face huh she's not snapping back it always happens right when you're on the like the big reveal i know here's the answer um so we'll have to see i don't know how to help her both yes if she bounces back i sent her a message just to let her know that she froze okay um and we can we can definitely circle back yeah when she can join us again very good question and and yeah that's why she's here part of why she's here so well we can keep going and then if she joins us we'll yeah let's go let's go ahead

[34:01] and she'll come back okay and i do i think you know ryan your question is a really good one and and there's probably going to be lots of kind of discussion around trying to for us to kind of figure out what the answer is on that question um so aaron kind of going back to questions for you can you tell us or define for us i guess what type of board is tab sure sure so tab is a advisory board which means it advises the city manager the planning board and the city council on transportation matters and the transportation advisory board is a board established by code so we have a couple like the open space board of trustees and the planning board that actually are in the charter and so the charter can only be changed by a vote election of electors um versus the vast majority of boards are enacted by ordinance so those are like other laws that council passes and council controls the parameters of a

[35:02] board interesting that's super helpful um so what is the difference between board authority and staff authority sure so so i think of our local system is is being sort of parallel to the federal system so like in the federal government you have an executive branch and a legislative branch at the city by charter we have city council which is our legislative branch and we have the city manager which is also in the charter and who's our executive so you have city manager you know executive column and that flows down through staff and then you have city council which is the legislative branch which flows down to boards in commissions and then we we deviate a little bit because our city manager is employed by our city council but that sort of the difference and you know there are charter sections for the

[36:00] city manager making the uh city manager the chief administrative authority in the city um and you know city council has has its role as well um you know one of the unique things i think with our system is that even though city council employs the city manager but by charter that the council and its members you know nor committees shall dictate the appointment retention or removal or director interfere from the work of any officer employee under the city manager so while they can influence the work of the city manager they don't deal directly in supervision of employees and that's why we have that council not a five rule for any matter that's going to take significant amounts of staff time council has required of itself five members to support that so if i am kind of like hearing this right basically

[37:00] um staff kind of works for or takes direction from the city manager and the city manager takes direction from the entire council and the board's role is to advise council correct everything everything sort of ties back to council but the city manager is one path and boards and commissions are a different path so it makes sports and commissions you know advisory for the most part um not oversight okay thanks um and i shouldn't because i'm probably the most ignorant person in this room but you're saying advising advisory to counsel is that right erin i think that's how they are are mostly thought of but technically they can advise you know they they offer advice to staff too which is who they most commonly interact with so they would meet with natalie or her staff and

[38:00] provide input on you know matters that come before them on their agenda okay thank you yeah thanks do folks have questions here all right i'll keep i'll keep going then um can you tell us about some of the most challenging issues that you've seen with boards and commissions sure you know it's been interesting watching the hab the housing advisory board and the police oversight board start from scratch because there were there were some people on hab who had prior experience with city boards and commissions but it also drew a lot just from the community from people who had you know non-profit experience or private experience and one of the one of the challenges i've seen for a lot of board members is realizing how much slower the government operates because we

[39:02] we have um you know transparency that is our our focus so you know we have public notice we have open meetings and many people come to boards and commissions expecting to be able to act quickly and take direct action and we just have a much slower process in the public sector excuse me uh i think another another transition item for some members is is kind of leaving behind the advocacy role in becoming a city official there's a different dynamic when you interact with the government as an advocate for a particular demographic versus now sitting as a city official and representing the community as a whole so that is something that that people come up to speed with pretty quick um [Music] you know i think some of the the other

[40:03] you know more of a conflict issue that i've seen is some boards being very invested and having goals that they would like to achieve and trying to control the work of staff or direct staff or direct work plans when really that direction comes from council and it's set annually at their retreat and then it's up to the boards and staff to implement that work plan um and part of that is recognizing that there is so much that the city does um that that kind of goes unnoticed like we have the really exciting projects but then there's a lot of things like just filling potholes and keeping the snow off the streets and basic basic infrastructure that eats up a lot of staff time so staff times like money we only have so much of it that we can can use you know at any given time that's helpful thanks erin i know i see that tila has her hand up

[41:00] but there's been a chat going on and i am not sure i i i know the public can't see it so maybe we need to share it out loud i'm not sure what the protocol is there um but it has to do with and ryan your initial question what was that based on or your initial i think it's council city manager and staff i don't know what that was in relation to was it who you advise yeah i think taylor has has clarified that or the charter says it's council and the city manager but implicitly city manager means staff staff so we actually you know because they're under the manager and that's who we spend most of our time with so it's for three years it's just clarification but yeah thank you okay and and i'm always the troublemaker on these meetings um i just wanted to back up to something erin said about leaving the advocate role behind uh because i think you were using advocate there sort of the sense as an attorney uh representing someone and

[42:01] advocating for their case versus uh i think that as as board members we obviously we don't perform a complete mental flush of what our priorities and our inclinations and things that strike us as important are and so trini and i will you know continue to advocate for um and i it's not i don't think it's a conflict but we will continue to advocate for changes that make our roads safer for more vulnerable road users um ryan always comes to us with uh an eye toward climate change and sort of better efficiency and that's not he's not saying you have to do it through this you know thing i recognize that if we were to say that you have to advocate for safer streets by going through it could be me which is trinity's organization then that would that would be overstepping the line but i just wanted to clarify what advocacy and work comments refer to do i have that distinction about right yes and and i don't mean to frame it as um you know you're not advocating for for

[43:02] that kind of thing that there are you know they're always special interests sometimes people don't realize that it's not all that um and that you'll be asked to chime in and consider and um you know make recommendations on on situations that maybe aren't as fun but you know it's a great policy or projects that that kind of bring people into the government and then you realize oh it's all this boring stuff too um so yeah board members i think that's what makes the system great is that people bring in their outside experiences and you know what you know and that's what makes it a great system is we have five extra people with with different perspectives and backgrounds um to chime in and shape policy can i add to that and i started to add a little bit of trouble and maybe further but um i mean i have even a sharper perspective on this which is when i came to apply for the position um there was nine other extremely qualified

[44:01] people that i competed with and i i ran for the position telling council i'm here to do a number of things i'm here because we have got to get serious about climate action and transportation car dependence and giving people better options and a few other things um council looked at some extremely good people and they said ryan we want you we want you here to do that and i think that um my job is to implement that and i you know i have to have a broader purview as well but i mean i i believe that i'm accountable to the i mean to the city of boulder to our residents to make that happen and in a way that is definitely advocacy in the sense that you know there's a there's a job to do um now of course i joined a team of advisory board members that have to bring other things and we have to work that all out but i guess i would what i would offer is if we're not coming to this with a with essentially a charter or you know a sense of a role

[45:00] that is a politically driven values driven you know i guess kind of a mandate then maybe well i don't know maybe i'm not praising it the right way but my impression is that's you know i'm actually here to do some work and i you know we'll continue working that hard and maybe um we don't have time for this today but it might help for us to make clear what those things are it is individuals board members that that we believe we're here to really work on and i i'm gonna interrupt for a second because you just said a whole lot and i'm trying to formulate a question out of that that that is is our role as can someone formulate a question out of what ryan brought because it's this is my understanding is what you're saying and let me know if i tell me if i'm wrong i don't know aaron if that's a something you can respond to or if that might be i i think so and i think i can maybe offer an example from the police

[46:00] oversight panel they also you know a pretty recent board in developing their bylaws they set aside a part that would be their guiding principles so they as a board are kind of sifting through who are we what's important to us and how are we going to do our work because they feel pretty good about this initial group and their relationship with the police monitor but over time you know people change in and out staff changes members change and so that's something you know that can be one of the good aspects of having bylaws is you can bake some of that in about why you're here and what you want to accomplish you know ultimately you're you're a little constrained by the code provisions that councils enacted and they still set the work plan and you still have your code provisions but there is there is some leeway in there about how you work as a group and so you know that's something that i can can forward on once they

[47:00] come up with it but but there is some some room to put your own stamp on it and your own personality as a board i think that's a you know something that my understanding is the tab you all kind of looked at at some point but didn't move forward and decided not to create bylaws but this sounds like you know and and i want to finish with some of the other stuff that you want to talk about aaron but this is my question not to be answered right now but to let it sit in in there and i'll come back to it is is that maybe that's something that you all want to pursue together in order to um have put your flavor on it the sort of bylaws and operating agreements completing something that i think you started a while ago nicole i was just going to take you up heidi um on your turning ryan's comments into a question because what i heard was the question a lot of questions actually around accountability and so um aaron

[48:00] maybe to ask a question to you what is tab accountable for what is counsel accountable for what are staff accountable for um that feels like it was a part of that question too and ryan please feel free to jump in and say no no nicole that wasn't it at all that's not right yeah well i think you know i think of it as we we all have to play in the same sandbox and so so council kind of builds that sandbox and gives us the sand and gives us um you know things to do with it and then it's up to us as staff and board members to figure out what we build um you know they have something that's relatively short on the work plan and it's up to the rest of us to flush it out and achieve that goal and a lot of times there are many different paths to the same sort of outcome so which is the path that you want to take it's a bit of a build your own adventure and hopefully people work well together

[49:00] to get there and have a little fun along the way natalie well i was just i wanted to ryan i i couldn't tell if you still had i know you dropped something in the chat and so um did you oh you feel okay you're good all right anyone else okay um so next question for you aaron and i know we're we're gonna wrap up on this item soon so um what have you seen in successful board staff relationships i i think one of the the key things is understanding what the roles are um you know what staff role that flows from the city manager what's the border commission's role and

[50:02] how they can influence and make recommendations on policy you know to the department and also to council so people are working under the same understandings that were were working were separate but equal in a way um i i think that helps a relationship and helps with communication um the the police oversight panel i think has done a really good job with that as they found their way um with the police monitor they've all kind of kind of come up together so i know we've had many staff changes at the city so hopefully this is a good time for people to get to know one another or get to know each other again anew and find good ways to work with each other with some very very open trans information and i think it's also important for a staff to be very clear and what they hope to achieve out of the relationship and provide data and information so that board members know right at the

[51:01] get-go you know what's our role in this topic that you're bringing to us and and one of the things i've seen successfully with bylaws um is hab has an agenda committee that they set up through their bylaws where the chair and the vice chair meet with staff and decide what's on the agenda so you know that gives the board members um you know a chance to you know get in at the early part and think about that work plan and when they're going to hear it and what they're going to do throughout the year for their meetings um i i think it's helpful if the board understands the totality of what the staff is dealing with and what their resource limitations may be so that if there are miscommunications about how much we can achieve and what resources we have to achieve it but that's an open dialogue and so that people know what limitations there are before they get their heart set on a certain path so yeah i think everything always comes

[52:00] back to communication thanks thanks aaron any questions here okay all right lady we'll hand it back to you then thank you okay yeah thank you and i i want to just say um there's brenda is reminding us in the chat that the public can't see it so we need to make sure that we're sharing whatever whatever goes in there so that the public can hear and i think though what came up um just the only thing that we haven't talked about was ryan really just trying to summarize his understanding that individual board members at least some in some cases appointed by council are there in order to advance specific political and values-oriented goals right that that you were articulating what it was you were you were trying

[53:01] concisely to say what you were trying to say i think we've we've talked about that so thank you very much um all right so what do you think i post i posed a question kind of toward the end of that but in the middle of it about it does this you know listening to some of what aaron was talking about does it make you want to recircle and revisit your own bylaws as a way of building your sort of how you do this work and um bylaws and operating agreements that you want to hold yourselves accountable to or you want to be able to express your overarching uh intentions or passions or interests or whatever might come up tila yeah i'm gonna jump in here just because i'm not sure how much um becky and trini know about the background on that um

[54:00] uh so just to fill in some gaps and we don't have a specific set of bylaws um some boards do some boards don't um around uh the year 2000 someone in the city attorney's office um did a draft of bylaws for tab um i don't know even who was on tap at that time but it just ended up being a draft somewhere um and within the last couple of years it's been there there have been times when it was unclear sort of how much um control basically tabbed members of cab in the chair controlled the agenda or items on the agenda or people who were coming to the meeting to speak and not just as a member of the public but to sort of present to tab and so that kind of rekindled an interest in it um and so natalie and erica vandenbrand and i spent several months um passing back and forth iterations of that draft it was shared a couple of times with tab um it's not hugely long it's maybe four pages but it's pretty dense stuff um and it just kind of seemed we didn't really

[55:00] we didn't really decide not to adopt them we just kind of decided it was just no one was getting to do the thinking in between the meetings and consider considering about it and we were kind of in the time when our meetings were going pretty darn late and no one really had the brain power for extra yeah that's when we thought well maybe this feels like more retreaty kind of of thinking to do so that's kind of where it is at [Music] i guess the main question behind you know should we do it or shouldn't we is are we over that um you know bit of friction and confusion is our current sort of system even though we don't have bylaws working sufficiently well and i would really like to hear from you alex and ryan on that because they've kind of seen what what happened and what what's working now so but that's the background okay alex i think we're past some of the friction that was taking place when you i think putting a lot of work into that i think we were on coming off the heels of a contentious project on 28th street where the then tab chair and vice chair

[56:01] went rushing to the city attorney's office and the department leadership went rushing to the city attorney's office each with different hopes for how involved tap was going to be in that process and whether a public hearing was going to take place or not and that's not something that has been has recurred to my knowledge since then and there's also an aspiration of one tab member at the time to have a community check-in where we take time on our agenda to discuss a matter that's been brought forward to us by a member of the community and it sounds like the city attorney's office expressed some reluctance to do that because it might provide a sense of favoritism from members of the community that are more the tab members are more familiar with and so i don't really get the sense reading recently the the draft operating procedures that those really um that there still isn't the opportunity for favoritism

[57:01] or that it really assault solves the getting something on the agenda or not question and so um to me it feels like we we might actually be solving much by by going through with those and there are other causes of tension that are worth discussing before we would i'd feel comfortable really um feeling like we've got a finished product i wonder um and we can talk more about that alex i i don't know aaron if it if you have any um experience with or kind of opinion on boards that have bylaws and boards that don't like even when things are going well is it helpful to have those um in the background that's my first question and then um my second question would i think be for tab members in that um you know one of the things aaron you talked about with the police oversight committee is that the bylaws were more

[58:00] than kind of just rules or procedure but um really got to like how the tab or the board wants to um work together and like what they're excited about you know what they want to work on um and so you know i guess my question for tab would be would that be something that um would also be of interest once maybe we all feel like there's better clarity on what tab's role is or that helps us you know define that better i mean for your first part i think it's always good to have the some sort of bylaws i mean if if for nothing else other than a training um tool for people coming onto the board to know what to expect and how does the meeting flow and you know the police advisory board is working on they're still developing their guiding principles section of it um but just as a new person you can pick it

[59:00] up and kind of know what to expect at your first board meeting you know sometimes the chair can't be there someone has to fill in it can be helpful to them you know you can have some perks in it like the agenda committee to help iron out that process i think you can head off a lot of issues with good bylaws and if you're going to do it take it and make it yours so that it's valuable to you thanks that's helpful yeah sorry go ahead i'm interrupting somebody was it you ryan well it was ryan i just earlier we were uh taylor said maybe i should weigh in on the where we were before because i was somewhat part of it but i don't know how are we on time should we can i keep going you're mute i think heidi we're good we're good ryan okay thank you i opened something else instead of unmuting we are okay on time okay i just wanted to concur going back to the question of like how do the members feel that they've gone through this in part and i

[60:01] just i would concur with alex um i i'm grateful uh tila for the work that you did with erica it seemed like the right approach at the time what we're going through but um i mean i think i think it seems to me that the question now is how do we really sync up with teamwork and like um just work productively together and to me that is um there's some really important exercises we could do to sync up on like strategic planning and visioning and you know having um developing a shared sense of what do we think is important to me bylaws is going kind of the opposite direction it's creating more more rules and like less like more formality and i don't think that's that's like what i'm as excited about and if we have extra time to spend on that i'd love for us to use some of that to work on some of these um i i guess just putting the time into developing some kind of like strategic planning together on some of these tpp goals that we don't yet have a shared sense of how do we achieve change that we all can say together to me that's a very top priority we don't have much

[61:01] time for it so i'd rather put the effort there second thing is as we just established tab is mostly accountable to counsel and if if the effort is to is to cr well council and city manager and if and if the if the idea is to like develop more structure then i would say we should think more about the relationship with council and with the city manager and um because that's just where i think we have the most the i mean we just discussed that's where we have the most accountability too so anyway i'm fine with which is kind of like keeping it on on the back burner for now but i'm also flexible okay tila yeah ryan thanks uh to the last point about it the draft that we have really isn't talking too much about how we interact with council and that's definitely something i would want to revisit if we did pick this this up because it was not it's not complete for sure um and again i had a question about the council not a five rule um because uh

[62:00] i don't know where it comes from or how codified it is but one of the things that the current draft operating agreement does do is does a similar thing is that there's a nod of two rule in there basically um you know so occasionally one member of cab will have a really great idea and want to pursue it and it might it might represent an extra work on staff or it might not really sound like much of a priority to the other members of tab but if you can you can talk at least one other member of tab into sticking it on the agenda in the next meeting then it goes on the next agenda meeting but we could just do that informally and so i'm just wondering how how the not a five on city council came about where is it where does it reside is it just sort of tradition because we could do the same thing for us without having to really rehash the whole operating agreement [Music] so the the council rules a procedure are in the code um you can find them there and let's see they are in

[63:00] 2 three three and then out of five is in those rules it is spelled correct okay i believe so yep that's what i was trying to ask yep council procedures and if you don't know where to find them they're in the muni code under 2-3 at the very end okay any other questions thank you so much aaron any other questions specific to erin or this whole conversation what i think i'm hearing from at least two of you is not very interested in putting time and energy into this now and i i don't mean tonight i mean putting it up for something that you spend spend time with going forward but but a little bit of a wait and see so looking at some of the examples from other boards and then maybe once there's some clarity around the role of tab etc i think that's what natalie said then then maybe so i won't toss it out it's

[64:00] there but we can revisit that another time if there's something that you're interested in i'm not hearing a lot of interest or commitment to it right now though accurate yeah okay okay um so at this point heidi and nicole nicholas just has her hand thank you hi nicole and please do always interrupt me i just miss those hands so often no worries this was um i just well well aaron is here and aaron i got your attention um i know in our city council handbook um it talks specifically about how boards and commissions can kind of pose um kind of like tila what you were talking to about the not a five and that sort of thing my understanding is that if a border commission of majorities support um kind of wanting wanting to do something or um requesting some more work from staff that then that majority decision then goes to council to see if there's an out of five on council to um direct that staff time and effort is that correct

[65:01] so it's like it goes straight from boards and commissions to staff but rather kind of goes up through council and then would come down to staff yes that's a great clarification no matter how many people on the board vote for it they still can't direct staff it would have to go back to the city council they could always make a recommendation or a request of staff but it would still go for that council not of five thank you okay thanks erin okay great anything else we're gonna shift gears and and shift to you next nicole so i want to just make sure before we do that that there's not anything else well we have aaron here and thank you so much for your time erin great appreciate it okay thanks all right nicole any big any introduction you want to do for nicole natalie

[66:01] yes i'm sorry i was just making sure it's unmuted yeah thank you so much nicole councilmember spear for being here um we really appreciate you taking the time to join us and and learn you know what what we're working on with tab and and we appreciate just the insights and your perspective as a council member so thank you awesome well thank you all um it's truly an honor to be here uh with you and i just uh have really greatly appreciated i know that you don't always see me at the meetings because sometimes i listen to them after but you are a wealth of information and i've been learning a lot from all of you that's really helpful for me especially with my doctor cog role so i just want to take that chance to thank you personally for teaching me a lot um and then also just thank you um i like i said i i was trying to say earlier when i think i may have frozen i'm here in my individual capacity not as sort of a representative of counsel

[67:00] um but i i think i would probably be fairly safe in just saying thank you for your service on this board um tab members um i know i i greatly appreciate you um i am certain that my colleagues do as well um you're taking time away from your families your jobs your personal lives rest and self-care like we talked about earlier um you're not getting paid but you're here purely for your love of our community and your commitment to kind of helping our city be its best and i just greatly appreciate that and um just wanted to thank you so like i said i'm coming here in my individual capacity tonight not on behalf of council what i just wanted to do was to share some of my professional observations as somebody who's observed some of your meetings now for a few months and coming from my perspective of having led and managed teams for over 25 years and i played a lot of sports when i was younger so

[68:00] being a part of teams as well um and then just my personal experience on various boards and subcommittees and things and then my personal perspective as a member of council um tila and ryan i think you didn't quite realize you were setting me up so well um for this conversation but uh earlier tla you asked about sort of boards do we have too many boards are they doing the right things um that kind of thing and ryan you were asking what i've seen boards do really well um so far i i don't think i've quite been here long enough um to see you know some really great examples of what boards have done in terms of bringing things forward i expect that i will get there in the next um six to 12 months but i'm not there quite yet um but what i was hoping to just share with you is just some observations around um how you know what i've observed in terms of board staff interactions um what um i sort of see from from my council um seat um in terms of how you know council

[69:01] isn't is not using uh feedback from boards um and just just try to learn from you all as well what can i do as sort of a transportation focused member of council to really help um advocate for the work that you all are doing as board members and staff here um does anybody have any questions so far okay really appreciate you being here yeah no i'm i'm really i'm really grateful um for to you all for letting me let me be here and learn from you it really is uh helpful to me um so just some of the kind of things that i've um noticed uh listening in on some of your meetings um first of all even being here tonight i can sense that you all feel the same urgency that i feel and that prompted me to run for council um urgency around the climate catastrophe that we're dealing with urgency in terms of needing to shift our behavior

[70:00] much faster than i think humans have ever shifted their behavior before um and and also just sort of recognizing as you all um are our frequent users of our bike paths and our bus systems and things like that um the fact that we're still kind of far away from our vision zero goals right we're still um having people uh injured on our roads and and you know i um so i i i can tell that you know and all of you and i think that staff you're coming from um a similar place of feeling all this urgency i've noticed that you all are all really exceptional in terms of your expertise and the perspectives that you are bringing so that um i just just wanted to commend you for that as well um i greatly appreciate all of the perspectives that you're bringing here um and it's clear because i've heard you all mentioned in a number of times that you're really interested in helping the city meet its tmp goals which is exactly why you're on the transportation advisory board

[71:00] um i you know one of the things that i've noticed being on council is that um and this isn't just specific to tab um and taylor gets to your question about boards and commissions it feels like we're not always clear um on what it is that we're asking boards to do and the kind of feedback to um provide and that to me feels like a challenge that um you know i as a council member for example i'm not always being clear about what type of information or feedback i would like to have from a board so you know i think that's that's something that i've noticed and i think that that translates um to a lack of clarity around kind of the goals and the outcomes and the roles um specifically within tab now just kind of thinking specifically in tab um that you know it seems like um there there was one meeting i think it may have been the first one that i attended uh a few months ago where i got the

[72:00] sense that um that that tab was a little bit like a teacher with a red pen kind of correcting you know some of the stuff that was going on um in in staff designs and things like that right and that you know to me was was a little surprising just coming in because that that wasn't a role that i was expecting you know tab to to have um and and so i think it's it's one of those places where um just trying trying to understand right trying to get us all focused on the same goals and outcomes and and i mean that not just in this group right now but council staff and boards the degree to which we can all get aligned on what it is we're trying to accomplish and what each of our different roles are the much faster we're going to get to to our goal um there's um i i noticed um that there's a lot of different uh levels of feedback that are being given um sometimes it's design feedback sometimes it's policy feedback um it's it's a

[73:00] little bit mixed and i think for me that was another reflection that council doesn't always do or that at least i sorry can't speak for council i counsel could do a better job of trying to make sure that we're um giving giving that kind of feedback that helps people bring bring or helps focus people's thinking and discussions um and then i also have just observed and i think i've heard some of you allude to this tonight so it's probably not a surprise but that there's sometimes this tension um that that's apparent in your conversations where it feels like um folks aren't always kind of working together that sometimes people are um i use a robot analogy a lot talking about teams right we're rowing in different directions and when you're rowing in different directions it's really hard to kind of head head in one one direction because they're all kind of pulling in in different places um and i think that the last thing that i've noticed um that i work on with a lot of my teams

[74:00] and work a lot is trust and it feels like like there's at times a bit of a lack of trust in the group and i say that not just in sort of trusting that people are always presenting accurate information but also trust in that if somebody is raising a concern or um you know even just saying hey you know what you just said didn't feel really good but it feels like that sometimes not not spoken that it just sort of sits there and and creates a little bit of tension um i don't know if i explained that well sorry i'm getting to the point of night where i usually have a second dose of the same caffeine so i think you're clear and i have the same thing about sometimes i need to sort of check it at this time of night but i do want to make sure are you talking are you are you talking about tab tab with tab or tab and staff as you're watching those meetings yeah i'm talking about all everybody all together so um

[75:01] everyone together that it just it feels like there's not um kind of the trust and openness that allows for um disagreement in in a way that's really productive right i i often tell my my teens that if everybody's agreeing with me you either don't understand me or you're not being honest with me there should never be a case where you're agreeing with everything i'm saying right um and so so i think there's there's a trust in being able to speak um the the places where there's disagreement right and then there's also sort of a trust that when we're coming in to work as a team we all have good intentions and you know we're all there trying to achieve the same goal that we're all committed to achieving the same goal and and that's sort of what i've noticed sometimes feels like it's missing um in some other conversations yeah what are so and i i think there's a so what

[76:00] aspect of that but that you you spoke about also because when everybody is so pa from what i gathered as i was just speaking with people and and listening there this passion is a wonderful thing right it's why we have people on the board but it can not work in the best way that everyone needs to right now to achieve these difficult goals that i'm hearing about if it's not aligned together and you're also bringing something else up in that which has to do with that sort of basic trust that is about assuming positive intent that we we can disagree because we're focused together on solving this external issue rather than focusing against each other as the issue is that that's part of what i'm hearing i'm not trying to put words in your mouth yeah yeah no thank you and i think just trying to you know remove kind of the personal aspect of it right so that when when issues are being raised it's about a specific

[77:01] uh statement or something like that not the person who made it that kinds of things um and it's you know and i bring it up because um for me and i don't know if if anybody's ever read the five dysfunctions of a team this was one of the books that my that i was kind of turned on to when i first moved into real leadership management kind of roles i can't recommend it enough it's a relatively quick read it's written like a fable um so it's sort of novel like but it has some interesting perspectives um but the one the one um foundation of everything that they talk about is this trust and why it's so important um and i think that's that's why i wanted to uh raise this one with you because because we are all feeling this urgency of needing to move a lot faster um than then you know we are moving and and what we're trying to do is move something that's really big and has hundreds of years of history behind it

[78:01] um so that's that's also really hard um and so oh yes thank you thank you heidi that's that is the book um but you know to get there right i mean we we all in our own unique roles and the teams that we're on council tab other boards and commission staff these problems are so big that we need to be the best performing teams that have ever existed in order to rise to these challenges um and you know so i i i'm i'm curious you know i did prepare a few questions on just um for us to think about you know how to um how to kind of move um how i can i in my role on council can help um advocate for some of the things that we're all trying to do together um and you know how how we can build some some of this foundational trust among all of us in order to move things forward can i ask a question of everyone because i appreciate the points you're making

[79:01] and it's brave to me with some of the points you're making but i want to check with tab members just any does anything seem off are you surprised by some of what what nicole is sharing that she has observed or kind of noticed or wondered about in the meetings or is it yeah tila i really loved the teacher with the red pen analogy because i think you're right um is that okay is that not okay i don't know i remember about a year ago a little over a year ago uh i think it was garrett who said uh you know some sometimes we we uh we have this this plan this idea and then we put it through the tab filter like you know what is tab going to say and mark and i both mcintyre and i both thought good you should do that before getting here so we don't have to say it out loud but maybe that's uh that's something that we should not be doing or a role do you think we've overstepped uh and then what surprised me was you know nicole i

[80:00] don't know obviously they recorded maybe you're going back and and listening or whatever but um it surprised me that you would pick up on that that tension um maybe i'm used to a lot higher level of stress in my life or that kind of interpersonal stuff just doesn't get to me but i was i was very surprised that you would pick up on that yeah that i'm going to blame i i am a really intense empath um and i feel other people's feelings and then i feel what i feel about their feelings and i know what they're feeling about my anyway that's exhausting so so it is something that i mean if there is an iota of tension and something i am feeling it and keying in on it um and it it has been helpful in some of my outside of council kind of team building sort of things but but yeah it's it's there you don't know that most people would one of the the keys that i i'm going to jump in here just because it's something it's also work that i do and i it was i just watched snippets to

[81:00] try to learn more about you all from a couple meetings so i didn't ever watch any home meetings but a real key to there is what i call an energy drain not working together is any kind of language around us versus them when you're talking any kind of that is and so i have a really analytical brain rather than the sort of empathic and i i picked up on some stuff from that and i don't know if it was as clear as what you're sharing nicole but um yeah uh yeah can i mention one other thing click the red pen um tila that that red pen to me feels like i want it on council right i want you all using that red pen on council like council that was no you know you you chose the wrong work plan item right um you know these these things you're doing when you say you care about climate those aren't actually climate focused decisions like that that's sort of where where i see that red pen coming out

[82:01] um and where you know i would hope that this board as an advisory board to council could really make make that input and or to make sure we're laser focused on the things that we're supposed to be focused on alex when i first joined tab i got some advice from a former um city department head and and it was your job is not to do the work she's like coming from this as someone in a cellular profession you're gonna have the urge to do the work but your job is not to do the work and i've done a terrible job at that and i've gotten worse over time and the the red pen thing really resonated with me because i feel that i am more hands-on and then i should feel the need to be um

[83:01] more so than i would have ever hoped and i it more than is probably healthy um but it in my first year on tap there was that's where the distrust began and there were it was impossible to sit by as a bystander and be told that we can't do all these different things when i spend 40 plus hours a week doing them and a little bit of red pen has gotten us from inaction to to delivering something meaningful for the community in a couple different cases and so i don't think it's anything i've acknowledged with this group before it is uncomfortable to get out the red pen um but i'm glad i have and i will continue to do so whenever i see an opportunity um and i prob i might not be willing to

[84:00] share that if it wasn't for a lot of the things that erica said earlier this year in one of her final meetings about the re the department retrospective i felt very heard when she shared some of her insights from what's gone wrong in recent years and the actions that department leadership thought were necessary to avoid some of those experiences that weren't always positive for everyone involved and then also with some of the new hires we're so lucky to have some of the fresh perspective and an experience of really really doing um some of these things that we're trying to do at a accelerating pace in town here that i think i pray that there's less temptation for the for the red pen moving forward and it seems like we're on track to get to a place where um we can both rebuild that trust and with that trust will come less of that red pen temptation

[85:02] from my perspective you know you you all really brought out that red pen during council's retreat and on council right and we got can out of it because you know you were you were really pushing for that and i think um that for me you know was a place there there were a couple things that surprised me in the retreat but the places where i was really um surprised in a really good way was when um kind of the the advisory board um like tab in this case came together with staff and i was like we got to make this happen how can we make this happen right and then kind of getting getting counsel to at least that was how it looked coming from from from my council perspective but um you know i think pushing on us in that way can be really helpful nicole i think what i hear you saying is push on council not that's the appropriate place to do it is that and not not with wherever you heard it was it staff or whatever in the yeah well i mean i think you know i think that there's you know a

[86:01] place for it like if staff is asking specifically you know can you give us feedback on this please bring out the red pen on this right that that that's that that is a place kind of within the governance structure but you know in the same way that um you know i kind of can't go and direct um staff work and it's really not appropriate for me to um kind of critique staff work outside of going through the council employees um i think it's it's sort of the same thing that without asking for that permission just from and this is just me speaking from a governance perspective and my sort of impression of how our city governance is structured that the more appropriate place without being given or being asked permission or being asked for feedback by staff is really through counsel but that and i don't know maybe that's i think aaron left but heidi you know you you advise folks too so maybe you can provide some feedback there i i don't i am the worst person in terms

[87:02] of the rules and regulations around i'm afraid right but that is that isn't you know and and i think they're really important i have to say that to begin with i do believe there is a reason for here's who influences and impacts who and where voices are heard i'm a big fan of what is in my field of study called lack of composure which is that we have the conversation where we need to have it in a really incredibly respectful way that you can't do that unless you have what you're talking about as foundational trust which really is even vulnerability-based trust i think according to lencioni and um otherwise it can't happen but um yeah i i kind of it was i was really interested alex when you were speaking because at first what i heard was i got this advice and i have gotten worse and worse about it over time and that shifted to and i will keep being bad about it because it's i've had

[88:01] success anyway i i realized it wasn't just that but it you gave me a quite a surprise ending on that one um that that you've felt uh you've somehow and i think it i think it stems back to some erosion of trust that it's the um it's what's gotten the results when other stuff hasn't or something it felt like that to you is that right yeah an example i often use is in the aftermath of a crash on folsom in 2019 council asked city staff to build protected by claim there and what the council was told is it cost 300 000 to study and 5.3 and at a minimum to build and um we ended up we've implemented for 170 000 and i was told many steps along the way of why it couldn't be done when i started getting some traction

[89:01] with the city manager's office and one member of the department i reached out to another to try to build some momentum they told me nope 1.5 million or more do you have any questions i was like i do have questions and got no response so there were multiple places where if i hadn't if i just trusted the folks who were i knew from personal experience that it was a little more doable than was than was understood and there was a lack of recognition an opportunity on on staff and then unfortunately some someone willing to even have a conversation that if i had stopped we would not have yeah and i appreciate that i think i mean it slightly differently where there's a conversation out of mutual respect where we can actually together problem solve around how could we come in at a lower price tag right or how could we make this happen rather than your that's

[90:00] not true and i'm going to go off on my own and do something and i i see the bobblehead of nicole and i i feel like that is the that's where um like this is really not my business and i apologize that i'm sticking my nose in but to me that is the richness of advisory boards and we and and staff and and council is when we can together say this is what's important yeah but i think this is what's important and i you know here are the limits i see well i don't see those limits and we actually have the conversation together about how do we have protected bike lanes and not spend so much money and i know i'm simplifying rather than you're not telling me the truth or you're a roadblock or an obstacle to anything happening because i hear you say not being invited into the conversation and i'm i want to how how we can all want each other in the conversation really probably is about

[91:00] working together and not against each other i know i i'm rushing what i'm saying because ryan's had his hand up for so long i know it's mechanical but it's making me feel like you're getting tired and you need to have a say so i'm gonna be quiet and call on ryan ryan you're muted oh yeah i just wanted to respond to nicole i think she sort of asked tab for feedback on it but i um trini or becky or you guys do either if you want to go first on just comments for nicole not to put you on the spot but i've talked more okay um okay then so just a few thoughts nicole thank you for all that uh this really um a lot of it is affirming to what i thought i so i think you're correct i think the red red pen analogy um is a good one and and it tells a few stories here so i think one is um that i'd like to say is when i started a tab my bias coming into this was in fact that um i would not be you know the one

[92:01] coming into super super levels of details but more at the level of like values and priorities and helping at the kind of strategic planning level um and i you know attended their first meeting in the second meeting and third and fourth and fifth and sixth and then i was kind of getting to the point of like when do we get to talk about that stuff like when is this gonna happen and um and it hasn't and um i you know i in a it one chapter in my career prior um i did it essentially corporate consulting in which the service offering was alignment alignment building literally bringing teams together to to do the work of alliance facilitating alignment and you know having that sort of creating that cohesion and i know that it's it's important but if we don't have the space for it in the sense that you know i want to point any one person but if we don't have a a leadership you know that says we have to do this then it doesn't happen and these discussions you know we end up just parrying with with the tactical stuff so 100 agree i think we're limited um in part inherently with

[93:03] just this idea that we have to meet once a month and six to nine and we've been um what's the word we've been in a previous retreat told by the attorney like and don't make the public spend any more time than just that because this is equity and it is so i think i think we do have some kind of inherent limitations to doing doing this kind of alignment work and i'm um but i also think we can do it and i think i think too much too much time has gone on so far in my year plus on council now that we haven't been able to at least have some strategic discussions about like about you know the values and priorities of the tmp goals and how we're going to achieve them and so therefore we end up do you know way down at more of the ground level of just kind of like duking out different proposal ideas so um i like the um the the idea of coming to council like like engaging with council more directly in the sense of hey council here's what we think you should push on we're not

[94:01] telling staff to do this we're telling you this is this is values and political you know decision making that we you know budget kind of stuff too um i guess the question would be for councilmember spear like to what to what extent you actually had appetite to you know you know really increase the volume you're the yeah it's the volume from us on that because um you need to be respectful of your ability to do that and then you know from you it's got to go to through the city manager so but i i i'm grateful for you to say that that you you that was a good experience with um i guess at least with can with coming to council directly i i do think um we probably are not we haven't done as many um resolutions get making recommendations to council as we could be more proactive about that so i guess now i'm just talking to my tab members um and the final thing is i just one more thing on the red pen i do want to say um in alex's um uh not what's the word not defense but um just just to give him a compliment

[95:00] um you know the can is a is alex's red pen i mean it this this literally was alex pulled out a closet of red pens and you know was the person who drew most of this up using his professional experience and um so i just want to say though on one hand like that's maybe um you know the red pen has some different sides to it but um you know you do have a professional a body of professionals here that doesn't know things so i guess the final thing is sorry i'm going on and on but um i i do think that the um the future the next director full-time permanent director of this department is going to be um the most instrumental person in like determining what happens from here and if that is a person who says we are going to take i'm going to stand for all the tnp goals and i'm going to make sure we have a strategic strategy for each of them and i want to work with cap on getting these right um i i think something like that will um will lead

[96:00] to a much more natural collaboration between tab and staff um and i think that's something that we've lacked in the past as a sense that we have a both a commitment and a strategy to to achieve imp goals i'll stop there sorry i'm sorry for the firehouse but thank you thank you nicole becky thanks um yeah i just wanted to echo what ryan said about i it's not always it's like clear when there are opportunities to give feedback on very specific projects and details but i i mean if i'm new so i don't have nearly as much perspective to reference but um i i've sort of been waiting to understand where wait where do we talk about sort of the that strategy and what where am i supposed to say things i actually feel slightly more knowledgeable about um as far as this bigger picture and um

[97:00] and i i don't know when i'm supposed to say those things or what the opportunity is and i feel like i understand so many things are in motion and it very few of them seem to be like i understand things that can't be changed i don't really understand what things can um and and where one would do that um so yeah i guess it's just hard to know and um maybe also it's the timing of you know there's the work plan council's work plans put in place and then you join a board and then you're told okay this is the work plan and you're not really sure if you're like what you know like what feedback do you give on something that's already been decided um um not not that i have any major comment on on that at this point but yeah just that sort of i i just don't always understand like where i'm supposed to where i actually can be affected i'm not really clear yet on where i can be useful to be friends yeah thank you and is there any because i think i i don't think we have we don't have

[98:00] aaron here anymore right i don't know nicole are you able to give any clarity on that or your understanding of that or yeah i mean i i it's about as clear as mine perhaps right um so you know i i think that this is one of those things that you know we don't necessarily have a great um sorry let me change that to i i don't have a great understanding of you know where tab kind of sees its unique ability right this group of people that you have together right now given what's on council's work plan given what's coming up um where do you feel like you can can give us that um feedback or where where can you push us because that i feel would be a really um a valuable thing for me as a council member and i would expect for some of my colleagues as well um you know for you all to come to us and say hey given what we're working with um here's here's what you know we think in

[99:00] collaboration you know with staff here's what we think our group can offer to you can you please set up some criteria so that you know we know when we get to weigh in on these things because i don't even know that that really exists at this point does it i don't i don't think it does um so i mean i think just just having and i don't know if this is some discussions you know within tab and within this group here with staff well and brenda might have some she might have some insight too right with the work that you've been recently doing yeah and we're gonna jump into more of that next but i i just wanted to jump on here you may have noticed on the agenda during the work plan discussion are some words that we all talked about last week last year last week it feels like last week um last year during this retreat which were sort of the three buckets of council requests staff needs and emerging issues as sort of a way to unpack a work plan

[100:01] for a tab and so so nicole what that what that what we were trying to help do with that and you all know whether or not it helped better than i do because i wasn't with you all year um but was to say here's what council what we know council has already asked of the board so that's gonna take a certain chunk of time and stat and staff effort and board effort and there's only 12 meetings in a year etc etc here's what staff is working on as their top priorities that they really need tab to weigh in on to feel that they've done the best job that they can do and then here's what's left of the time frame that you all have together right and so what can we dig into during that time that we can then bring to council that can be a priority and a council request three years from now or you know what i mean how does the how does the visioning happen and trying to make sure that we were

[101:00] defining what that margin of time looked like that could be spent in that way without compromising the other two buckets and that was really an attempt to to make sure that the time that is spent is valued and valuable those are the two words i've really been trying to use a lot in the organization as far as boards and commissions go is it should be a valued and valuable service opportunity right not only should you feel like your time has been well spent but also staff and council should feel like um what what's been brought to them is hugely valuable to them and and we're starting to get there i think but it's not just tap like what nicole says is true of every board of commission of the 23 to 27 or whatever we have now boards and commissions right if the clarity is there for some and even when it's there for some it's not really there for some so it's part of a larger process improvement that we have a cross-functional team a

[102:01] cross-departmental team working on at the moment and it's slow work right but these conversations really help inform that work because we aren't going to need to hear it from all sides like where are those pain points and those moments of confusion and the places that need need support and love and attention around them to make this more functional [Music] please go ahead and call yeah i was just gonna say just from my own um experience being part of these conversations in my my day job um sometimes they're not very satisfying right when there are real problems that need to be addressed and solved but what i've also observed is that these kinds of conversations and discussions and decisions are actually the ones that have the longest impacts because they're changing how work is done and they're creating the circumstances that lead to more highly functioning teams and so from you know from that

[103:00] perspective it feels really valuable um not just for this council not just for this tab but for for many future essays um to come and heidi can i make one last point just please do of course this is just something that i was thinking of alex as you were talking about kind of getting about trust in the red pen and things like that and i just wanted to emphasize it's not blind trust right it's not trust of just saying like oh you've got covered i don't i don't need to worry about it um that it's really once once you have that trust there the next thing to come into the five five functions five functions of a team pyramid is disagreement and conflict because conflict is actually the way that we get to the best solutions it's when we have that disagreement the thing that i try to keep in mind in those conversations where we're having disagreement is this phrase of coming from a place of curiosity um so that it's it's starting with the assumption that the person is really

[104:00] trying to do you know their best work or trying to meet the goals that we've set as a team and then question like what is it that you know that they know that i don't know that's leading them to a different conclusion that can be a really valuable way of advancing that disagreement and getting to a place of shared knowledge so that you can kind of move forward to achieve the goal that you've set as a group yeah very well put thank you alex yeah i think if i can give a couple examples of where some distress has risen and then i think an opportunity near term to to try for all work together to strive for a better outcome i want to interrupt for just a second and and you can then continue but i would love to find what is it that works and how you can go forward so if it's something that is valuable and understanding that because you know

[105:00] then please share the example but if it's too you know i just want to be careful about i'm looking at the time you know how can we identify the the way forward natalie did you want to say something real quickly i saw you went off mute yeah now i appreciate that heidi um you know my just as i've been listening my thought is that you know i think a lot of the distrust was from past staff um and well and there certainly are i think sentiments of you know more recent issues but it would be helpful you know as we just think about how we work together moving forward like what are things that work well for us to work together um because i mean i think we have spent some time on kind of like what hasn't gone well we that department retrospective i think was that you know attempt to kind of talk about some of

[106:01] the things that didn't go well and how we learned from those things and how we're moving forward so that would be helpful for me um but that's just kind of well i one of the one of the things and this just comes from working with um you know working with teams is that we we get a lot further when we focus on what is it that works and how do we bring that to this situation rather than the the drain of what doesn't work too much you can't ignore it and i'm not suggesting that but i just want to find a way to um make sure and it isn't going to be doing that work tonight but i'm starting to hear a wish to do this work and maybe finding out logistically how to because i hear you loud and clear when do we have time and i think i heard you know becky saying when is it the right time to bring some of this stuff up and i'm not sure yet because i'm new but also other things that you've really been hungry for and the forum doesn't you know

[107:01] we're not sure what the forum is and i'm i guess what i wonder is can you do more of things like this to address some of this stuff but is that i guess where i've felt valued and valuable to the tremendous point was when staff reached out to ryan and i to discuss the potential tip projects to submit they gave us a preview of some projects and we were sort of reacting live so we didn't have a ton of input in that meeting maybe it was just more of an opportunity for us to gather information and ask questions and then staff had requested that we provide feedback by a certain date so that they would have time to respond to it and incorporate that feedback into the the upcoming meetings and um that meeting took place at the first days of march and we had our input in by the eighth and there were some pretty basic it was i felt valuable because um ryan

[108:02] and i brought forward the idea of including two new projects which ultimately ended up being things that we're going to submit on next month and council approved was it last week um but the the questions that we asked we still haven't gotten a response to um two and a half months later and and it felt like um you know we we only had a week to react to it but in in the months since we've had the opportunity to to hear a lot more opinions from other people on staff and other ideas from members of the community and sort of being shunned and not getting any sort of response we've asked questions in an email and a more formal pdf and in meetings where we're still not getting any answers it's hard to follow up and where i think there are community members who can provide value and there are ideas that i'm hearing from them that i would like to advocate for but when we have a staff that's entirely unresponsive to us it

[109:00] makes that impossible and involved in this process is a longer time [Music] member of staff where there is some some long-standing distrust that city their department leadership hasn't really ever i've expressed an interest of discussing but have department leadership has not taken me up on that as much as i would have thought they would so thank you for reaching out i wish it was like more of a back and forth and it feels like ryan and i just sort of early on just gave over a bunch of information and then we we had more to follow up with if there was a willingness from staff but we were just kind of um kind of boxed out you know and some of the things i get curious about and i'll let you i'll let you speak for sure natalie of course because i don't really think about this situation but i hear immediately assumptions that uh we're being shunned where they're not

[110:02] you know these things and where some of it might and and some of it might be busyness might i'm just giving hypotheticals right but but when i open up and think well what could be driving some of that it could be busyness it could be that the there's a lack of trust on both sides and and there's not a perception of you as a resource i don't know you know so that it's like instead it's this something that i need to deal with rather than something that i want to deal with does that make sense to you i'm not sure but there's there's so much that could be other than being shunned i just want to offer that up natalie yeah and i mean i i appreciate you saying all of that alex and i think um i definitely just don't have clarity on on all of what you're kind of referencing like i'm i'm not sure what questions haven't been answered and so um but i do

[111:01] i do think a lot of it is just busyness and and staff certainly wants to use tab as a resource and and that was why there was that initial reach out to um you and ryan to have you be a part of the process you know very early on before you know it even went to the whole board um and i think you know again it goes back to the trust right like you feel you know feel like there's a lack of trust we feel like there's a lack of trust and so that assumption of positive intent is we're like so far from that right of like you're not assuming that we're just busy and not able to get answers to you um or there's like a misunderstanding that we're thinking we're gonna get answers to you at a later date i mean i i don't know because i don't know the details of what the questions were um but i think like to me the just the basic kind of issue or underlying issue under of all of this is you know talking about trust and how we

[112:00] need to be able to rebuild that so that we can work together successfully because i think that dr cog tip process in ways that was successful in that you were engaged early on and the projects that went to council were approved by council right like that to us is a successful pro is a successful process um but i think when we talk about the amount of like there's the like a right amount of involvement between tab and staff and that i think is getting back to like what tab's role is and like we all need better clarity as nicola said like even council needs more clarity on what tab's role is um and like to me there's still a question of like how much you know hand-holding or whatever word you want to use of like us working together like you're an extension of staff is appropriate and how you know how is that effective for staff

[113:02] and how is that effective in how we meet our goals right like you know getting to becky and ryan's point like they want to have more strategic conversations about you know high-level things and if we're spending time on um you know very granular project design and project development to get to an application is that effective right and so i think to me like that is like the question that we need to answer and it's not going to happen today but like all of this hopefully is getting us to that place thanks brenda yeah see that's the problem when i turn on my camera then i stick my nose in place as it might not belong but um i first of all just want to really appreciate the level of of um vulnerability and that's happening in this conversation right now it's really impressive for a public forum meeting um and for a board or commission at the

[114:00] city of boulder so thank you all for being willing to say things out loud that are uncomfortable and hard to say out loud so my contribution to that is to talk about it from an engagement perspective which those of us who try and really create inclusive and meaningful engagement in the city one of the things we have to always remember is that not everyone is going to agree with every decision that the city makes that city staff get to at the end of whatever their long process is and the people that we've asked for their thoughts and opinions for along the way are are not going to always be satisfied and sometimes they'll feel like because they don't like the outcome it was a bad process right and so we work very hard to make sure that we have good processes and that we circle back and this is where we are most challenged as a professional engagement staff is the loop back is the loop back to say here is where your engagement happened

[115:02] here's how it was listened to here's the role it played in the decision that was made and we know you didn't like the outcome but it isn't it didn't happen because we didn't hear you it happened because of all these other factors along the way right and and we're really bad at demonstrating that and that's part of what i'm hearing in this conversation is we invest in process and we invest in process and we invest in process and then the outcome looks like this which isn't what we said and we didn't necessarily get the conversation after that that explained to us why we ended here when we were talking when we were saying this over here yeah right and it's really hard to do when we work at the pace that we work at this city um and so i offer all of those from a general engagement perspective as well that's helpful brenda because i think that's i i felt like we that was such a good example of it that alex gave of

[116:01] trying all these different avenues to get a response and connection and and it's hard when you're busy but understanding here's what i heard you here's what you you brought to us and here's what we heard and here's the decision that we made and here's why right helps a lot even when the decision is different but uh yeah it is it is a really good conversation notification is why i got distracted and i'm plugged in the way i thought i was sorry no worries at all um no it's really valuable thanks nicole i was just going to note that that level of commitment is the third level of the pyramid of function so just wait we keep hitting on all these points so i just wanted to again recommend we get into accountability and then we get to results and what we're trying to get to are the results right in that pyramid so yeah yeah yeah there seems like to me like there's

[117:00] a there's a hunger to to there's passion there's really really important work and there is a desire to to put our energy into making amazing things happen and move the mountains that we need to move i'm hearing that from everybody sometimes passion and that hunger like you said that sense of urgency we want to we makes it hard to do this step back and have these conversations but i'm really feeling like this feels hopeful to me in terms of next steps for finding ways to move forward where we're working more together instead of against each other i know there's a lot of work to do do you all and this is directed at tab because i know we need to take a break and shift gears but do you all feel uh ready and willing to do some of that work too that we're talking about which is to to establishing uh what nicole is talking about with the pyramid the the trust the mastery of conflict the commitment

[118:01] to finding the things that we are that are uh we're all aligned about right and i think ryan this speaks to your if we can understand what those are then we can start to identify the specific bullet point action items under them um and then achieving results does that feel like work you're willing to do i know there's a big step of when and how but are you interested and willing is there a commitment here for that yes from ryan it's like a very rhetorical question but it does i mean i don't mean for it to be i i anyone like to immediately resign yeah no right yeah i i have no idea i'm terrible at this stuff i have no real idea what that looks like i'll participate in anything you want me to but i i don't know okay so you're not sure because you don't know what it what it might entail but it seems like worthwhile work and ryan is saying yes and and trini you're saying yes and alex how about you what we signed up for

[119:00] in my opinion that's what we signed up for i mean it's just making things very clear and i think that's kind of like sounding off on what becky was saying i mean as a newbie i i'm kind of confused as to when i can say certain things or when we can like get together i mean i was at the orientation and i had never heard that if i hit reply all that immediately kind of convokes meaning and that really kind of freaked me out um but there were things that i would like to ask and i don't know when that moment is the right moment or you know i've talked to becky about it we went on a hike and we were both kind of like well you know so i think we are all you know so so excited and so passionate i think you've said that word and hit it on the spot like i think we're all very very passionate about this and we just want to maximize all of our efforts and we're together you know i don't

[120:00] so clearly in alignment i'm hearing big clarity and alignment yeah yeah um thank you anybody else before we take a break anything nicole that's coming up for you i just wanted to let you know that my tension radar has not gone off at all in the course of this conversation and i just really wanted to commend you because these are hard things we're talking about right it's not easy to give feedback it's not easy to let each other know where you know we um where we're struggling or where you know people are doing things that are not helpful for us and i just i'm truly honored to be a part of this conversation and just thank you for entering that space kind of like you were saying brenda um thank you this is this is the kind of work that i think is going to really help me this all forward wonderful thanks and uh you know i'm not doing my job very well because we're 30 minutes behind schedule but that's one of one of the aspects of my

[121:00] job but tila i i see that you went off me so i want to know i just before we break up i just wanted to thank nicole uh in in your short time on council you have spent more time and attention with us than any previous council member in my tenure um and uh yeah i just want to honor that it's this is nice this is extra credit and you're getting no credit so i wanted to yeah thank you to acknowledge it i really really appreciate your engagement with us on this yeah um that's awesome thanks and you're gonna stick around still right nicole that and that not amazing right the whole meeting i i'm impressed with that i have to say that's awesome okay is 10 minutes good everybody get up and move stretch i think what massage your earlobes do don't inundate your brain with stuff remember picture alex standing by the moving water which is probably where he's going right now all right see you all in 10 minutes sounds good

[129:18] natalie can you see that okay and is it the right yes as it should be it's good and i can see everyone's faces so i'm getting way ahead of the last time i shared a powerpoint in the zoom i would just lose everyone's face every time i was just hearing your voice so quietly and i'm like why is she speaking so quietly and then i realized you were coming through my earphones that were laying on my desk i was like quiet nobody ever says that i know there's this little breath of voice coming out of my oh there

[130:00] [Music] oh all right should i launch heidi or do you want to ease us back in i i think everyone's here i i wrote something down that nicole said and she used different words than me but and i think i said this earlier in the meeting that i just really love this uh this sort of curiosity and open mind and you know i wrote down the listen to understand like be curious about what is it someone else knows that i don't rather than because then that gives you this great opportunity to speak afterward about to be understood right but this sort of first listen to understand rather than to respond it just resonated with me as i was walking around during break so appreciate the conversation that everybody just had and now i'm going to just launch it right into natalie and brenda's hands or brenda's hands i think yeah i think you know i had a

[131:00] some opening remarks to make for brenda but i think we can just dive right in because you know i think we're yeah well tuned up for the conversation i think we are yeah i think you know what sometimes naturally the conversation just leads you right into the next piece which is i think right where we went um because really what i'm here to do is to provide some tools so that the atmosphere that is created that i really am feeling in this room tonight of productive dialogue and working well together um the tools that we've been working on as a staff to provide staff boards council and community members with with ways to stay in productive community together that way um many of you have seen a lot of this i think all of you have had the opportunity to see some of this work um so i'll move through some of the pieces quickly and slow me down if you need me to be slower um but i brought specifically tonight some of the pieces that maybe only tila has seen um that

[132:02] are sort of the more in-depth tools and language that we've shared with chairs and vice chairs in the past but i think it's really useful for everyone i know tila has seen this like 14 times so i appreciate your patience with it um and if there are particular pieces that resonate with you tila please feel free to highlight those um so i added some words to this slide that those of you who may have seen it haven't seen before which are inclusion and belonging and i'll get to sort of what that is and what that looks like um but i'm just going to launch into sort of what this productive atmospheres thing is that you'll hear us talk about as staff and we will encourage you to think about in your meetings um i have too many slides so i am going to move quickly um but this comes from work that is as old as my time here which is almost five years um in that um we had a public participation working group that really helped us identify some of the areas

[133:00] of improvement that needed to happen for us to be conducting meaningful engagement with our community so we've dug into that hopefully you've seen in a lot of different ways over the last four and a half years and one of the ways that they charged us with that i got have got to hold in my hands for that time is this this meaningful and inclusive way of talking together right this way of making sure we're being productive making sure that we are talking to each other in ways that we can keep listening to each other because that's really the key right that we're all human beings showing up together as human beings um and so we talked with more than 300 people in the community to find out what that looked and felt like when they were in good conversations how did that look and feel we thought we were going to come out with a quilt that we could embroider these community guidelines on and hang in council chambers and those would be all the rules that we would all

[134:01] feel good about following and then we learned that there is no set of rules that everyone feels good about following and that stitching a quilt like that would be like step number one to marginalization of parts of our community right and so we've we heard that clearly loudly early in the process we threw it out and then we had no idea what we were working toward we're like we're gonna put a bunch of time and energy into something and we don't know what it is and we're just gonna trust that it's gonna be something and we're just gonna keep talking to people and at some point we'll hit on what it is right so we did and then we tried to talk to as many different kinds of people as possible and then we had a small group of community members sit down with me and with our contractors from cu who were amazing to really dig through all this data and we came up with this um vision that you see in graphic form in front of you the words quickly and i could talk a long time about each of these words but

[135:00] i won't today inclusive dialogue personal accountability organized good meetings are organized right accessible receptive and responsive we have fuller discussions about things we're not only talking about narrow bits of things um disagreement like nicole was saying we can be in disagreement together and it's okay and co-creation we work together to develop what things are right to develop the ways we engage with each other it's not just us saying we're going to engage like this it's all of us together saying let's engage in these ways so that's what we're working toward always i also have a list of 25 things that make this work hard that i won't go into today literally they're called the enduring issues there's 25 of them they're real and they are hard and so we're starting to unpack some of those in different ways now and some of this work reflects that so once we did all this work with the community we turned to staff to say all

[136:01] right what does staff need how is staff experiencing this um what is happening out there in particular at this at the time our city manager was getting some pretty harsh and difficult and painful and abusive feedback from some of our community members and she asked council to think about that and think about what the role is from the diocese when things like that happen and so that took us down a journey of how do we support staff how do we support boards and commissions how do we support council how do we support the community in addressing it when these visions go awry when we are not being in community together how do we stop and say hey what we're not doing it remember that vision we want to do we're all accountable to that together and so we started to develop some tools some language i worked with a cross-departmental team we listened to folks in a number of different ways and we have a toolkit that we've developed for staff and we're considering longer term

[137:01] options what does that look like for you all i wanted to show you some of the hard things that we heard from staff that they experience in their jobs just doing the job that they show up to do every day sometimes this is how conversations land on them and that comes from all sides that comes through their email box that comes on the phone that comes at points of service at front desks that comes from our forestry professional who was physically assaulted for trimming a tree on pearl street mall right this comes in a lot of different forms and it comes from the feedback that they get from council from boards from commissions that make them not want to present in front of their council their boards and their commissions um so they have been verbally attacked for their motives their competence their integrity they have been shouted at and yelled at and cursed at they've um in when we were more in

[138:01] person been threatened their physical safety um they've been threatened that they would get fired that they would that someone would get them fired for what they were saying or doing is part of their regular job there's been verbal attacks on their identity especially some of them who are part of protected classes they've been doxed people in the community have dug up information about our staff members and posted it publicly they have people have used size and gender to intimidate our staff members so i use our staff as an example here because we've spent this time over the last two years where we've had a lot of time together and separately as staff to dig into what this looks like so we can all get better at it staff included right um this talks a lot about the first amendment and how we can um encourage each other to behave the way we want to behave together without violating anyone's first amendment rights we're not here to shut down

[139:00] anyone's voice ever we're not here to shut down anyone's emotions ever but we are here to conduct business and we need to be able to continue to do that and so what's important is identifying and being empathetic to moments in your meetings that are disrupting productivity and that's what we're looking for awareness of so when someone has spoken to a staff member extremely harshly there's an opportunity there to say do we need to take a minute right but that minute that we take is in is disrupting our meeting so yes we want our staff member to be able to breathe and be able to continue the the good thought processes that they have brought to the meeting today and that's disrupting our meaning so if that behavior continues that's going to become a bigger problem and we can't let it continue right so it doesn't mean we stop people from being who they are and showing up the way they show up but we do look out for those signs that

[140:01] it is making it hard to do business and it is getting us out of productive community together um so we identify the important thing on this slide is we have to identify it as a disruption we have to see that whatever is happening is a disruption and we have to say it out loud usually for the chair's responsibility alex so these are tools for you but for also anyone who's presiding and anyone could ask you to say could we talk about whether or not our meeting is being disrupted by this behavior um what we really ask of all of you first and foremost is that you model it right you show up in with curiosity with openness with willingness to listen and you treat each other and the people who are resourcing the meeting with you in a way that all of you can stay in that space because when we're being berated or we're being questioned in ways that that are not about our work but about our own personal integrity it's it's

[141:00] hard to stay in community right it's hard to stay productive so that's when we need to disrupt it and say wait a minute this is going astray let's get back to where we can all be curious together so we ask that you avoid creating that type of atmosphere yourselves and that you gently remind each other if that starts to happen right you gently say you know one of the things words language we pulled from sam um for a recent come from a recent highly controversial community conversation is it's easier for us to listen to each other when we are trying to persuade each other instead of trying to berate each other and the landmarks board says that at the beginning of every meeting now because they've found it helpful to remind each other and to remind staff and to remind community that they are in it together and that they're there to persuade each other about the thing they're passionate about not berate each other for not having the same opinion

[142:03] and then these are the slides you maybe probably see at the beginning of every meeting i just wanted to put them here because they're they are for everyone right i think we wrote them and we read them um before open comment and before public comment because we've have seen how that can have a positive effect on how the community talks but i also just want to remind us that it's for all of us and it's for all of us to point to when we're feeling like it's not happening for whatever reason that is um you've seen these and so i'm not going to read them to you because you hear them once a month probably and if you don't then we can help resource that better um these are those cues i was talking about that we hope that you'll hear and and support for each other um these are just examples but we know what it looks like when someone's off knocked off their off their um rocker and they can't quite move forward the way they should be able to

[143:00] um so a lot of interrupting can do that right i can't get my whole point across because somebody's jumping on top of me every time i speak um technology you know it can be as easy as phones going off right in the zoom world we're a little more forgiving of the barking dogs and the kids walking in and because we have to because we are right and so we all have to develop our own culture there what's what's disruptive what's not um someone's showing material that's not related to what's going on we see that happen in lots of different ways in public meetings um the audience or fellow or presenter or fellow board and commission members have an obvious emotional reaction that means they can't go on right and and that reaction specifically caused by something someone else did right sometimes we have emotional reactions because of the subject matter and that's real but if it's an emotional reaction you're having because someone did something to you and now you can't now you're in fight or

[144:01] flight instead of at work right that's a disruption um someone asked for a moment we can't trust that our staff or our presenters or each other will always be comfortable doing that so we want to look for it but certainly if someone says i i need a moment a disruption has occurred in your meeting and someone needs to be held accountable for it and the participants are being specifically targeted with obscenity racial epithets things that can be assumed to be causing an individual to feel unsafe that is certainly a disruption to your meeting so what do you do when there's a disruption you have choices right um so sometimes it's as easy as someone saying i i'm so glad you're here i'm so glad you're sharing your thoughts with us it's really landing hard and it's making it hard to listen to can we step back and breathe for a minute and try again just name it right

[145:00] name it appreciate it embrace it but don't let it continue right suggest a different pathway um with our community members we can say i really am going to need you to to start again and try again to get your point across in a way that we can hear it or something like that right and alex you can find your own language there however that works for you and then you do have the option to remove someone's ability to participate in the meeting we try not to physically remove people from a meeting ever but we can say you know we're not going to allow you you know because you we warned you during open comment and you did not change the way you were speaking we're not going to allow you to participate in public comment tonight right or you can say you know we need to stop this meeting for a second we need to all walk away and then we can come back together you know you always have the opportunity to

[146:01] just stop for a second and reset um and i have language and things that i can throw at you alex if that's helpful i have no doubt that you can develop what makes sense and works for you um but i'm here to support that um so before any action is taken oh also we want there to be warnings right because we're not shutting down anyone's first amendment right so we have to tell them what they're doing that's disrupting the meeting and we have to say that out loud and give them a chance to correct and then if they don't then we have to move forward with with some other way to disrupt it um this is a lot about how that works right um diplomatic approach is not considered an official warning so someone just saying out loud hey talking to us like that doesn't really work great it's not a warning you actually have to say please consider this a warning to um

[147:00] to not being able to participate any further tonight um and then this is a very legally just another reminder that this is a very legally protected forum with a lot of scrutiny so we never want to be reacting necessarily to the content of what has been said but more the the behavior that is disrupting the meeting right all right that's a lot of language that alex can look at another time and then i promise to talk about inclusion and why we're talking about that now um and i know i'm trusting that someone will stop me if i need to be stopped but it's almost your turn i promise um one of the things that we are doing across the city as you all know is looking at and digging into racial equity and what that looks like and where that really shows up in boards and commissions um is in the diversity both of who applies for our boards who's appointed for our boards and then who shows up to engage

[148:00] with our boards because it's a volunteer position it is often left to those with more time with more disposable income with more flexibility in their lives and that's not the whole of what our community looks like and it's important to us that those voices get elevated to sort of the perceived power level of the diocese right being in these deep conversations where policy advisory happens that's where we want the diversity of voices of our community and we have to be intentional it's not just going to happen right and so we're working on how do we do capacity building in lots of ways that's a lot of what engagement does throughout the city as well um but also what do our rooms feel like what do our public meetings feel like how do people um how can they show up in the way that they're their whole best selves in a room that could be really intimidating and scary

[149:01] right and so we're trying to make all of our public meeting spaces less intimidating and scary across the city and boards and commissions are a huge part of that and as we've said tonight 23 to 27 different cultures happening in each of those rooms right and lots of power structures and lots of different dynamics and it can be really hard as becky has said tonight to and and as trini has said tonight to even know where your own opportunity is as a board member let alone someone who's come to engage with you in your meeting or wants to send feedback to you by email right and so we're really trying to help change those climates of inclusion and belonging in those rooms and we've spent some time with staff they did eight hours of workshop with us so far there's two more eight hour sessions focused on diversity and equity coming later this year to really work together and think about ideas for change and how we do things

[150:02] differently so i can share some documents for for you all that are about those ideas that they came up with they were in response to these four questions and we asked them to think about behaviors that are welcoming behaviors that are exclusionary or marginalizing dominance behaviors because a lot of times you know without even realizing it we're doing subtle things to dominate each other in a room to be heard more right and examples that you use to help you understand opposing views and make more room in your own mind and heart for people who are saying different things to you so we have lists that staff have come up with for each of these questions that we will share with you because we want you to think about them too and what can you do from your role on the diocese to support creating a welcoming space that is open and and people are able to use their full voice in i've said so many things and i want to

[151:00] hear you all speak but i was also very conscious of the fact that our time um is is precious and i want to be as valued by you all as i find my time with you valuable every time i get to come see tab so um so i'll stop talking and listen to you say things about all the things i've said comments or questions yeah tila i told you i'm a troublemaker usually no i love it thank you brenda for this i think um uh i've been hoping for a little bit more like direct guidance i actually appreciate that the the slides have gotten more specific about things to say and standards to apply when a disruption occurs i was definitely hoping for some more uh guidance about how the city in general council meetings the board of commission media member meetings can um sort of

[152:03] be casting a net in a different way i suppose more not just invite you don't just like post a you know a notice of a meeting as required in the law but how can we actually be more proactive to ensure that people want to attend and we want to like specifically invite them and this feels a little bit at odds with some of the tension we talked about earlier about how i was trying uh you know in years past to invite um people to come speak to tab about transportation related issues and about these were generally vulnerable road users who i thought were and under noticed so uh i i recognize your work here isn't done but i would um like to see more more detail on on how we can do that and what we are allowed to do and not allowed to do and there as a separate issue i kind of wanted to raise with something that heidi said at the very beginning you know about how we're going to have this this uh retreat um

[153:00] and when you can please keep your camera on because that helps us you know understand each other better and i see that lin siegel is um attending this evening and it's something that she raises nearly every time that she is here she's a regular attendee to tab and other board and commission members and city council members and her chief like go-to point um felt frankly less relevant at the beginning of covid when um it felt like an emergency situation and we were going remote but this is feeling like the new normal and i will say you know i signed on for a second term for tab partly because participating virtually makes it a lot easier for me and it makes it easier for people with young children but lynn's point is why can't i have my camera on when i as a member of the public am trying to communicate and trying to engage why for that golden three minutes can i not be seen and i think that as time has gone on that complaint

[154:00] has become more valid and she clearly really feels it can you address that what's the continuing rationale for not having that we actually just brought this back to council so maybe i can tag team with nicole on this but so originally um in zoom there are a lot of things we can't control right because everyone is in control of their own box um and so if we're in person at city council and someone is doing something truly disruptive in a way that is not okay for the public uh the whole entirety of our public whoever they happen to be you know five-year-olds to whoever all else might actually be in the room we can remove them from that space which we can also do on zoom but it is harder to do because it is harder to zoom in right on the box that is

[155:00] creating a problem and we experienced that early on in in zoom like one of our first public meetings with city council members present we had um child pornography displayed during the meeting and and it was yeah trini i'm seeing your face and the the folks who experienced it almost two years ago now still get emotional when they talk about it and so we made a ruling at that time because we can't control what people are doing in their boxes that we needed to not put ourselves at risk of violating first amendment rights because while that instance was not violating first amendment rights there are other instances that are much closer to that line and so to not put ourselves in a position of having to make that judgment call in the span of a second and a half to protect the safety of our meeting we just said we can't we can't juggle

[156:00] all the things at once and this is something we're going to have to take off the table and so we've not allowed it um and we just went back to council with that question because as we prepare to bring community members back into chambers which obviously we can't do yet but we were on the brink of doing it was supposed to happen last week that started to become an equity question for us how come people who show up get to be seen and people who are choosing to participate from home don't get to be seen but in recognition that all of the same risks still exist council decided not to let that video open up in the same way that we have never allowed that over the course of this emergency that never ends um so that's that's what i know and that's what i can offer i don't know if nicole wants to chime in on council's conversation about that a couple weeks ago

[157:00] and it's a sore spot for me tila i know i kind of lost this one um i was really hoping to have that because for me it is that equity issue that brenda talked about um it doesn't seem fair to me that given the pandemic still going on people can't kind of you know have the same um exposure to us that that they would have um if they were comfortable and safe going in person um i lost that one and um my my sort my understanding you know about it is i think that because it's kind of um virtual because it's broadcast there are some extra implications there of um having things like if somebody decides to put up some child pornography um that you know we we can't quite control um and yeah so so i think that that's part of it it's just kind of the the legal implications for um the city i'm sorry i didn't know about that discussion so i'm kind of curious to go back and and yeah

[158:00] it was maybe it was maybe the faded may 2nd meeting brenda do you remember that yeah yeah and it's uh probably at the tail end of the meeting as matters from this manager i don't know if anyone raised it but you know the specter of people in person doing something inappropriate we cannot fix that in a second and a half by removing them physically you know someone decides to drop trout and flash the entire council we cannot shut it down as quickly in person as we can on zoom so this second and a half problem is i'm sorry that there are people who are you know naughty in this world but yeah so if the students start swearing it's squishy no one can speak you know there's there's an overreaction and overstepping and i think this um i think there were good reasons for it in the beginning but this is uh now carrying on a bit long and uh for lynn in particular it really it really matters to her and i could see that right yeah yeah and i think it's something that um you know maybe some additional conversations with the

[159:01] attorney just trying to figure out i think i mentioned something about what if people sent in videos right that could be like screened in advance but then that adds time right and so anyway it feels like the sort of thing we could try to resolve with some more creative thinking um and thank you nicole for pointing out that because i don't think i did that the city attorney's office is ultimately where we got our advice on this issue we said to the city attorney's office what makes the most legal sense to do and that is what they've offered us each time that we've asked that question because we do i have had clients disagree with my legal advice so it's advice it's yours to take or not and we do continue to ask the question because we do see all of the sides to that you know as the engagement team we want we want equity that's what we want first and we want a productive atmosphere we also want that right so and hopefully those

[160:00] things can always go like this and in this one instance it's been hard to make them do that so what what other questions or comments do you all have i feel like tila had an initial question ah you did and i got an answer and now i can't remember what the question was how do we cast a net wider how do we be more invitational i suppose to have more representation from the community that sort of thing yeah and i would encourage a few different things so we have seen um and i would encourage natalie who's been through the the quick version of the workshop but meredith went through the full workshop and you have some colleagues in public works and and across the city who've been through spending some time talking about these things some initial ideas that have come up um as far as recruitment goes are hosting information sessions um so that people can learn more about your board and what it looks and feels like to serve on the board and what they

[161:00] would actually be doing and how it all works the chair taking out the new board members or prospective board members right really doing some one-on-one recruitment it's always up to council who lands in those chairs so so there's no promises along the way there but really being intentional about who you reach out to and talk to about what this board service looks like and then alex we've heard from new members from other boards from past years that it's really always helpful when they get to spend some one-on-one time with the chair before their first meeting or somewhere along the way just to ask all those questions that they're never time to come up and ask um in the in the conversation right in the just about logistics and all that type of stuff i'm not sure how we could do that in a way that was safe but i guess if it's just two of you yeah so yeah like you and i we all we had hikes before i stepped down as chair so perfect yeah exactly so that helps yeah and that helps get some of those questions out and maybe

[162:00] check-ins along the way um and then we have heard that um we've had hab that aaron mentioned before have tried some different types of in-meeting engagement so they've done some listening circles that were really interesting and really successful where they said here's the topic for tonight and then you know clearly they had invited they had been intentional about wanting to invite a variety and diversity of different voices to come and sit in that circle but also anyone in the public was invited to come and sit in that circle they came off the dice they sat in a circle and they passed a wireless microphone and it didn't necessarily only go in one direction right sometimes someone was responding to something someone said and that's one model and there's other types of dialogue models like that that we could try that the engagement team would be happy to dig in with you and and give some of those things a try you know there's things like a fishbowl meeting where you select four people to have a conversation about a topic and everybody

[163:00] else watches that conversation happen um or they can get up and switch chairs and they can indicate that they have something to add to the conversation and so then people rotate in and out of that circle so there's there's lots of models that we could do to cast that type of lighter net becky um yeah i have a slightly different question which is you know even even if say the meetings were perfectly inclusive and welcoming to anyone we we still know that the people who show up are a slice of the population that's not representative for structural reasons and that's true of every single feedback opportunity right it's volunteering it's surveys it's i mean non-representative surveys it's yeah it's every every opportunity and so i what i really struggle with is knowing that knowing that there's

[164:01] repeated the same bias these come up again and again how what to do with public feedback that i know is not representative i don't want to obviously disregard it all together but i don't want to overly weight it yeah that's right um and that's what we look at is it it's not about shutting down any voices it's about raising up more voices um so that you get to hear that other side and some of the ways that we do that at the city on your behalf and this actually natalie was on the pilot team of our community connectors years ago with the mayor's challenge where we wanted to talk with our community about making electrification as far as transportation goes more accessible and getting people to do bike shares but also driving electric cars and looking at electric bikes and all that stuff and and natalie and her team piloted our first program of selecting

[165:01] neighborhood leaders in some of our lower income bi-cultural bilingual neighborhoods and working directly with those folks on creating what those awareness raising and education programs look like and then getting folks feedback on what types of resources they would need to be able to better engage with those resources in the future and so we've taken what we learned from that and we now most projects probably not true probably not most projects most major projects have community connectors involved in gathering the feedback so what i would ask you all as board members to is to look for that feedback in the information that you're given and trust that or ask staff let ask staff to tell you what that process looked like who they were able to reach who they are working with and where those voices have impacted the project so that and they're getting really good

[166:00] now at telling that story of friends but if you're not hearing that story ask about that story and if it if it's not there suggest that maybe some more work needs to be done in that area but due to as tila sort of mentioned at the beginning we are doing engagement very differently over the last four years then we've done it before and hopefully creating lots more different opportunities for different folks in our community to be heard so if you're not seeing it in those presentations ask for it i'm not sure becky's question was so much you know i'm not sure what the outreach has looked like but she's saying it looks like the feedback we're getting is from the haves and how do we weigh that appropriately when we know the have-nots are not here right so i'm saying look for the have-nots because they might because because they might be there and if they're not and if you're not seeing them there ask where they are and why not and how can we get more of that voice on this project because we are being really intentional

[167:01] all the time about doing more of that as we have staff capacity to do more of that but um we're staffing up we're doubling our engagement staff um over the next few months and so we should have more capacity to make that happen we've been two now we're three and we will be five soon so um so it's not not getting huge but more capacity than we've ever had before i'm gonna i want to do a check-in becky did you learn something new that maybe staff was doing something different with reach out than you had known about um i mean i was familiar with that work and i think it's really valuable i think i i don't know maybe there isn't like a great answer to my question because the problems are so like deeply structurally ingrained um you know it's kind of the issue of like oh well if everybody says they want something you have a representative sample but then all the feedback you get doesn't match what we said the goal was do you listen to what the feedback is or do you listen to what the goal was to

[168:01] begin with you know i i i it's um yeah maybe there just isn't really a good answer for it um that's a great that's a really good you put your finger on that though i mean that's that's the tension that we look at you know and i'll use cars as an example you know we say we want less cars in boulder and people can't afford to live here who work here and so they drive their cars here and we'd like them to take the bus but i for example don't live in boulder i have a 10 year old kid as i mentioned it makes me super nervous to not have fully independent transportation to my kid should something happen and he needs me and so i drive right and and so there are lots of reasons right we have parents who are whose kids go to three different schools and they have to get them to three different schools in the morning and drop them off in those places right and so it doesn't always it doesn't always look like we hope and

[169:01] want it to look so how do we use that feedback to make choices about our our proposed solutions that have that do the least harm and the most good right and that's what we're trying to learn what is the least harm what is the most good we don't usually know usually our community has to tell us and that engagement looks very different like we're not necessarily going to see those folks show up at our open houses or at board and commission meetings we're hoping they will we're trying to make that easier for folks to do but often we're just having separate conversations with them because that's more comfortable and because there's sometimes a learning curve sometimes people haven't had the bandwidth to follow an issue from the beginning of that issue and we have to catch them up first and then start to talk about what we need to know from them but what i'm hearing is awareness that we don't you know the there are everybody isn't coming to these specific events that are public engagement events and i hear

[170:01] that you're you're intentionally going out to the people that you know aren't represented at that to start to get that voice and sounds like there's more growth but it's it's acknowledged and we're we are we are going out to get that voice to yeah the three of you okay yeah that's awesome nicole yeah i just wanted to ask brenda and this is just for me as council member as well as possibly for boarding commission i love that everybody's having this conversation this to me is a central issue and i'm going to do another book recommendation hometown inequality um seriously if you want something that's going to keep you up at night just in such a dark place worrying about the state of the world that's that's the place to go find it but it lays out the problem of how poorly local governments tend to represent the communities right um that we are uh as you've all said we are a subset of the community um we tend to consistently be whiter and wealthier than than the

[171:00] people we represent and what do we do about that it doesn't have solutions it just lays out the scope of the problem which is terrifying but it really calls on communities to find those creative solutions and so long preamble brenda my question for you is is there a role for us as council members and his board and commission members in going out into the community as just sort of regular community members going to um events that we wouldn't necessarily go to um otherwise putting ourselves in situations where we're talking to people who are you know maybe having different perspectives in us just to build some of those relationships and make sure that every time we're coming to a decision we have some different voices in our heads than the ones that are typically speaking to us and is that i guess is it like does that railroad the city's engagement process can that be part of it um no yeah i all yeah yes i know i i think we um want always want to be thoughtful to be where we are welcome right um city council members coming to

[172:01] a private block party that is host that is primarily spanish-speaking and hosted by folks who might feel vulnerable in certain ways might not feel comfortable or welcome for those folks right so so that's also part of our work is we try and get invited to stuff we try and use the relationships that we have created that are trusted and and um and real and authentic relationships to help us then go to that next step and and start to be welcome in communities um and and partners who are hosting events you know we were at um el centro amistad fundraiser the other day um very much side shoulder by shoulder shoulder with our partners that that have helped us build trust in that space um and welcomed with open arms right but it it's a thoughtful process it's not a helicopter in process but yes i i think there can't be too many of us doing that work um and so i'm always happy to talk with any of you about how you support that

[173:01] work and and what that can look like so just to restate it sounds like what you're saying is um if we would like to have some of those relationships facilitated kind of go through you if we already have existing relationships then those are just ones that could foster unfolding but if they're new yes let's go through and make sure it's entering the right way yeah we don't want to barge into anyone's house right we want to be invited whether you're invited yourself because of the relationships you have or we help get invited um either way thank you ryan oh thanks just uh um a little bit of a response brenda you made me think about your your very organic problem statement of our of transportation equity and that um strongest force is compact development and that for for transportation equity and on pedestrian and bike um and you know high um highly leveraged transit and um yet it's out of

[174:02] our explicitly out of our scope generally to be able to weigh in on this stuff and so this is i mean this is the first natural organic thing that would come up on the subject of of somebody talking about transportation and equity and making your life better and easier so i guess um i'm just sort of flagging this for councilmember sphere that this is i mean we structurally one of the big topics uh um that we can advance on equity is this one it's housing inclusion and it's allowing more people to live here live closer to the places they need to go in boulder um and we have you know we have we have limits structural limits as a board and i think to some say the department um i would like to us to have greater ability to be able to talk about parking proactively and to talk about zoning and to to be able to take on these issues that would allowed that would allow our staff i'm just starting with city staff

[175:00] to be able to live here and and if we do that we're going to get trans start to get transportation equity right in some pretty fundamental ways so um i do not have a simple solution other than to say nicole you know if there's opportunities for tab to be have greater um be given greater i guess i don't know uh just ability to proactively raise um or maybe it's for council to send more things to tabs away that have to do with zoning and planning and land use it's a problem that we don't um have the ability to be proactive on these topics and i think that this makes me think tila one of your initial comments um just asking about boards right do we have the right boards are they doing the right things um this is the conversation that i've just individually right been having with a couple of different folks around um these issues that we're dealing with they're really cross-cutting right across departments across different issues and

[176:00] you know our is our structure for how things are set up right now correct given what it is we are um we're working on so i think you know that that's a just for me what i see as being a place to move forward with that like these are the kinds of things that pushing on council and having meetings with you know individual council members and saying hey we really need this to be able to do the work that you're asking us to do that you know may help us move a little faster now just um how that resonated with me ryan is so my actual role is neighborhood liaison which means i connect with people who live in boulder that's my job and help everyone see each other as human beings in the city staff community member equation and uh and so i talk to a lot of people about what they care about and what is impacting their daily lives and it's transportation it's parking it's you know these are the things that people are passionate about um and parks

[177:01] they're very passionate about their parks and the outdoors um but but the things that our daily life are transportation and parking and so you know i you're not wrong like that is what people are caring about and the more we can talk about those things probably the better and the more we can talk about those things um collaboratively cross-departmentally i'm i'm a huge fan of all of us being in the same conversation as opposed to lots of separate conversations is there still joint board stuff that happens just out of curiosity on occasion for specific reasons yeah yeah that that's what i was thinking i know that's often the for specific reasons i just wondered this is making me feel like we need like a super group board right if there's here to look at things

[178:02] yeah the the silos helped dig into specific things about stuff but what i'm hearing right now isn't about silos right it's about what we've been talking about the the collaboration figuring it out from this perspective how we impact each other yeah but then it's easier said than done what that looks like in action to to make that happen and yeah becky um i just had one more comment on this because it didn't come up which is just i think there's you know this is a good role for data to in the absence of being able to get representative input not not to give all the answers but to be a source of perspective that otherwise you know it's hard to come by it's as far as tracking who's who's where and here we who we hear from and where and how oh no i mean i meant more like on specific issues we're talking about you can you

[179:01] know we have cert at some degree of data about the population in boulder and yeah who lives where and who's served by what and that kind of information yeah just and i know i know there's lots of data that goes into the work that every you know no no i just i just want to be specific it's one of our boredom commission issues actually is we we don't have a true baseline of like who sits on our boards and commissions now which is pretty easy to get if we ask all of you to identify yourselves you will probably but who has applied in the past and not been appointed who ha you know we don't have any of that data so when you say data that's where that bounces off me but yes we have this amazing there's this amazing computer program that creates for you a racial dot map of your city that shows you according to census data where people who identify ethnically in different ways live in your city and we use that a lot when we're at the sort of beginning stages of projects we say okay

[180:01] where are we and who lives there and what does that look like and what does that mean to the goals of this and how do we how do we then engage in that way um so it's a huge piece and we never feel like there's enough of it and collecting that data of who's showing up and and how and why is is also a lot of what we think about and don't do as successfully as we should or want to so a lot of work you know nicole i'm going to call on you and also say that we need to move on this this has been such a good discussion and i hate i hesitate to cut it off but we just have an hour and some talking about the to do yeah yeah i just wanted to point toward folks toward my uh colleagues councilmembers volkerts and weiner who are on the subcommittee that manages boards and commissions um for a council and they are thinking about a lot of these issues as well and so they are wonderful folks to get in touch with and provide feedback too

[181:01] just because that's sort of their job right now and i will close by um pointing to nicole as a model for how you ask good questions about racial equity when staff comes before you with presentations i've been very impressed and grateful for the ways that nicole applies that lens um to everything that's brought before her and really asks us to be accountable to those goals that we've set out for ourselves great thank you brenda thank you so much really appreciated it's important work and and very good to to learn about it and some good tools it sounds like not just for alex um but for everybody to be aware of the model so yeah thank you so much all right so i'm going to shift gears because we have the 2022 work program and and then tab kind of interests and priorities to at least begin to to map out and i want to have a little bit of time to just

[182:00] circle back on is there anything that came out of tonight that you do want to commit to scheduling more time to together to go through like the the work that nicole is talking about with the trust building and mastering conflict and that sort of thing so um natalie i think this is you and valerie right that's right and gallery is going to share her screen okay good thanks and i'll go through a few slides and then valerie will take over and um and you know i'll try to be brief because i i do want to get to the next piece of the conversation about what tab is excited about and yeah and then you know where we want to go from here after tonight so um all right well i'm gonna just go over our goals and work program and then hand it over to valerie to speak to more detail around the work program if you

[183:01] can go to the next slide valerie oh there we go um so you all are i'm sure very familiar with our goals so these were set out in the 2019 transportation master plan um and these are really our guide posts for the work that we do as a department the tmp and these goals were adopted by council and they serve as our council priorities for transportation next slide so in the tmp the it identifies that in order for us to meet the goals laid out on the previous slide we need to achieve a 20 single occupancy vehicle mode chair for all trips by residents by 2030 and to do this we need to increase walking biking and transit to 80 percent for all trips by residents and a 40 of work trips by non-residents

[184:03] next slide so in the tmp and and we've been doing this for decades we've been measuring uh it used to be nine measurable objectives and we've we've narrowed it down in the last tmp to eight measurable objectives um and these are we've been tracking them for for decades and and it really guides the work that we do so we we measure these objectives every two years and that's through the transportation report on progress and it's really a dashboard to to measure the progress towards our goals um and in the 2019 tmp we updated the objectives to reflect the 2030 target year and then we also incorporated the city's renewed climate commitment goals which for climate commitment it was to reduce transportation sector ghg emissions 50 by 2030.

[185:00] and next slide so here's just a snapshot of the 2020 report on progress and what's what this shows and you can kind of see from the colors called out here is that we're making good progress on a couple objectives those are the what's shown in green we're doing okay in the yellow and then we really need to improve in the red um that's where we're we're not making progress we're trending in the wrong direction and you can see it's it's some of our it's a couple of our most important objectives in order to meet our goals that's vmt and mode chair and safety um so and then we can go to the next slide and so as i said you know the the goals and measurable objectives really guide our work program and we we try to implement a work program

[186:00] that's going to help us meet our goals and and you know all what i'll kind of say is from the 2019 transportation master plan it it's not super clear the our actions or work program actions are not clearly tied to our objectives and our goals as they have been in past tmps you know the 2014 transportation master plan really did a good job of showing that direct tie between the work program and then what that work program achieves as far as the objectives and our goals and so i think that's an area where we in future transformation master plans really want to kind of bring that back because i think that's been and we've talked about this with board members over the last you know year and a half or two years is that there seems to be this disconnect between the work that we're doing and and how that's helping us meet our goals but i think that's where there's an opportunity for us to have more

[187:00] conversation as staff and board to really figure out what it is that we're doing that's helping us meet our goals because i think we've heard that kind of question from board members a few times lately so our 2022 work program highlights um a lot of this will look very familiar to you i think erica shared a snapshot of our work program early in the year um but as always you know there is that i think somebody referenced earlier the the kind of boring work that we have to do so um some folks don't find it boring which is good um but maintaining core services you know that's really snow and ice removal pothole filling um median maintenance that's those are our core services and that's the work that you know is expected to keep the city running and then enhancing maintenance and that's that there is the work that we're doing to enhance our pavement management program and our sidewalk maintenance

[188:00] with you know trying to integrate vision zero initiatives into our kind of ongoing maintenance programs and then of course the focus on vision zero and this year that's um we have several intersection improvement projects that you all are familiar with um and then division zero action plan is underway that work is underway and the tan of course um which valerie will talk to um in more detail later on in the presentation um and then uh our other kind of key work programs are implementing our key capital projects and i i couldn't list everything here but um you all are familiar with north broadway that's been going on for um over a year now 30th in colorado as well and then we'll be starting on the 28th street um improvements this year as well next slide this is where valerie will take over

[189:00] yeah thanks natalie um as as natalie mentioned earlier our work plan is really centered around those measurable objectives in the tmp and um we wanted to highlight also just a few examples of areas of work um that our staff and our transportation planning division are working on um to really turn that dial on greenhouse gas emissions and vmt reduction um so for example when it comes to making you know those convenient and cost effective choices to use modes other than the private vehicle we're looking to continue incentives that we've had um enduring work on over decades um to you know provide things like parking cash out and ecopass programs that really make a dent in you know travel behavior and especially relating to work trips um you know we do have a lot of longitudinal data that shows us that the average daily vmt for non-resident employee work trips alone

[190:00] is more than double the average daily vmt for boulder residents for all vehicle trips um so that means that we do have areas where we can focus um to turn that dial and complementing those types of transportation demand management measures is providing people with convenient high frequency and affordable transit options and so that's where our local and regional transit emphasis is so important things like restoring and expanding our rtd and hop service levels um expanding brt on colorado 119 colorado 7 projects like that and making those big connections between transportation and land use as seen recently at tab in the body of work around the east boulder sub community plan and the modeling for that um plan showed that that scenario that was that is now moving through the adoption process will result in a 28 reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as compared to other scenarios that were modeled so

[191:01] another place where that intersection of transportation and land use is so important for turning that dial and then electrification will also have a big role to play in greenhouse gas emission reduction everything from e-bikes to e-buses and we're well on our way to our tmp goal of electrifying our hot fleet our local transit fleet by and we have four but e-busses that are in service today 11 they're going to be in service by 2023 and a full fleet of 17 buses by 2030. um and we're also working on shared charging infrastructure concepts with partners such as via the university and bvsd to further that future of bus electrification and as part of our shared micro mobility program the electrification of our shared bike fleet has been a game changer in terms of the use that we're seeing and the attraction of new users as well so we're really excited to continue to support the availability of

[192:00] e-bikes through our micro-mobility program and lastly our continued focus on building out high quality infrastructure to improve safety and connectivity for people walking and bicycling that will also turn the dial um helping to shift some of those day-to-day trips and you know we always bring um different agenda items before tab um but we don't always get to talk about how all of this work really interconnects and relates back to um turning the dial on these measurable objectives and to that point you know we're really excited about our collaboration on the core arterial network you know that was elevated as one of the ten council priorities for city departments this year into next um as you know as we've reviewed um with you all before at the april tab meeting we've already established a work plan an initial funding strategy for this initiative and there are already seven active projects that are underway on the the can corridors that were identified by council um you know staff also have identified

[193:02] three priority corridors for which we'll be accelerating work to initiate design and community engagement over the next year and a half and we're also addressing staff resourcing and capacity needs to ensure that we have internally really clear roles responsibilities and project level assignments for this work so all things that are in service of those objectives that natalie reviewed earlier and of course a great opportunity for partnership as we do our work together with you all on tab and with that i'll hand it back over to natalie thanks and thanks valerie that that was great um i think you know we can we can certainly open it up for questions here at this point um and then we definitely want to get to tabs interests and priorities yeah and with questions as you're thinking about questions i would love to hear what was exciting about that

[194:02] to the tab members like what did they see that they feel good about sorry i i'm hesitant because i see that there's chat stuff that i missed um so there's a question from ryan just a clarifying question valley thanks a lot for all that that's something really exciting i i just wanted to the ghg bmt turning on the dial things i was i i'm feeling heard i like that i like i like what i've seen there but i didn't see if that was part was that one of the work plan items or was that does it not fit there i'm not sure work plan is the right way the right term but there was a before that there was a slide that showed the plan for 2022 and then i not sure if the turning the dial fit into that yeah valerie do you wanna i'm happy to take that or yeah i'm happy to add on anything

[195:00] so ryan i i think the our intent there was um you know to provide a high like high level highlights of the work program and then valerie kind of went into detail around other work program items that are in service of kind of turning the dial on ghd and bmt so in service of those objectives um the measurable objectives and then also our goals hopefully that so you know all of the work that she talked through on that slide is work that we're doing that's on the work work plan yeah in a sense i thought it might be helpful to just share um you know as natalie mentioned that that we have these kind of bigger buckets of work um that are reflected over all the years um in terms of the department's work plan and and those areas of work are are really fundamental to how we shape um you know what we prioritize in in partnership with you all in council year to year so um you

[196:02] know it's really kind of a higher level look at the the efforts that we feel as as staff um have been successful over time at at turning those trends um as you know the the yellow and the red and the green you saw on that slide in the progress report um you know where we're making progress um you know we're continuing that work and then we're expanding work into new areas to to um you know address the places where we're not necessarily seeing the progress that we'd like so i think those buckets of work might be really helpful for tab as you consider um you know the things that make you really excited um they you know it's reflected in various items on on a work plan um but they're also kind of almost like initiatives or work areas um where we could maybe find um you know some place for conversation in the future i think i got it thanks a lot

[197:01] what specifically is exciting about this to you becky um why sorry i had a different um i mean i mean a lot of it is exciting um i think i mean yeah they're it's hard for me to honestly keep track of everything there's so many yeah there's so much right i'm not really sure how the department does so many things given how much is going on it sounds like a ton of work um um but um i mean i'm always most excited about the things that get us towards vision zero that's really you know okay yeah most excited for the day when nobody dies um in traffic in boulder um and um and so i might i mean i have a question should i ask now or do you want more yes no it's fine thank you um my question is is um i think one of the things i i struggle with in trying to figure out how to

[198:01] how to make a decision or have kind of form my opinion on something is um you know what is is i don't always understand the gap between i understand where we are you know here's our goal and here's where we're at um in services and reaching that goal um but i don't always understand what it takes to get there and if we know what it takes to get there um and i don't just i i don't just mean money i mean i know funding is always always an issue but like for instance i i mean i i'll just the kind of more simple example i can think of is like how many intersections are unsafe in the city you know how many intersections would we need to to make safe to cross an arterial street say um until we know every single one of them is safe to walk across it you know as much as can be we believe can be controlled before so like that kind of understanding and then from there saying okay well if there are x number of these

[199:01] how many dollars would it take to fix it or how having i know there's a lot of stuff that goes into it and that can't all be answered today but i i just really struggled with like understanding like i i don't know it doesn't seem like the 2030 goals are possible do we think they're possible yeah i don't um do we not think they're possible and if what would it take to to make to make them happen like what would need to be provided so that that i guess my question is just like do we know the answer to that or do we not do we not know what could get us to reach those goals and we know that these are strategies that'll get us towards those goals but we don't know if they'll get us there by 2030. right my question that's a good question um i i can jump in if that's helpful um i think you know there was a lot of conversation about the 2030 horizon um and the tnp and tila can probably speak to that um

[200:01] so i'll say from staff's perspective i think we wanted to be ambitious as far as being you know goal driven and also recognize the urgency of the issues at hand right and so it didn't feel good to say 2040 um and so that was i think the intent behind that um and then i i think you know we're the work we're doing to be able to to kind of get to your point around like do we know what we need to do to actually achieve what we will have set out to do i think in some areas yes in some areas no honestly um so i think when it comes to um the like at a high level what it is that we need to do like we know that but like how to actually um do that at a detailed level we don't know how to do that right um

[201:01] so and it kind of depends on each objective that we're talking about um as far as our safety goals though i think that is something that we're able to quantify and the vision zero action plan well we have the safe streets report which identifies kind of the um the current state of our system and what people are experiencing out on our system and then the vision zero action plan gives us an opportunity to say this is what we can do and how much it's gonna cost and how much staff it's gonna take to be able to solve all those problems um and so i think when it comes to safety we have a better grip on that i guess i would say valerie do you have anything to add yeah i think um it that that's a very kind of technical and targeted type of work effort and then what's also you know kind of important in in considering that in addition to just like the pure safety

[202:00] goals is the connectivity goals and i think that's where the can concept really comes into play um there's there's a very strong overlap between um the the streets in our city where we're seeing the the highest amounts of you know severe and fatal crashes and then the the corridors that were identified by council on the can um so that's a huge opportunity for us to address both safety goals and connectivity goals which all serve to make it more conducive to take those daily trips instead of um being in your car maybe choosing um to take a different mode um and that's for both people getting around the city um as residents but also you know people coming in and out of the city and um i think that's that's something that um we're excited to see unfold this year as we embark on the vision zero action plan which is an effort that's headed up by our traffic operations division um that that will really allow us to to dig in and inform the project development

[203:01] process for can corridors um with that kind of safety lens but also thinking about the quality and the comfort and the connectivity of that network um that's something we really appreciate about the can concept and why um it's been a nice synergy for for rolling that in together with our vision zero action plan um scope of work for this year trinity um yeah yeah so um i you know like like becky um there's so much to take in but but what jumps out at me is that we have very hefty goals but those goals can be achieved i think by prioritizing safety and i guess my question would be where in all of these goals do you guys see this vision zero action plan app because to me it would be like a no-brainer to try to implement those things first

[204:01] and then the rest of it will fall into place i've always said you know people you can tell people all the benefits about you know choosing other modes of mobility but if people don't feel safe or if people keep reading and keep getting information about people getting hurt on the road they're just not going to do it i mean i can tell you that all this past year my child rode his bike to school and i was right behind him i mean not that i could have done anything to make him safer per se in the in the trajectory places where i felt that he was not safe but it just gave me a little bit of peace of mind but you know it's i would have let him go and not have a care in the world if i would have known that his journey was pretty much on the path and he would not have been in harm's way because of someone being distracted or you know so ultimately i guess my question is where is vision zero and all of these multiple um

[205:00] objectives that you guys have laid out um where is it as far as your priority so yeah i mean i can say safety is our top priority um both from when we look at our funding priorities and then also the transformation master plan um and then i think you know that's that's part of maybe that's an area where it's tabs roll right to continually to remind us that the work that we're doing ties back to that being our priority right because yeah everything like even street design like the way we think about these new projects we have to keep that at the utmost you know top level in the sense that you know we have to think about not not necessarily making all of our roads get people faster to places but you know people safely to those places

[206:02] so natalie so uh because what part of what i'm trying to listen for as you all ask these great questions is this to me is a place this the the um coraterial network is a place everybody feels is a really good place and important and we need to do the things and i'm my question and it and i and nicole and natalie and board members for this is for everybody is what are the possible what are the what are the things what is the role tab plays or could play in that that would be valuable and to counsel that and staff and all the things i'm really not doing a good job wording my questions i hope that that made some sense what what is it like because i hear people are hungry about it because it ties in i think to the safety thing right that's a big part of it alex

[207:00] i get asked by advocates why we're not moving faster and i try to reassure them we're we're moving faster than we have been and that's reason to be satisfied to a degree and that with experience of implementing these types of things we'll improve and hopefully be able to to pick the pace up a bit i think what would be helpful for me and perhaps council members would be to know on each of the elements within the core arterial network are there areas where we could move faster like is it a funding transportation funding thing where city council creating a new funding mechanism would unlock what would accelerate things is it a staffing thing where if the city manager's office were to be able to allocate more resources for staffing that that would move things faster is it political support where a nod of

[208:00] five from some council members on how to proceed forward with a study or plan could accelerate it if if staff knows that they have the political support behind them and i think we recently saw it's still fresh the staff plan i can't what it's called but they're they're overall strategic plan with with the core material network but now doing a second path and letting us know are there advocacy things that we could do on our end to accelerate these or other asks of counsel or counsel can give you financial or political support so a couple things i heard and i'm reiterating because i i think they're important and i want to put a stake in the ground but also to check understanding one of the things you were saying is that's a that's a thing that you all could do is when people ask the question why aren't we moving faster you you have the possibility of giving a really good

[209:01] answer to not just we are moving faster now which is really exciting but but when you look at all the things that staff is working on that there are the you know the key i know this is utilities but keeping the lights on and the water running is is the foundation that we have to do to keep the city running right the streets paved and that sort of thing so you can you know you have some of that knowledge to share but then also exciting because we are moving faster now than the the other thing i heard is not just in your messaging but where can you advocate and help reach out other populations talk to counsel if you the more you understand about what's needed to the the more you feel like you could find your place in that is that right advocacy to counsel or or others yeah yeah i think this would be sort of our red line or our red pen of um of counsel of hey here's a place where

[210:02] we think the city could move faster and with your leadership we would like to see if you can provide staff with direction or resources to accelerate a piece of this this vision okay ryan okay um on the question of can and what what can tab do this is a really good question and um i'll offer a couple things um and nicole i want to i want to probably speak to you directly on these um i think there's two there's two risks of this whole this whole enterprise that that concerned me the first one is that it is is a long term it is a plan it's only a plan right now and it's it's like kind of like a plan it's in a sense like a plan to develop you know more detailed plans which we have to preach these different um corridors and areas so um if i'm a council member i guess what i would be wondering is

[211:02] is what's what is what do we expect what's the timetable that i should expect for the rollout to look like you know with some flexibility in there but like let's get let's just be um uh concrete about for the different aspects of the plan and then what does it look like at each year you know or six months and then each year going forward and then and then it his tab helping to you know provide some kind of a progress report or maybe a staff or whatever but like tab has an advisory even a sorry just an accountability role on this and helping to ensure that there's there's you know there's accountability to progress and um i mean that in the general sense of the word accountability but just that keeping us keeping on track and if it turns out well things need to get um pushed back which happens fine but like let's just have some rigor around the council understands this this five or ten year plan like what we need to be doing on a quarter by quarter to be on

[212:01] track if we're not on track what course correction is needed so that's that's the first thing i think tab should be doing on can we should have a standing item one way or another go ahead heidi i just i want that was a lot and i can feel i feel that you're going on to point two and i want to stay here for a minute is that does that make sense in terms of everything we've heard about what tab's role is and is that valuable and useful i i don't know it's but i want to ask that question because i'm trying to tie into aaron conversation nicole conversation about tabs roll and and adding value does that feel to the staff members here and nicole who's here like yeah or um well i can go first i was just yeah i i was starting to wonder if i threw a big elephant on the table but i don't think i did but i mighta

[213:01] i mean i think that there's like something here i just the like where ryan said the word like accountable holding staff accountable i guess yeah it's kind of scratchy i'm not sure about like that being tabb's role um but i you know i i don't know the answer though so um i'd be curious to hear nicole if you have a thought here on this i always have that i thought maybe that'd be clear right now um no i think i i love where this conversation is going um because what it seems to be headed toward is this point where staff and tab are coming together right to think about what is it we can do how can we push on counsel and i think i think ryan it's not even about providing us the information to hold staff accountable which is what you just put in the chat just to note that but rather it's it's it's it's about um

[214:01] because i don't i don't know that it's staff accountability right i think where it comes in is you all having this um this clear understanding of what the obstacles are that staff are facing right so if we have our rtmp um we have goals in there that everybody's trying to achieve i feel like tab is the is the group that's best positioned to understand where the hurdles are where the brick walls are the obstacles the staff is facing and elevate that to counsel because there are things that you all can say to us as council members that i don't i don't think staff can say um i i just i don't i don't know that we have fully that that culture in the city you know where where staff feels really empowered to say some of the things that maybe need to be said sometimes that to me feels like where the power of our boards and commissions come in is that advisory position like hey if we're really going to hit vision zero council um staff needs this or you know you need

[215:00] to redirect priorities and you know and focus on this kind of thing to counsel right not to staff because i feel like that those relationships that you could build with each other will help facilitate council getting that information in a way that we might not be able to otherwise thank you uh okay and then was there anything that you would want to add natalie or valerie or not necessarily you know i would say um you know part of our presentation at april tab around the can was to describe the the kind of process um that each individual corridor would would undertake in the the timeline um typically that that work would take um and as we presented that information and we highlighted the three priority corridors the intent of of delivering that information for for tab was so that you have that insight into

[216:01] the work that's about to unfold and you know how those little boxes on the schedule like what that means what we'll actually be doing in each of those phases of a project and um you know i appreciate nicole's comments earlier about um the opportunity for tab to digest that information and lift up what are the things that um drive those schedules um you know often it's it's a combination of factors it could be staff capacity it could be funding it could be a number of things right um and you know every individual corridor kind of has its own story um in terms of the process that will unfold and um you know i think that's something i'm really taking to heart is is listening tonight um you know what it is that maybe we we could continue to cover in terms of the information we share so that you have that information that you need um to communicate as advisors to council um you know when when we present that

[217:02] we're accelerating work on three priority corridors and then the feedback we get is that um that we could be doing this faster um i'm really looking for how we can talk to each other about what it is that's um you know maybe the opportunity to accelerate further um so i hope that that um makes sense where my perspective as city staff um where i'm coming from is um we've you know we're always trying to be responsive to the feedback that we're getting from you all um and sometimes we do come back with with information um and it does feel like a little bit of a disconnect um and so i think that i would love to just hear more concrete examples or ideas from you all on um our plan to accelerate the work how how you know what ideas you have for how we could um you know modify that um and you know ultimately i think that that would be maybe a more productive

[218:01] conversation um i i think what what i'm just hearing is that we need to do the work faster and it's it's hard to operationalize that yeah yeah and can i respond just to well at some point just to the yeah because i know i had raised the original plan but please i don't know when you have to go with me no i i don't have anything more to add other than i think you know what valerie what i hear with what valerie just said is that like we want tab to be a thought partner and and and so um if your thought is well this could be going faster then we talk about like you know how you would do that you know instead of because you know obviously we're bringing to you what we can what we think we can do um so yeah so can i just say thanks for um sorry trying to entertain you did you want to well i guess my question would be um and i i maybe i missed the answer but does

[219:01] it have to be do with funding i mean we all appreciate all the work that you guys don't do i mean that's it's tremendous and that's one of the things i said in my application that i felt like so incredibly privileged to live in a place where you know you guys were doing such an incredible job overall but my question would be i mean do you think that we could move faster if we had access to more funding for example would that be something that would be um helpful so it depends i mean well because the reason i'm asking um because of the work that i'm doing on my day-to-day like my 9-5 or whatever you want to call it i keep getting all this information about new funding that's that's uh that's available for cities and for different communities and it's new new money so i would like to know if i can kind of share that information with you

[220:00] guys or what the like how how to make that known to you i mean i don't again i i'm completely new at this so i don't but i don't want you i don't want us to miss out on opportunities as a city you know to have access to these fun funds that i know are out there but how do you do that i mean how do i i'm hearing so much good intent and i just i just need to i need to acknowledge that because i think it's so great and i hear you know your trainee's trying to say i just don't know and i'm new but you know don't want to miss an opportunity simply because i don't know when i knew right and i'm not sure what the right thing is what i really liked what i'm what i'm appreciating isn't here's a solution we have to offer but help us understand what what is the situation that you're facing and together talk about what are the roadblocks that we're facing and then it and then in that conversation it could

[221:00] become clear some of the things that i thought both alex and uh that all of you have brought up it could be a funding issue it could be a staffing issue it could be something unique to that specific part of the corridor but through this inquiry you could identify these issues together and then potential solutions like what you're talking about trinity is this making sense to everyone it's this it's it's this working on the issue together and i think there's been because i think you have some just great ideas this what what trini just brought up there's there's some great things and and ryan you as well of working separately and coming at it with a solution as if that work has not already been deeply done elsewhere can feel bad right but if instead we we have the conversation with each other as you're doing tonight i feel like that that's the this is where it feels like things could happen would you agree

[222:02] that that's a whole lot of absolutely nothing coming at me right now not agree i was hoping to tie up the can thing because i was giving you have one more yeah yeah and then i just i wanted if i could just respond there's a lot of sort of like feedback on the the original point and may i okay try to be brief okay thanks nicole and valerie um and natalie for latin i realize when i'm using the words accountability maybe i'm i'm using a language for my organizational whatever but i mean totally agree with what you said and the the the main so what i heard is landing on was like just tab being supportive of implementation of can and um in my um the the the idea of the i guess what i was trying to get out is this similar theme that i've raised elsewhere which is how do we get to have at a higher level so we're not like just in phase all the time but like we have some kind of a a score card or a check-in or

[223:01] something like a you know yellow light green light red light kind of like the tmp goals such that we're able to help if we're not um where we need to be and then help help you know do our job to help council understand but at the like executive level not down at the weeds so um thank you for helping to me to i guess just articulate that um then the second thing i just wanted to offer because i think this is this is pretty important especially that we haven't because we have any pull here because i think the second risk with can the big risk it's the same thing that we've seen with with with the false the folsom thing a few years ago and it's that backlash and you know we're going to be we're going to be reallocating space and it's easy to say today but this is going to be a big political set of political campaigns and um tab is in a position to to be supportive of this effort through um you know engaging with community groups so um something on this on like like thinking thinking ahead strategically about what what's the what are the political you know exercises we're gonna have to go

[224:01] through and how can we support and not like at the last minute but how do we how do we build build coalitions and constituencies um so that those are the big things i'll leave it to that thanks thank you and i'd be really excited about what ryan just said i think that would be a great thing yeah now ryan i i love you know kind of the things that you're talking to here i think this idea of how do we get to a higher level like that that feels like more conversation that tab can have to figure out what those things are and how you start measuring it you know with um you know input from staff but really just to push that on to council and say hey you know here are these things you can potentially accomplish with you know these projects we advise doing you know this one because it's going to get you the closest to these things that you say you care about um and i love that idea about working to get engagement and buy-in um from folks in the community that to me also feels like just from one person on council

[225:00] looking at this that feels like work that you all can uniquely do um in the city that would be hugely um important in kind of getting us getting us through and i think in collaboration with partners in um engagement and staff like brenda and other folks um it feels like something that would really add value to moving us toward our goals faster from me as one person on council thank you other thoughts ideas things that are exciting to you about this and or questions or ideas about tap's role with cans specifically i see both becky and tila how about tila first okay um so for me a lot of uh the frustrating part about these long planning horizons was that they have to be so long but that's the reality uh but it often appears that like we

[226:00] have to do the public engagement and feedback and looping looping different you know levels of public engagement before any real significant design work happens and so i wonder if there's an opportunity for tab to have a bigger role in some of that public explanation of what we're doing gathering of feedback that might happen um more in tandem with the the more nuts and bolts work that staff is doing if there's any way we could take off from you know the limited staff time um some of the burden that is inherent in some of the the public outreach um in public you know consultation and participation that's necessary in these projects um it's always hard to to make a case for change without identifying what the problem is and i think cab is probably pretty good at articulating what we think the problem is uh and might be able to do so more frankly than uh then city staff would feel free to do so i would just like to offer that i've offered in multiple ways you know tab as

[227:01] as available to help lead this and in general it just means that we're also invited to the same city meeting the city staff is in charge of planning finding a venue for coordinating making the agenda doing all the doing all of the hard work um and i just would like to again extend our availability as a resource to take some of that work off of staff's plate instead of just being participate participation in that effort [Music] thank you my first thought was um just as far as what i'm excited about i mean i think it bears mentioning that the support of council for this work as it is right now is very unique like in like there are very few cities that have a council that want to move on

[228:00] this kind of infrastructure um this is my general experience like it's just incredibly hard to find places without political will um so i think it is you know this is a super unique opportunity to um take advantage of it in whatever in whatever ways we can while we have that support um and especially knowing i mean echoing what ryan said like there's virtually no scenario where right-of-way is reallocated from cars to another mode that doesn't elicit push back in every single city every single time um so it's just you know it's it's just sort of how it goes um that's not i don't mean to be too flippant i mean i understand there are ways to do it you know that can be more you know better ways of doing it than others in terms of engagement but it's just also just something that always happens um so having that political support is um just an amazing um amazing resource for going into this

[229:01] kind of work yeah i just want to say that yeah i think that's really great and even more reason to to figure out how to work to work in a way that you really add value and move the dial right because it is a unique opportunity and i'll well no i'm not going to share what i was going to share because it's being recorded and i was going to talk about a different client so i won't do that but just a similar situation of a very important and unique like urgent and unique opportunity because of of support to do work and people not being able to get out of their own way to make it happen it and it's a you know when we have all of this expertise both in and and ability to do things and outreach and willingness and passion from staff and from the board to make things happen and a council who's on

[230:01] board it's pretty exciting what what you could possibly do with this right so i'm hearing some things i'm and what i don't know is if tab is all lined up with each other on it um and i'd also love to hear if there's stuff specific from additional and specific from counsel and staff about how tap could help but i'm hearing about being able to tell the story about the problem and why why this is important and why we need to do it and also supporting the efforts that are underway and even though it might not be moving fast you have some understanding about all the work the staff is doing and um you know they're they're human beings we haven't figured out the quantum stuff yet to to be able to do more faster i'm also hearing some really good things about advocacy and public outreach and being able to be to do some of that work and to actually have conversations

[231:01] around some of the things that might get uh be what i call roadblocks and and um i and brainstorming or identifying ways to help maybe clear some of that ideas for clearing some of them um the the other thing that i've heard today that is is maybe not news but this sort of thinking ahead and anticipating what might come up given this like the the sort of backlasher you know some of the stuff the resistance uh that and then what ways tab might be able to help with that as well what else from all of you are some ideas for the pet tab is interested in alex i think can gives us some near-term things to focus on and luckily each corridor is sort of unique and therefore has unique staffing needs and funding

[232:00] needs and funding opportunities i think it was a bit of a stop gap and a bit of a fluke just that it came together so last minute and we could be a little more prepared to have more buy-in on some of our longer-term priorities and hearing from we often hear from ryan what's the change model and from becky tonight it was do we have the means to achieve our goals or hear from trinity tonight is where does vision zero fall in this and so i think hearing from uh individuals on what they think the the most effective thing we could do uh to achieve our tmp goals is something that we don't often do we have goals that are competing against one another some work together some some are our intention and we have this finite amount of money um on it on an annual basis and then even in a grant application cycle

[233:00] where we need to try to estimate the the cost and benefit and the value of different things um so i think just just hearing from everyone because um i think we see very different um first priorities or top priorities for achieving some of these goals and having more robust conversations at a high level that aren't project specific would be beneficial for all of us i think i see i think i'm seeing head nods everybody's affect is getting a little lower because it's the end of the night and we're tired but i can't tell how people are responding to what they're hearing and it'd be nice to does that sound positive to other people too high level conversations is that a place for tab yeah in that conversation yeah okay tila yeah i think ryan phrased it i mean alex you wrapped it up right at the end there

[234:00] i'd raise my hand i'm like but what about what about so you captured it right at the end there i think but the way that he said it earlier was that you know he joined this board wanting to talk about big picture policy level stuff you know values on priorities and uh and just kept you know getting caught up in the nitty-gritties because you know that big level discussion hasn't happened yet and when do we get to talk about this and it's clear unless we carve out some time we're not going to get to talk about this and i would like to hope that it's not just the kinds of values and objectives that we as a community identify and work on every time we do a tmp update because that's not going to be scheduled until at least 20 24. um do we have time in this next 12 months to have that kind of big picture policy level values objectives thing or or not is that going to be something that we express through our work on can or is can you know this this year's expression of those values and priorities i just don't know but i thought it was an important it's a good question though that you just asked do we have time is there is there a space

[235:01] space that can be created for that conversation in the next six months is that that's one question right is there is there is it can i have something positive and say i think a good i think valerie and the team take a really good step at least on the ghg and the bmt components that are highly related with that turning on down the dial slide i would love to see that take the next step and and um put numbers to to those you know what ghg and vmt reduction do we plan you know ranges or something from each of those items and then roll up and then and then that can help with discussion here here's what we believe to be true about how we produce bmt such that you know when we have a proposal come up to talk about we have something to wait against but i think i think we're close and maybe you know to moving moving that in a really meaningful direction so um that's my that's my take

[236:02] yeah i can't tell if that's getting more down into the weeds or more up at the policy level of things that we talked to council about and it's just because i'm not it's not my area of stuff but that that sounds get natalie did you want to add something to that so i mean i'm doing a lot of processing and trying to think about how yeah um i mean i i guess to the initial question of like i mean i think we we do want to make time for that higher level more strategic conversation and and i think it can be you know there's you know if it's a climate commitment kind of theme this year that um as far as a conversation that we want to have um i mean i think the what valerie shared in the presentation tonight like that is still such a high level snapshot of the work that we're doing and so um

[237:00] like i know i feel like i'm over simplifying it when i say that when i say this but i i do just think like there's a way that we probably need to communicate better with tab on some of the things we're doing to further these goals because i i think there is just this disconnect and and that's something that staff can spend some time kind of thinking about like how do we um bring this information to you and then be able to have a high level conversation with you about our strategies um and and and so i see you know ryan i see why kind of seeing progress on these initial initiatives is kind of i think what you're asking for is like a next step and how that could be helpful uh but i think we just need to think about that more and anyway so i do think this is something that we can think about having that conversation in the next six months um so yeah hopefully that's helpful can i just add that i know this is a

[238:00] little bit of roll up this leaves work like what i've suggested but the current current state is that june 13th i don't know it's on the agenda it'll probably be some proposals and there'll be factors on there that will mention vmt or ghg and it's going to be more of the same of well we don't have a common basis for for talking about these things and i don't see how we get to a higher level unless we do the roll up the sleeves work to say here's here's here's the machinery underneath each of those things maybe we don't have time for it but i just want to say that i think there's a there's actual current problem that or at least the current state that we have to be reflecting it seems like maybe there's some thought process that needs to go into that and what would be useful and what would keep us at the level of that conversation that that is the most valuable and useful um because i think that's part of what's

[239:00] happening right now nicole yeah um tila what you were saying earlier about you know is there um time or where to fit in this what i what i would just as an outside person um ask you to think about is is there time to not have these conversations to not all get rowing um in the same direction to set expectations for each other kind of information you're going to get and give what your roles are what the goals are that you're moving toward and how this this group can best work together to me even though it's going to take more time up front it's going to let you go a lot farther um once that initial work is done and it's too late for me to tell you a story about taking my kids rowing for the last time but just you can go a lot farther when everybody's throwing together and you're going to navigate the obstacles and not fall out um and and i just wanted to offer you know for me on council if there are things that council is doing

[240:00] that is not allowing you to have that time if you decide that that's what you want please let me know um because that's something that i could advocate for of like hey we really need to give folks this time to think about this so that they can um be be better advisors to us as we move forward okay i i wanted to sorry i i i don't have a big enough screen to see what the comments are and unless i um go to chats but i know it's something we're off off business oh because you're a cockswain yeah it's just saying you appreciate the rowing uh analogies because of your experience on a crew it sounds like yeah excellent um it you know it's been a really great conversation and obviously it's a beginning of maybe a possibility of more positive conversations of figuring

[241:00] things out together and i really appreciate everybody taking the time to do this and there's more um you know i i think part of what dr ryan drives for is we have sort of the overarching and the things but to really drill down on what's possible and and a desire to get more specific about goals maybe even measurable goals but i'm hearing also this um awareness of some of the pain points from each of you and an understanding of i heard quite a bit of understanding of each other and that makes me really feel hopeful i think you need to find a way to have more time have another you know i know that you have your regular meetings public meetings but something else along these lines it does four hours is just an awful lot for zoom i wouldn't recommend doing four hour chunks but i do think you need to do whatever you all call this retreat stuff you know where you can have this form and and you're

[242:00] allowed to have these conversations together i think it's really important to commit to do that whatever you find possible to do i'm hearing a hunger for it and a commitment to it the next step is just to to make it happen i would love to hear just very very quickly because we have to stop and and um what what is it that your you know works and that you're grateful for and i know i asked the question what you're excited about around can and productively we we want to get there but we want to talk about what we're concerned about but i would like to end with what what feels good and on track and that you're hopeful and grateful for all of those things in connection to the conversation we've had tonight and the work that you are doing and can do with each other so think about that and whoever would like to go first please just do and then i can call on people after that

[243:08] well it's not so terribly related to what's going on tonight but i have felt uh in the last year or two and particularly in the last month um gratitude for a lot more plane spokenness between tab and staff i think in natalie and valerie right now you know natalie i have every hope that you'll continue on in your in your role um because in particular you've been able to hear questions that are asked and actually answer them or say i don't know i'll get back to you and in general you do get back to us um just that level of um that there's very little veil left you know and under previous directors there was a lot of arms

[244:01] lengthening that i'm not feeling from either you or valerie and so i am hopeful um that we will have a different different flavor of interaction and just more just frank discussions if you need to tell us no i i'm confident you'll tell us no as opposed to trying to tell us something that you think we might want to hear and i think that that's only going to help our work be more productive um going forward so stick around please thanks tayla oh well i i just wanted to say that i'm i feel really um really grateful and really fortunate to be part of this conversation and part of this this board that you know get to just shine in on what our our priorities might be and yeah thank you uh becky

[245:02] um i forget exactly the phrasing of the question um but uh i guess i'll say i'm excited about um the department's work and opportunities for input from the community and tab around um standards like design standards more generally i think um it's really you know it's a tough thing to do because there's been so little good state and federal guidance historically to provide to cities the kinds of standards for building safe roads and so it puts a lot of onus on cities to um kind of build that out for themselves in many ways so um i really appreciate the amount of work going into that and thought going into it um so um yeah so that's something i'm

[246:00] really excited and appreciative about thank you how about you ryan i uh uh agree with tila about the comments with valerie and natalie really appreciate both of you and your work that you've done and valerie you're relatively new here um i can start to say that with other people but in any case i just wouldn't guess that so i really love the um just the direction you're doing and also nicole i'm glad i'm just so grateful to have council members fear here um you know our you know our as tab council is our primary or one of our two primary jobs is to serve council to provide vice council we don't have that many direct types times to speak with council and um having you here nicole i think just changed the discussion entirely and you know we can't ask you to join every meeting but i appreciate the chance to um to kind of sync up with you and have this three-way for i don't know whatever number this you know axes we have here but having you here and and helping us

[247:02] both with staff and with tab to understand like what shouldn't we be working on so um i'll and and i i appreciate the invitation for us to um be more engaged with you directly as council with um with alex's red pen um so yeah thanks thank you alex it's been refreshing in the past four or six months to hear from staff that they see room for improvement in the methods with which they do things the process our communications our design standards spent years just project by project item by item being assured that nothing could possibly be improved in the when it came before us and then after the fact um very little reflection or attempts to to

[248:00] avoid some of the things that we kept running into so just hearing it from from a bunch of different people in a bunch of different ways that um we we all tab certainly included have ways have room for for improvement and how we go better wonderful yeah that sort of opening on in all parties nice thank you um nicole i'm just feeling a lot of gratitude that in the midst of all that's going on right now in the outside world in our own lives still being in a pandemic all of this um everybody took this time tonight to come together and form these really human connections um even virtually through our screens um i think there there was a real recognition that um teelechi is another uh um boat kind of analogy we're all in the same boat right we're not gonna get through this by trying to throw each

[249:00] other out of the boat or fighting each other or anything but rather by having these really um open conversations about how we can all start moving together um and it just gives me a lot of hope um that is really hard for me to find these days so i just want to thank you all for um for giving me a bit of that hope tonight and um the other thing that i saw tonight was sort of this building of relationships and community and that in my mind is what's going to get us through all of these really hard challenges is these connections that we have to each other um the investments that we're making in each other and in our lives together and so just thank you for giving me all that tonight you really filled me up and and i will actually try to come to as many as i can it doesn't always sometimes there's other things but you can absolutely ask me to come every time great thank you valerie um i think i'm really just appreciative

[250:00] and reflecting tonight on um i guess the the kind of shared reverence that we all have as as staff as elected officials as appointed officials as facilitators heidi um all of us in the work that we do in mobility and its impact on people's daily lives um you know that reverence for the people we serve and why we're doing this work um i think especially with introduction of becky and trini to the board most recently and the perspectives that you both bring and i think that's something that that just fills me with with hope and purpose um and just mutual appreciation for what we are all contributing together thank you natalie um i'm most grateful for just the kind of steps we've taken towards each other i think tonight um it felt like we for quite some time have just kind of been maybe talking past each other and i think we're getting closer to one

[251:01] another and that's going to just make it easier for us to work together as partners going forward yeah great did i miss anyone i think i didn't i don't know meredith i know you're there i don't mean to not include you i just know you're busy but do you okay um so anyway thank you all this was a big um big long amount of time that i feel like there was some positive movement and there's still a lot of work to do right we don't have uh the the total clarity and alignment but we have a lot of where we're closer to that and i think the common and both valerie and natalie just put really well that i love that shared reverence but the importance of the work we're doing and the commitment and passion that everybody here has toward that important work is um is the stuff that gives us even more

[252:00] energy and will to do the good work so i feel like you start from a really great place if you can find ways to work with each other on these big problems so thank you all very much for showing up and engaging in the way that that started out with wanted to be engaged had a little bit of fun um but i can see a lot of tired faces right now so we'll call it a night thank you so much heidi for absolutely guiding us through this yeah all right thanks everybody bye