City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Thursday, August 6th, 2026 regular meeting of the Boulder City Council. I'm going to go ahead and call us to order. Can we have a roll call, please, Alicia?

Yes, sir. Thank you. And thank you, everyone, for joining us tonight. We'll start the roll call, as usual, with Councilmember Adams.

Present.

Benjamin.

Present.

Mayor Brockett.

Present.

Councilmember Kaplan.

Present.

Marquis.

Here.

Shuhard.

Here.

Speer.

Here.

And Mayor Pro Tem Weiner.

Present.

Mayor, we have our quorum.

Thanks so much. All right. Well, our first item is open comments. So, Alicia, if you can go over our public participation guidelines, please.

Yes, sir. Thank you. We would like to again thank you for your participation at tonight's council meeting. We ask that you abide by the rules of decorum found in the Boulder Revised Code. This includes participants are required to sign up to speak using the name they are commonly known by. Individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online. Only audio testimony is permitted during open comment. No attendees shall disrupt, disturb, or otherwise impede the orderly conduct of any council meeting in a manner that obstructs the business of the meeting. This also includes failing to obey any unlawful order of the presiding officer to leave the meeting room or refrain from addressing the council. Our remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business, No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person. And lastly, obscenity, other epithets based on race, gender, or religion, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the meeting will not be tolerated. Thank you again for joining us, and thank you for listening.

Thanks so much, Alicia. All right, we've got 11 people signed up to speak. Each person will get two minutes, and I will be strict about that limit in the interest of fairness. Our first three speakers are Lynn Siegel virtually, and then the rest of the speakers are in person, starting with Lara Gonzalez and Paula Palmer.

Lynn Siegel, proud and, well, I'm not proud. I don't like that word. But I'm happy to have received a suspension until December for Erin Brockett, Cutting off my voice as I bring up anything Palestinian with regards to our financial economic budget crisis in Boulder, for which I'll be speaking at the public hearings coming up, and then being blamed for it, for yelling, which I certainly do, because I don't like my voice being cut off, you know, especially when I get two minutes or three minutes for a public hearing. I think that Aaron and the rest of the council, except for Rob Kaplan and Taisha, who I feel better about. And yay, we're running Lara Gonzalez for city council. Sweet, sweet, sweet. Yes. You can sign up down here. Just come outside and you can sign the thing. That's where I am. And unfortunately, I have to be really hot today. because the city of Boulder gave me a retrofit that doesn't work and that I was left out of because they did not support me in being gaslighted from the county as to having any input on my retrofit. So I'm at 88 degrees in the downstairs and 98 degrees upstairs. And in the winter, I'm 54 degrees downstairs and 40 degrees upstairs. So I'm pretty uncomfortable all the time. And I'm 73 years old. So I'd like to have some peace in the later part of my life. But the city's been promising to fix this problem for two years now. And now MGI, they're consulting with to just take this stuff out, not fix it, but just haul it out because it'll be. Many, many, you know, $100,000 to get it out of my place. Fixing all the walls, re-dribling and everything else. I'm not paying XLM. Your time is up.

Thank you for your testimony. All right. Our next three speakers are Laura Gonzalez, Paula Palmer, and Evan Ravitz. Is Laura present?

Here, Black August. If you don't know what that is, learn fast. This month is for black political prisoners and freedom fighters the Western Empire has tried to bury. Today, in 1962, Jamaica broke from Britain. But Britain, like every supremacist power, gave away land that wasn't theirs. In 1917, they promised Palestine to white European Zionists. This month, Haiti fought for the freedom through armed struggle, which is a human right when the land is occupied and people are enslaved. Their reward? reparations to slaveholders, perpetual debt and poverty by design. That moral rot is in history. It's in this council. It's in your DNA, in every white body in this room. Hell, some of you even carry Jewish supremacy too. And you can't help yourselves, criminalizing protesters, criminalizing speech, writing new rules during a genocide to silence us. Shame on you. Angela Davis, Nelson Mandela, Marwan Barghouti, you're doing the same, deciding whose voice is criminal or terrorist and whose voice is safe. That's liberal fear politics, which you thrive in. You're no different than Trump. Malcolm X warned us about you liberals. You overestimate your goodness. You're no good. You support genocide and you silence those who name it. This week, I saw a fetus because his mother, his mother's body disintegrated in a bomb blast. I saw an empty onesie with only bones. I watched skin and bones on the daily because the evil settler genocidal colony of Israel, which you defend to the grave, starves children by choice. Yesterday in Masafriyata, a Jewish terrorist tried to burn a family and life, and you refused to divest from apartheid, which existed long before October 7th. Am I surprised? Nah. You benefit from those white folk that ate black and indigenous babies, who threw black babies to the alligators, who made furniture out of black enslaved people's skin, who melted skulls in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. You benefit from the Sand Creek Massacre. You pass an MMIR resolution and don't even name Megan Trussell, an 18-year-old indigenous girl. I demand an end to your fascist rules of the quorum, rules you ignore until our pain became inconvenient to you. No one should be suspended for speaking their pain from watching a livestream genocide. Free Palestine.

Okay, our next three speakers are Paula Palmer, Evan Ravitz, and Rob Smoke.

Good evening, neighbors. My name is Paula Palmer, and I'm here representing Right Relationship Boulder. Last year, when Council approved the concept plan that Open Space and Mountain Parks had developed for the Fort Chambers site, you attached one recommendation. You said, it's important for a physical representation of the actual fort to be on the site, not necessarily a reproduction of the whole structure, but a way for visitors to see and experience the reality of the fort, where Boulder men set forth to carry out the Sand Creek Massacre. A year later, this past May, OSMP unveiled an interpretive design where there is no sign of the fort anywhere. We don't understand this. And perhaps more importantly, the official Arapaho tribal representative, Fred Mosqueda, told us he doesn't understand it either. This property is the site of a fort where Boulder men volunteered to join the U.S. Cavalry as, quote, Indian fighters. How are visitors, and I'm thinking especially of the fourth graders who are studying Colorado history, supposed to understand what happened there if there's no evidence of the fort itself? Right Relationship Boulder has many concerns about the proposed interpretive design for this site. We hope you're studying the interpretive design and coming to your own conclusions. We hope you will remind OSMP that you asked them to consider how the fort can be physically represented. The Arapahoe representative, Fred Mesquita, proposed one way a year ago. We've been urging OSMP to implement Mr. Mesquita's proposal. Please let OSMP know that you want the truth to be told at the Fort Chambers site. We believe the people of Boulder, as well as the Arapahoe and Cheyenne, want this too. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Evan Ravitz, Rob Smoke, and Hanalei Lanner.

Last time I said the city had abandoned its previous moral position boycotting Burma and South Africa and instead invests in companies profiting from Israel's genocide, including Caterpillar, whose bulldozers have been destroying thousands of Palestinian homes. including in our sister city, Nablus, where settlers firebombed two mosques just last week. Some sister, Boulder is. That must be because Boulder businesses increasingly profit from war, including BAE, which made parts of the Tomahawk missile that destroyed the Manab Girls' School in Iran. The city's new embrace of war may also explain your offensive historically inaccurate and extravagant plan for Fort Chambers Memorial just outside Boulder where the Sand Creek Massacre was plotted. The motive for the massacre in the proposed memorial is repeatedly, some 40 times, said to be fear of the Indians. This is offensive because, one, It was almost exclusively women, children, and old men who were murdered, hardly a threat to the armed soldiers who killed them. The fear of settlers for the Indians is the same fear of any colonial occupiers, of those they have dispossessed, as was Israel. The primary motive was greed for land, gold, water, etc., The city should give the money budgeted for the Fort Chambers Memorial to the tribes to do what they wish, not use it to continue to justify a massacre plotted right here in Boulder, 162 years later. Have you learned nothing?

Thank you. Now we have Rob Smoke, Hanalei Lennar, and Jorge Figueroa.

Good evening. My name's Rob smoke. I live in Boulder and, uh, I have in my possession, um, a photograph. Well, I'd have to dig around for it, but I have a photograph of my uncle Max, my great uncle, Max, Max, standing next to Harry Truman at the signing of the declaration in support of Israel on May 14th, 1948. And my grandfather, his brother was, uh, editor of the Jewish Daily Forward for decades, for decades. And people will still tell me I'm anti-Semitic for speaking out against what's going on with Israel. Well, if I'm anti-Semitic, so are the people who voted in seven primaries during this election season so far, where the AIPAC candidate has been turned down. And the Jewish Voice for Peace candidate has won, including this Tuesday in the Senate race in Michigan. And I think it's wonderful news, very hopeful news for humanity generally. And I think it's up to the city at this time, the city of Boulder, to take a new look, a fresh look, at the need for divestment, or they're talking about Caterpillar that Evan just mentioned, or we're talking about any number of other companies. The documentation is there, the documentation of something really unthinkable, which is genocide, which is just the outright murder of innocent civilians, lots of them children, lots of them men and women, but lots of them children, tens of thousands. And as a city, we need to be conscious of that and take a fresh look at what we're doing with our investments, $38 million in investments that we need to unload. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we go to Hanalei Lanner, Jorge Figueroa, and Brigid Mark.

Good evening, and thank you for your representation and for all the hard work that you do. I am here to advocate for Spruce Pool. I represent 125 people plus. That's how many we have on our mailing list. And I've lived and been a resident in Boulder since 1978, been a swimmer at Spruce Pool since 1981. And I know that Spruce Pool is in need of several repairs. I'm advocating that those repairs be made either this fall when the pool is closed or next spring so that prior to Memorial Day, It will be open at full hours, 7 to 7. And if the pool is closed, there's no revenue from it. So I know that the budget is based on revenue and people's ability to be there. Spruce Pool is a unique and pivotal pool in the community. It serves needs that are not served by the other community pools. Namely, it's very family friendly, especially to young families. My daughter was raised there. And people with physical challenges and disabilities, people who are blind, people who are recovering from various kinds of surgeries, it's not a chaotic pool like Scott Carpenter is. It is also easily accessible for people who are handicapped. Scott Carpenter's lot is always full, and the handicapped parking spaces are frequently full. And many people cannot risk being in a pool lane with many Olympic training participants and being injured by somebody else. It's also a community connection place. It's a place where we care about each other, especially in this loneliness epidemic. And there are a lot of people who have neurodivergence and dementia and things like that that are served by this pool. So we would like to know how we can partner.

Your time is up, but thank you for your testimony. Now we'll go to Jorge Figueroa, Brigid Mark, and Henrietta Gregorio.

Is Jorge here?

Not seeing him, let's go to Brigid Mark. And just to note, if you have a sign, it can't be held higher than your head. It has to be your head height or lower. Thank you.

Hi everyone. My name is Bridget Mark and I'm a PhD candidate at the university of Colorado Boulder, where I study indigenous environmental justice. And I'm speaking here today on behalf of right relationship Boulder to encourage substantial revisions of the interpretive design for Fort chambers. First, The design presents fear as the primary explanation for why Boulder residents formed a voluntary militia at Fort Chambers. Members of that militia later participated in the Sand Creek Massacre, killing hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho people, most of them women, children, and elders, at a peaceful encampment. The design mentions settler fear 34 times. Visitors might come away believing that the actions of Boulder residents were justified because they were afraid. This also contradicts the plan's own desire to avoid, quote, speculation or prescriptive moral framing. Second, the design uses sticks to represent Native populations. This is dehumanizing. It reinforces longstanding stereotypes of Native peoples as primitive, anonymous, or belonging to the past. The decompression area also makes the decline in native population appear natural, obscuring its violent causes. The reemergence area then presents a simple story of native return, as if everything is resolved. I asked council to direct OSMP to revise these elements in close collaboration with Cheyenne and Arapaho representatives. This site should tell the truth clearly, not excuse violence, reproduce stereotypes, or imply that the work of repair is complete. Thank you.

Thank you. Our last three speakers are Henriette Gregorio, Michelle Rodriguez, and James Duncan.

Good evening, Mayor.

Can you speak into the mic, please?

Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Henriette Gregorio, and I am a homeowner in one of Boulder's permanently affordable homes. First, I want to thank the city for its vision. Boulder's permanently affordable housing program has made home ownership possible for thousands of residents who would otherwise never have had that opportunity. I'm here because I want to help protect that success. The city already recognizes that HOA dues are part of housing affordability. They are considered when homes enter the program. My question is what mechanisms exist to preserve affordability after the homeowner purchases the home. Across Colorado, HOH costs continue to rise because of insurance, aging infrastructure, reserve requirements, and inflation. Those realities are understandable. But when monthly HOA dues begin to equal or even exceed a homeowner's monthly mortgage payment, I believe we have reached a public policy question. I am not asking the city to solve my HOA dues. I am asking the city to examine whether the Permanently Affordable Housing Program has a policy gap that no individual homeowner can solve. I respectfully ask Council to direct Housing and Human Services staff and Boulder County Homeownership Program to explore an affordability preservation mechanism for homeowners whose HOA costs have fundamentally altered the affordability assumptions under which these homes were originally purchased. The question is not whether Boulder's affordability housing program has succeeded. The question is whether today's economic realities call for the next evolution of that success so that permanently affordable housing remains permanently affordable throughout the life of homeownership. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we have Michelle Rodriguez and James Duncan, and then we'll let Jorge Figueroa go.

Hi, good evening. I'm Michelle Rodriguez. I didn't realize you guys were going to have such a lit crowd and a very long list. There are 63 other speakers coming at you, but I just wanted to express my gratitude and appreciation for being heard recently and for the opportunity to be able to follow up on my stuff. I'll let you guys get on with your night. Thank you.

Thank you. James Duncan and then Jorge Figueroa.

Good evening, Council. James Duncan. I'm a resident here in Mulder, and thank you for your service. I appreciate and respect the position you guys hold. I want to speak about humanity. There's an old phrase that's been pushed around, see something, say something. Well, I want to address what Francesca Albanese has saw and saying. She is the UN Special Rapporteur on occupied Palestinian territories, And she's now in her second, third year term. She has been saying things like, what started in Gaza hasn't stayed in Gaza. Israel's pogroms and violence in our occupied West Bank are at record level highs. Children, elderly, priests, teachers, shepherds, all wiped out, murdered. Refusal by the Western governments, that's you, to take action is allowing it to continue with impunity. The so-called triumph of international law has crashed. Israel has made it clear that unveiled its vision for Palestine, nothing, nada. There's no Palestinian state in their vision. The colonies, genocide, and apartheid is a state enterprise. So it's Israel which must be sanctioned and isolated. This is what Francesca Albanese is saying. No more arms. Cut trades. If you do this, then you will see immediate consequences, peaceful, and an end to the violence. The Nakba catastrophe has never been over since 1947. It's ethnic cleansing on steroids. repossession, cultural erasure, it's the ultimate crime.

Time is up. Thank you. Our last speaker is Jorge Figueroa.

Thank you so much, Mayor and City Council, and City Manager and Deputy Manager. Really grateful for this time. As you already are well aware, in previous communications, I have found... the situations at the shelter, sanitary conditions, specifically the shelter bathroom in which they have left, after being reported, significant amounts of blood for unclean for more than 15 hours. It's a biohazard threat, not only for the residents of the shelter, for the workers of the shelter, but also for Boulder community members who are family or shelter residents and shelter workers and that might be exposed to shelter residents being exposed to communicable diseases because of this. In following up, I have received an official statement from the city and from city and county health officials in which they claim that the city nor the county have jurisdiction over the shelter's main bathrooms with regards to the management and cleanup of biohazards. I don't believe this question of government oversight ends here. For example, the main shelter bathroom is also the main shelter bathroom for shelter residents and visitors who eat at the shelter's cafeteria, and it appears also to be the main shelter bathroom for the shelter's prepared food and kitchen workers. So maybe Boulder County should regulate. OSHA should also regulate. And you also have a contract with the shelter that I would imagine that the contract stipulates that the shelter should abide by local, state, and federal laws and regulations. I have three specific asks. One, to please meet with the county to figure out whether it's true that there's a regulatory black hole on the shelter's bathroom, and if so,

Your time is up, but I'd welcome you to send the rest in an email. That brings open comment to a close. Thanks, folks, for coming and speaking to us. Nuri, do you have any responses from city staff?

Sure. Thank you so much, Mayor, and thank everyone for their testimony tonight. A couple of things. On open space, just want to always appreciate the partnership with Right Relationship Boulder. I know that they have sent us some information. We want to continue to lean into that. There is a meeting coming up at the end of the month with Right Relationship Boulder, uh, facilitated by Mr. Ernest House, which I know that council's familiar with. So we will continue to lean in, um, and, uh, try to make sure that we are living up to our values and our partnership, not just with Right Relationship Boulder, but with our tribal nations. So thank you for that. Uh, to, um, the, uh, individual who brought up Spruce pool, just also want to thank you. We've actually received quite a few, LETTERS AND EMAILS ABOUT SPRUCE POOL. REALLY EXCITED TO SEE HOW MUCH FOLKS IN OUR COMMUNITY JUST LOVE THIS AMENITY. IT WILL, IN FACT, BE CLOSING TEMPORARILY AT LEAST FOR SOME MECHANICAL RENOVATIONS THAT NEED TO HAPPEN. SO IT WILL BE OPEN THROUGH LABOR DAY AND THEN WE WILL CLOSE IT TO PERFORM SOME OF THOSE RENOVATIONS AND WE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT A LOT OF OUR FACILITIES IN THE VERY NEAR FUTURE, I BELIEVE. I just want to appreciate the woman who is part of our affordable housing, permanent affordable housing program, and want to say that we know too that we are concerned about continued affordability. The conversations around HOAs do not elude us. We have been talking with our state partners about how else we can support it, but we too have an interest in making sure that the program remains affordable to all. So thank you so much for that. And then finally, Jorge, thank you so much for joining us today and for the conversations we had earlier this week. You shed light on a horrible situation you experienced at the shelter. Appreciate that that gave us the opportunity to speak to shelter leadership. We also spoke to individuals at public health. And we will continue to follow up as we move forward. But I wanted to thank you for sharing your story with us.

Teresa, do you have anything?

Nothing from me, Mayor.

All right. Thanks, Neria. Any questions for city staff following up from open comment? Yeah, Tysha.

Thank you. I believe I also made a request to get more information around the poor chambers component. So just wanted to flag that that was not only a staff and right relation builder, but there was a request by council to get additional information as that transpired. It was It was my understanding that we were waiting for the meeting with Ernest House Jr. to get that, but I just wanted to make sure that that correspondence does get to us in an information packet or whatever the most appropriate vehicle is.

Certainly, Council Member. We sent something in July, and we will plan to follow up as soon as we have some of these meetings and come back to you.

Okay and then on that note are there any we didn't hold any tribal consultations in 2026 unfortunately and I was curious if planning has already begun or when the planning process will become for tribal consultations in 2027.

Sure I know that our office of equity and belonging along with our partners in OSMP have started to have conversations with our tribal nation partners and frankly with the county as well about what that looks like in the future so we'll be talking more about it, but we don't have details yet.

Okay, and it would be wonderful if we could also include CU Boulder. We did hear that feedback that they would like us to coordinate across so they didn't have to travel so far. That's one question. My next question is around, a commenter brought up Caterpillar, and it reminded me of the inquiry that we received in May 2026 regarding Calendula's investments in oil and gas, which breaks our current rules, Cisco's current investments in private prisons, which breaks our rules, Microsoft is also invested in private prisons, and State Street is invested in tobacco, firearms, and private prisons, and oil and gas.

Thank you so much, and certainly recall that as well, and trying to get back to the individual who wrote to us, and I know some of you on council have also expressed interest. While this was not picked up as a council priority, I take what we get from community members seriously. I wanted to take a look at it. We have not been able to do something in more depth, although it did come up as we have been preparing for budget. So as soon as we have more, we will let you know.

Okay. And I just, I mean, okay. I'll wait for when I have my whatever minute to give comment. Thank you.

All right. Seeing no other hands raised, we do have the opportunity for very brief council comments about open comment if people would like. Does anybody have anything? Taisha.

Thank you. One, thank you all for coming to speak and open comment. It's been a component that has been missed. As the Noblest Boulder City representative, I have heard from residents that I had the privilege of meeting in 2025 around the escalating settler violence and also from the Israeli government. just sending out thoughts, prayers, and hopefully policy change to our sister cities so we can model the sisterhood that you so rightfully deserve. I also wanted to lift up the concerns around the investment portfolio. This is a governance issue. It shouldn't have to come up from We hire a company to make sure that they are abiding by the rules that we have in place, and that's not happening. So I continue to have concerns around just making sure that we are comprehensive in the governance and making sure that we are implementing all of our policies with fidelity. And lastly, oh, wait. I think time's about up.

That was it?

I was looking up there.

It was one minute.

But I didn't see the thing.

We didn't do that. I just was doing a stopwatch.

Okay, I would like to make a quick request that next time we have the thing up here so I can see the time. I was wondering why it wasn't moving. So I'll just quickly say I look forward to more information on that permanently affordable housing thing. Thank you.

Thanks. And just before I wrap this up, I'll just say, Jorge, thanks for coming. I appreciate the chance to talk to you the other day. Thanks for shining a light on the challenges there, and we are in communication with the shelter about how to improve things. So I appreciate that. And with that, that brings us to the end of open comment. We are going to go ahead and recess until the start of the business portion of our meeting at 6.30. So we'll see you all in about 28 minutes. GO AHEAD AND FIND YOUR SEATS. ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. LOOKS LIKE PEOPLE ARE FINDING THEIR SEATS AND THANKS FOR QUIETING DOWN. IT'S 630, SO I'M GOING TO GO AHEAD AND GAVEL US BACK TO ORDER. AND WE'LL MOVE STRAIGHT INTO OUR CONSENT AGENDA, PLEASE, ELISHA.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Our consent agenda is item number three on tonight's agenda, and it consists of items 3A through 3C.

Any questions or comments on the consent agenda? Perhaps a motion? Make a motion to pass the consent agenda.

Second.

Great. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please raise your physical hand. That passes 8-0. All right. Let's do our call-up check-ins, please.

Yes Sir, thank you. Our call-up check-ins are item number four on tonight's agenda. For A is the outside city utility permit request for the property located at 1098 Cherryvale Road. This is referenced under case number LUR 2025-00071.

Any questions or comments or desire to call this one up? Seeing none, let's go to the next one please.

4B is the outside city utility permit request for the property located at 6906 Frying Pan Road. This is referenced under case number LUR 2026-00025. Any desire to call this one up?

Seeing none, let's go to our last one, please.

4C is the outside city utility permit request for the property located at 5083 Cottonwood Drive. This is referenced under case number LUR2026-00022. Any desire to call this one up?

All right. I'm not seeing any, so that wraps up our call-up check-ins. Let's go to our first public hearing, please.

All right. This is a lot of information, so everyone be patient. Our public hearings are item number five on tonight's agenda. 5A is the consideration of a motion and to adopt the ballot measures on second reading. We'll start with ballot measure, I mean ordinance number 8758, which is related to the issuance of general obligation bonds for the purpose of financing community recreation, safety, infrastructure, and other capital projects. Next to be considered is ordinance 8759, which is the question to whether to raise taxes in the city of Boulder by adopting a vacancy excise tax imposed on homes that are occupied for 183 days or less per year. Next is ordinance 8761. This is the question asking if, I mean requesting to add a new section 73, collective bargaining for firefighters, creating a charter guarantee right for full-time fire department employees to bargain collectively to the Boulder, I mean the Boulder Charter. Next, ordinance 8762. which is the question authorizing an amendment of the Home Rule Charter to modify the calculations of the city's debt limit. And ordinance 8763 is asking first determining the necessity of establishing a Boulder DDA. Next, formation of that DDA and a ballot issued to waiver applicable revenue and spending limits. Next included is the declaring the necessity for an election on November 3rd, 2026 concerning the formation of the DDA and determining the organizational aspects of the DDA board.

Take a deep breath after all of that. Nuri, I'll turn it over to you to get things started.

Thanks so much, Mayor. Today we're going to be talking, as Ms. Alicia shared, about a variety of items and wanted to just make a note about a few of them. One of the ballot items today is about the recreation and safety bond, which is aimed at addressing decades-old deficiencies in funding. While we'll get into the details of that possible bond, and I'm sure you have additional questions, I just want to highlight that this is not a recent phenomenon. We are not here to cast blame for decisions made in the past, but the reality is we did not get here overnight or even in the last few years. This has been created over decades, and I really want to thank our team for working through and uncovering this need in the past few years to come up with not just information we've been able to share so transparently, however painful, but with solutions as well as measures to ensure that we are not in this place again. It started with centralizing services and putting forth a detailed facilities plan in 2021. The plan was the first holistic in-depth assessment of the current state and needs of our buildings. This is something you'll see needs of all our buildings and identified the need to incorporate ongoing maintenance into the same. This is something that you'll see more openly called out in our upcoming budget, but we have been slowly building this into our budget since the release of the facilities plan. This too doesn't just happen overnight. Many may recall the great effort put into building up the city's municipal reserves in the past, where it took a little over a decade to go from around 10% in 2008 to our now 20% that we reached post COVID. Similarly, we've been building up our facility maintenance reserves every year in accordance with our facilities plan recommendations. We also continue to move forward with building consolidation at the Alpine Balsam site. This project that stems back to 2015 when the site was first purchased will consolidate 10 buildings in one which will only then allow us to dispose of other facilities once emptied. Other buildings, like Park Central behind us, simply cannot be redeveloped as they are in the high-hazard floodplain. All of this combined, including the advancements of the council priority of the long-term financial strategy in recent years, which recognizes the need to focus on taking care of what we have been addressing, our backlog of needs, and increasing our revenue diversity and funding flexibility, has enabled us to enhance our financial governance structure and bring forward, with council support, this tax ballot measure proposal to fund our backlog of infrastructure needs. Further, we're working on a plan to add a community advisory component to these capital investments. Both our CFO and myself have experience with such community advisory panels in other places, and we've been thinking about how to create something similar for our community. I say all of this in advance largely because staff won't. We've received some criticisms that somehow we got to this place through recent mismanagement. That's just simply not true. I'm here to say that this team not only worked hard to address decades of different decision-making, and likely there were good reasons for those decisions at the time, or folks did not have the level of detail this team has been able to create with more in-depth data analysis and tools. But we've been honest about raising it, bringing it forward, and daylighting the true needs the city has. It would be a shame, in my view, to criticize staff for bringing these very hard concerns forward in such a transparent way when what we're really trying to do is have an honest conversation in the public realm about what the state of our facilities are amidst the growing desires and demand for programming within our community. Another topic for tonight concerns the Downtown Development Authority. We appreciate all the conversations that are happening in community about it and recognize that this is a new tool for us as a city. We knew when you asked us to prioritize economic development efforts and look to expand tools for the use to bring forward ideas that some of these ideas would be novel to our community. This year you already approved the establishment of a metro district and asked us to bring forward this potential DDA tool in time for placement on the ballot. However you choose to move forward tonight, I want to recognize the enormous amount of work and the community planning group have put into this to bring forward on a tight timeline and we will continue to say that we believe it is a strong lever for the revitalization of a downtown and hill area that have been in decline since the pandemic and for which our current GIDs are unable to provide the kind of investment capacity that something like the DDA could provide. Finally, I wanted to express sincere thanks to the leadership of our fire union, and you'll see all of them over there in red, our International Association of Firefighters Local 900. I have joked with IAF's president that for a while there I probably spoke to him more than I spoke to my husband. But I wanted to thank him and his leadership team in reaching what we believe is a positive charter amendment for your consideration. It was clear from the beginning we were more aligned than not on outcomes, and I'm really thankful we were able to agree on common language for communities' consideration in the event that you move this forward. So thank you to our partners. And with that, Mayor, I will pass it on to Charlotte.

Good evening, council members, Charlotte Husky, budget officer for the city of Boulder. Good to be here with you this evening. I'm joined by, uh, alongside Regan Brown, who's the economic development strategy manager who will be speaking on the DDA. Uh, this evening, we will start our discussion on the 2026 potential, uh, ballot measures and staff recommendations speaking on the tax ballot measures. the recreation and safety bond, the debt limitation, as well as the vacancy excise tax. We'll speak to the city charter ballot measure, the firefighter collective bargaining, and then end with slides on the Downtown Development Authority. So first I'll start with the potential tax ballot measure for city council consideration this evening with the recreation and safety bond. This tax ballot measure brought forward to you this evening is part of a larger comprehensive strategy that the city team alongside a partnership with the financial strategy committee and city council has been working on as part of city council's top priority for the long-term financial strategy. The long-term financial strategy builds upon years of recommendations to, among other items, focus on taking care of what we have and our city infrastructure and needs. The long-term financial strategy was first named a top council priority in 2024. and builds upon decades of recommendations that first came from the Blue Ribbon Commission in 2008 and 2010, and focuses on taking care of what we have, recognizing the backlog of needs, of infrastructure needs that we'll speak to tonight, prioritize the flexibility of funding to meet community needs, recognizing the challenges of restricted funding, coordination on tax ballot measures within broader financial planning at the city, including looking at alternative funding mechanisms as well as our budgeting approach and looking to distribute the tax burden more equitably. Specifically, and in recent years, we have shared forward our financial constraints the city has faced and the importance of the long-term financial strategy in helping to guide our work forward toward financial health. When we look across recent years, we see that revenues grew 3.3% less than expenses. And recently in the budget for 2024 and 2026, we've shared this forward with council and recent budgets. And most recently at our May financial forecast, this gap widens with our flattening of our major revenue sources with sales and use tax, as well as with property tax at our annual revenue growth, just below 2%. To combat this growing gap in recent years in 2025, We focused on closing a projected 8 to 10 million shortfall, implemented a hiring freeze mid-year, and implemented 5% operational savings across the organization. In the 2026 budget, to close a projected $7.5 million shortfall, we implemented reductions and emphasized realignments across the city budget. We focused on internal service, one-time internal service transfers, as well as reduction of subsidies that the general fund provides. This led to an overall decrease of 7.8% year over year in the general fund. Now with the 2027 budget, which we are currently focused on in these current weeks, are focused on balancing against an approximate 6.5 million projected shortfall. So staff has come forward to city council several times this year to discuss the connected work of the city's long-term financial strategy and facilities funding needs. These conversations have provided detailed overviews of the city's current financial landscape, including specific focus on city facilities investment backlog. On March 12th, staff provided an update on the long-term financial strategy and presented an overview of the 2026 potential tax ballot measures. These measures were synthesized with the financial strategy committee as well as with city council feedback, narrowing our potential tax ballot measures that would help support the city in taking care of our existing assets and enhancing revenue sufficiency and stability. On April 9th, staff provided an update on our city facilities funding needs, including specific focus on the recreation centers and 15 priority buildings when we look across our entire city building portfolio in need of renovation and replacement with specific focus on those 15 priority buildings. At the May 14th financial forecast as well as the ballot measure discussion, Staff shared forward our financial landscape, which is shared earlier as projecting a 6.5 million gap in our 2027 budget in the general fund due to flattening of our major revenue sources compared to annual expense growth. At this same meeting, we also focused our discussion on providing scenarios of potential tax ballot measures to receive direction from city council on these ballot measures as well as charter changes, including the recreation and safety bond, before we proceeded with a statistically valid polling survey. Staff presented the survey results at the June 25th council meeting where we shared the results that we received from likely voters across the potential tax ballot measures, including the 400 million recreation and safety bond measure. Recognizing the financial landscape and the need to invest in our backlog of existing facility needs, City Council provided direction to staff to move forward with the 400 million recreation and safety bond to help address this critical backlog in the majority of our 15 priority buildings shared with City Council in April. Tonight, we come forward to City Council for second reading and recommended approval of the recreation and safety bond ordinances for a tax measure for voter consideration this November. So the recreation and safety bond was identified as part of the city's long-term financial strategy. Again, addressing our critical city facilities investments that we would be able to address city facilities investments without implementing reductions on existing service levels or making significant adjustments to other currently planned capital projects. This would enable us to perform near-term investments in most of the identified 15 priority buildings, such as replacement of the South Boulder Recreation Center, renovation of the North Boulder Recreation Center, including relocating the H-Well West Center, a new public safety building, and renovation of other city facilities, including fire stations, the Penfield Tate Building, and the Municipal Services Center. The proposed list of projects is reflected on this slide and that would be advanced by the recreation and safety bond. This includes the South Boulder Recreation Center replacement which would replace the South Boulder Recreation Center including aquatics amenities with a modern well-being building that is accessible to community members of all ages and abilities. The North Boulder Recreation Center renovation in addition of the older adult services would support deferred maintenance needs and modernize, expand the fitness area and add space needed to co-locate the West Agewell Senior Center to improve access to recreation, social connection, and well-being for all. The Penfield Tate Municipal Building renovation would support the renovation of this building to address failing systems like heating and cooling, improve accessibility for people with disabilities, and repurpose vacated offices for community and public safety uses. Fire station one and five renovations would help to support repair and renovations of the building to sustain emergency response capabilities. And the public safety center 911 dispatch replacement would replace failing public safety buildings, the public safety building and create a modern hub for police and 911 services. The Municipal Services Center redevelopment, the final on this list, is a city-owned site on more than 40 acres and could support consolidation of multiple buildings that are currently located across the city. This would look to redevelop this site in eastern Boulder to more effectively manage operations related to fleet, transportation, and utilities maintenance, as well as possibly public safety. So shifting now to talk about the city charter ballot measure for debt limitation. The debt limitation measure brought forward to city council this evening would amend charter section 97 so that the debt limitation could be no more than the actual value rather than is currently written in city charter as the assessed value. of taxable properties within the city. This amendment would bring forward city charter in line with other Boulder County communities and state statute. You can see that listed on the table here where Boulder is the only city listed of assessed value compared to actual value. And finally, covering the tax ballot measure for council consideration, the residential vacancy excise tax. The residential vacancy excise tax measure would add an excise tax for homes that are occupied for 183 days or less per year. This tax measure would raise taxes to support general city purposes and would begin to be imposed on January 1st, 2028 at $4,000. per unit with an annual adjustment for CPI for a maximum of 7,000 per unit. If approved by voters, an effectuating ordinance would be drafted to craft the program details including its administration, enforcement, and legally permissible exceptions to the tax.

An unusual move, council. I get to present this one and not staff. We can go to the next slide. This next ballot item, as I mentioned, was really brought to us initially from our local 900 IAFF local union, our firefighters. They really had two initial sort of main goals, although there were others encompassed. They wanted to really think about how do we expand the bargaining UNIT MORE IN LINE WITH STATE LAW, THE COLORADO FIREFIRE SAFETY ACT HAS BEEN SOMETHING THAT VARIOUS JURISDICTIONS HAVE MOVED OVER IN THE PAST YEAR TO PUT IN THEIR OWN CHARTERS, BUT REALLY ALSO JUST THINKING TO CODIFY THE CHARTERS IN TERMS OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AND MODIFYING THE IN-PASS PROCEDURE. WE TOO RECOGNIZE AND WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT THE CHARTER HAS A GUARANTEED RIGHT TO COLLECTIVELY BARGAIN AND AIM THE CITY. WE ALSO WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT WE PRESERVE MANAGEMENT RIGHTS FOR THE WHOLE CITY, BUT ALSO allowing for expanded opportunities to meet and confer. It is always our intent to have discussions and to talk about a variety of issues, whether they are required to be mandatorily bargained or not. So we are hopeful that council will take this and move this forward at the right time.

Good evening, Council. Regan Brown, Economic Development Strategy Manager with the Office of Cultural and Economic Development. I'll be walking through the DDA ballot measure slides. We can jump right into the next one. So before we jump into the details, I do just want to take a minute to recap how we got here. In 2024, Council identified stronger commercial area connections and quality of life as priorities and directed staff to evaluate tools that could better support our commercial areas. We evaluated the full range of financing and governance options, and in April 2025, council directed staff to further explore a DDA as the priority revitalization tool for our downtown area. Since then, we've worked with a planning group, businesses, community organizations, and council to refine what a Boulder DDA would look like, bringing updates in March and again in May, each time incorporating council feedback So the ordinance before you tonight represents the culmination of roughly two years of analysis, stakeholder engagement, and council direction. Next slide. And before getting into the mechanics of the DDA, it's worth stepping back and asking why we're considering one in the first place. Downtown and University Hill are two of Boulder's key economic engines. They support hundreds of businesses, thousands of jobs, and generate revenue that help fund city services across the whole city. But over the last several years, we've also seen signs that these districts are struggling. Property values have declined. Commercial vacancies have increased and sales tax growth has lagged behind the rest of Boulder. At the same time, we've also seen what targeted investment can do. The Moxie Hotel, as you see on the screen here, is a great example. That project brought new visitors, created activity on the hill, and has significantly increased sales tax revenue in the area. It's the type of catalytic investment that can have benefits well beyond a single property. The idea behind a DDA is to create more opportunities for projects like that, projects that encourage investment and strengthen the surrounding business district. The question for Council tonight is whether Boulder should have a dedicated tool focused on that kind of long-term commercial revitalization. After evaluating the available options, staff concluded that a DDA is the strongest tool because it's the only one that combines dedicated funding, long-term governance, and financing tools into one entity. Ultimately, the goal isn't just to generate more revenue, it's to create healthy commercial districts that continue supporting businesses, residents, employees, and city services over the long term. Next slide. So before diving into the projections, I do just want to spend a moment on what's behind them, some of the key assumptions. These are planning scenarios prepared by our consultant team, Progressive Urban Management Associates, or PUMA. They're not predictions or guarantees. They're simply looking at two different ways the future could unfold. The first asks what happens if recent trends continue, and the second asks what happens if a DDA helps spur additional investment over time. For property tax, that's the difference between continued modest decline as we've seen the last six years versus modest long-term growth. For sales tax, both scenarios assume inflation. The difference is that the DDA scenario assumes additional economic activity, more customers, more businesses, and more private investment. The reality is that it will likely end up somewhere in between these two scenarios, but they really help illustrate the potential impact of targeted investment. And then one last point I want to make here. These are not citywide projections. They differ from the city's financial forecast because the city's forecast looks at Boulder as a whole. These projections focus specifically on downtown. Downtown has underperformed the rest of the city over the past several years. So these scenarios are intended to illustrate what that targeted investment through a DDA could mean for this area over the long term. Next slide. So what do these two scenarios look like over 30 years? Under the DDA scenario, every taxing entity is projected to receive more cumulative property tax revenue than under the baseline scenario. That's because the DDA doesn't take today's property tax revenue. Existing revenues and even natural appreciation of existing properties continue to go to the city, county, schools, and library just as they do today. The DDA only receives the new property tax created by new development within the district after the base year. Sales tax works a little differently, but the concept is similar. While the DDA would receive future growth in sales tax generated within the district, the city's general fund is also projected to receive more revenue than in the baseline because the overall economy is larger and because staff is proposing a revenue sharing approach. So the key takeaway is that the goal isn't to shift today's revenue from one entity to another, it's to grow the pie over time. Next slide. So because a DDA would be a separate governmental entity, it's important to establish clear parameters for how that entity would work in partnership with the city. With that, staff has developed a draft letter of intent or LOI that serves as the framework for a future intergovernmental agreement, or IGA, between the city and the DDA. It outlines key expectations that we've heard from the community and from council around organizational transition, tax increment financing, parking assets, governance, and board appointments. And while the letter of intent is non-binding, it does provide clear direction on the principles that would guide the formal agreement if the DDA is ultimately approved by voters. the detailed IGA would come back to council to be negotiated with a future DDA board and ultimately approved by council. Next slide. Another common question we've heard is what role council would continue to play. Even though a DDA is a separate governmental entity, the city retains significant oversight. Council appoints every member of the DDA board, including council representation on the board, approves the DDA's annual budget. It must approve both the initial plan of development and any future amendments. Transportation and parking decisions remain aligned with adopted city plans and policies. Finally, if the DDA were ever dissolved, its assets and reserves would revert back to the city. Together, these provisions are intended to provide accountability, transparency, and continued council oversight. Next slide. So if council decides to refer this measure to the ballot, state law requires three separate questions. The first asks whether to create the DDA. The second is the required TABOR question, allowing the DDA to retain and spend the revenues it collects, including tax increment financing. The third asks voters to approve a property tax levy of up to 3.674 mills, which is intended to replace the existing Central Area General Improvement District CAGED assessment, not add an additional layer of taxation. And finally, only qualified electors within the proposed district as defined by Colorado statute would vote on these questions. That includes eligible residents, property owners, and business lessees within the district boundaries. The city cannot elect to have the DDA as a citywide election because of state statute.

Excuse me. That concludes our presentation for the potential ballot measures for city council consideration. I'm happy to take any questions before public hearing.

Thanks so much to you all for the fantastic presentations and all of your work on this. So let's have council questions. And if I can ask folks to keep them to one or two, certainly at least for the first round, we got to 63 people we want to hear from in the public hearing. So does anybody have questions? Rob?

Just one quick question. Do you have the number of electors that are within the DDA boundaries? Residential, property owners, leases?

Yeah, thanks for the question, Councilmember. We do. Total residential electors is roughly 559. Property owners, 536. Business lessees, a little over 1,100. So the total, that comes to a little over 2,200. Thank you.

All right, I got Tina and then Matt. I've got one. Tayshia.

Yeah, on the, and thanks for all this information and all the work that you did putting this all together. For the bond measure, could you remind us what the impact would be for a residential property as well as the impact from a TMF and the early childhood tax? Certainly. And also the timing when each, when residents or businesses would feel the impact of those taxes?

Certainly. One second. So the property tax increase for the recreation and safety bond would be a maximum of 6.3 to 352 mils. For a residential property that's valued at 500, the annual increase would be just under $200. For a residential property valued at 1 million, the annual increase would be about $400. For a commercial property value that is valued at 500, the annual increase would be just under $800. And for a commercial property value at a million, the annual increase would be just under 1600. For the transportation maintenance fee, I'll start with the early childhood credit that is on the ballot this November that is for Boulder County proposed on the ballot. For a residential property valued at 500K, the early childhood mill levy taxes would be about $78. For a residential property valued at a million, it would be about 163. For commercial property, for actual value at 500K, the early childhood mill levy taxes would be 322. For the actual value at a million, the early childhood would be at 645. And for the transportation maintenance fee, this depends on the square footage of the property. In one second, I'll bring up. So for a 5,000-square-foot general commercial property, the fee would be $800. And... happy to answer any additional questions. I think the additional question that you had was the implementation.

The time, like when will we anticipate them?

So for the transportation maintenance fee, that was approved by city council last year, and staff can correct me if I am off on this, but know that we are working on implementation and plan to fully implement next year in 2027.

for the the one second while you're looking for information at your fingertips Charlotte I just want to note for council and for community we have a transportation fee maintenance fee calculator on the website that people can certainly go to and look at their own property

Thank you, Nuria. So for the implementation for the recreation and safety bond mill, that would be implemented in 2028. And for the childhood tax credit, we would need to look at that to confirm.

Did you have a follow-up on that? Yeah, I did have a follow-up.

So what is the average? You used $500,000 and then $1 million for commercial properties. So what is the average cost of a commercial property? Why would you use $500,000?

These are represented ranges only. So the average... residential home in Boulder at this point in time I believe it's just under a million or around a million and so this is just represented a range of residential and commercial potential values so what is the commercial then is the average 1 million we would need to look into that and get back I think the intent of the Sharing forward is the range within. And so the range that we presented was about 500K to a million with that annual increase of just under 800. And then for a million, property value would be 1,600.

I guess, let me rephrase. Why I'm asking is because is 2 million also there? I mean, I just want to know the most... Businesses will pay in other words and they do pass it down so it does affect small businesses and Tara I think we probably can do the math that if your property is worth two million you would you would double the one so how many? Properties in the city have that was what I'm saying just a few a lot or is 1 million the average We probably don't have the numbers.

We don't have the numbers right now.

I'm happy to provide that awesome as a follow-up Tina was that everything okay Matt and then taisha

You said one or two, so I'm going to use two. A question about the bond. I noticed in the bond language and in the presentation, much to my happiness, I see South Boulder Rec Center listed as the number one item. I guess, does that mean anything to the voters, that if they see the South Boulder Rec Center listed as one of six items and number one at the top of the list, Does that mean that that is the top prioritized facility to be replaced? Certainly maybe with regards to rec centers. Is it now ahead of North Boulder Rec Center in terms of the queue? So I think voters want to kind of know what that entails. Is it more just symbolic like we've heard you or does it have substantive meaning? And really the further context is, you know, past infrastructure taxes have failed to actually fund all the projects that were described in those taxes. And I think some voters are curious and concerned that that might happen again. And so I think we want to know how that is maybe not going to repeat. So yeah, where does that mean with the number one rating? And a friend has showed up to answer the question.

Appreciate the question. Toss it to Michelle Crane, Deputy Director of Facilities and Fleet.

Hi. Good evening, Council. Thank you for the question. Michelle Crane with Facilities and Fleet. It's a great question about the prioritization of the projects. they're all priorities in our mind and South Boulder is a clear priority. We've heard that across the community. I think it's one factor of many that we're weighing on exactly how they start, but really the way we've structured this bond, the way we've looked at projects is being able to fund all of them. So that's why it's listed so clearly. That's why we have articulated what we're trying to achieve with that as well as the other projects. I will mention that some of the prioritization, though, that we're also considering in order to maximize what we can do is ensure that we're executing projects, large projects, as quickly as possible to stay ahead of escalation. So some of the largest projects like public safety or those other that are going to be a long timeframe, the sooner we get those out of the gates, the more we can stay ahead of escalation, the more we can make use of that bond money that's there. So there's going to be a lot of strategy going into timing of each of these projects. Some of them are renovations. They'll be achieved on a quicker timeline just because of the regulatory process. Some of them will have a longer timeline. I do want to assure we have heard loud and clear about the rec centers. South Boulder Rec is a priority project. And so while I can't say it is the first in line to get out of the gates, they're all really first in line. We find an urgency behind each one of these to get them out of the gates quickly.

Okay. I appreciate that. My next question kind of circles back to the DDA. I'm kind of curious, has any city ever declined to put a DDA on the ballot following a process like this? I know there's a bunch of DDAs around Colorado, and I'm wondering if that's ever happened.

Thanks for the question. I don't believe so, but I do want to defer to Brad Siegel here from Puma, our consultant team who has experience with several DDAs across the nation.

Good evening, council. My name is Brad Siegel. I'm president of Progressive Urban Management Associates. We've been advisors to the city on the DDA. I've also been involved my whole career in this space in downtown revitalization, so about 40 years. I don't know of a DDA that actually has been rejected by a city council, certainly within the last 10 to 15 years. I can't speak to before that, but within the 10 to 15 years, more than a dozen have been created, and none of them were rejected by their city council. Oh, thank you.

All right. We got a colloquy. Tina.

I do have a colloquy. I was just reading about the DDA in old Colorado City that they're thinking about. And can you just tell us sort of what didn't go well in that scenario?

Sure. Thanks for the question. And Colorado City was created two years ago. It was created in the city of Colorado Springs. The statute is very clear that each city should only have one DDA. Colorado Springs has a downtown DDA, and then Colorado City was created. So it was questionable, frankly, in terms of precedent as a second one. And also with the Colorado City DDA, why it is having some turbulence is the DDA was created, but its voters did not approve of the mill levy to fund it. So it has not had a budget. It has not had an approved plan of development. It is arguably languishing. I would say, in my professional opinion, I think it's dubious, frankly, that it exists at all, because I think it flirted with state law. So my understanding is Colorado Springs is, this is not a technical term, but is losing some patience with Colorado City.

Okay, go ahead.

Before my question, so have other cities and more importantly states or cities had DDAs that were impacting restricted funds? So for example, the CCRS tax and some of the others, if it meets a certain threshold. Oh, in terms of sales tax? Yeah.

Yeah, so to clarify the question, I think is sales tax is made of a general fund and then there are voter-initiated parts of sales tax. Yes, that's what I said. Yeah, so our understanding is all the DDAs, at least in northern Colorado and in the state, utilize the full sales tax increment. Probably the example I'm most familiar with that has a parallel to Boulder is actually Denver. And Denver's sales tax, as you may know, has many, I think more than Boulder, in terms of citizen-initiated sales tax increases. In the Downtown Development Authority in Denver, starting with Union Station 15 years ago, the entire sales tax increment was allocated within the DDA.

Thank you very much.

Do you want to follow up with your regular question? Yes, I would like to.

Great. Thank you. I don't think it will affect you. So my question is around the scenario planning and how water, extreme heat, food, and energy was considered in those projections. We know that, especially when you said 30 years, just the Colorado River alone, which is one-third of our water supply, the long-term projection on that is anywhere from 6% to 45%. So I was just curious how the financial scenarios that you presented incorporated the actual water supply and the impact that that would have on potential sales tax revenue. Thank you.

Yeah, I'm happy to... I'm happy to bring up the project manager, Michelle Crane, for additional detail, but know that as part of our capital planning process, we consider our facilities energy impact and environmental impact as part of the full capital improvement planning process and know that that's something The team has considered across the board with these projects, not just with the projects that are proposed within the recreation and safety bond, but on an annual basis as we perform the capital improvement program development with our infrastructure investments that we perform.

So point of clarification, I specifically asked if the Colorado River projection of 6% and 45% had been considered in the 30-year projection. I heard you say climate. I'm specifically asking about water.

Michelle Crane, thank you for the question. I am trying to make sure I understand it fully. And I think the straightforward, the actual percentage and what you just described was not specifically calculated in there. If you're, though, talking about how we do plan buildings for resiliency, okay.

But thank you. I was just asking specifically if those numbers had been. Thank you. And again, I do understand that industry standard does not typically incorporate water supply at the scales that we are going to need to moving forward. Thank you.

Nicole?

Thanks. I'm going to take the bond measure for 400, please. So I've heard some concerns from community members who want the H-1 West Center to stay where it is. But my understanding is that that option is practically challenging due to life safety requirements and prohibitively expensive given that building consolidation is a key part of getting to a financially feasible facilities portfolio. Can you just speak a little bit more to why we're hoping to co-locate it with the North Boulder Rec Center?

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that question. And really understand we've looked at this for a while. We do understand the value of the current Agewell Center and its location and to the community. The challenge that we have been experiencing with that building and the way this one in particular was constructed is all of the mechanical systems, all of the piping, is underneath the current concrete slab, and it's leaking. And it's something that for years now, we periodically go in and dig up parts of it to chase leaks in that building. And we are always confronted or commonly confronted with heating and cooling concerns and complaints about not being able to keep the building either warm or cold. And a lot of that's because the system's actually underneath the ground. So when we assess our ability to really reconstruct or renovate this building, it actually entails tearing up the whole floor of the building. And at some point, you hit this critical place where you're taking down more building than you're putting back. It is then compounded by its location around the floodplain and that area. And so when we did do analysis of that building reconstructing at that current site, is quite challenging, in addition to a number of other factors that we've heard about with the site and the sloping also being hard to navigate. So that is one of the reasons that led to an idea of colocation. Another is just the added benefit that we know we hear and is seen and experienced across the communities about the value of colocating. older adult services, and just multi-generational health and well-being. And I think more and more we're trying to look at our recreation centers not as recreation centers but as well-being hubs and really trying to maximize the value of everyone being together. It also gives us an opportunity to better utilize the space across the entire building. So there are definitely times during the day in the rec centers, a lull during the middle of the day when you've got some of your morning and evening workouters not there. And so those spaces are not well utilized. And so there's real opportunity there to, again, be efficient and kind of maximize our programming ability and be efficient with the way we run buildings. So that's a lot of the logic behind the co-location.

Thank you. And I'm not sure who this next question is for, possibly Nori or somebody else. So we received an email from the president of the Boulder Police Officers Association in support of the recreation and safety bond. But the bond also impacts other departments like Parks and Recreation, Fire Rescue. Have we heard of groups like Local 900 and Play Foundation are also supportive? And are there any others that have suggested that they might be supportive of this measure?

Thank you so much, Councilmember. I have not heard directly from our local 900. They're here. We can maybe ask them at some point. But I have heard from BPOA, our police officers union. They are extremely supportive. They have been living in and working in a building that is just not fit anymore and we are just wasting money into those buildings. I have heard over time Our firefighters in different conversations talk about the state of their current buildings and assume they would like to see renovations and improvements there on a multitude of levels. We have heard from the Play Foundation, who is very much in support of our efforts as we think about the improvement of recreation centers. We have heard from a variety of other community organizations. So we believe there is support for really taking care of what we have. There is frustration and how did we get there and why are we here now. But I also hear much appreciation for the honesty of saying this is where we are and how do we move forward. So yeah.

Thanks. I've got a couple.

I'm so sorry I should have mentioned the Boulder Community Aquatics Coalition because if I don't I may hear about it later in support.

Great. So a couple questions I'd like to surface some information for the community. So if we do place the DDA on the November ballot and a majority electors do vote in favor of it tell us what the next steps are for realizing the DDA please.

Yeah thanks for the question Mayor. So next steps would include appointing the DDA board which council appoints the board and has representation on that board. It still does not become effective or operational until council and the DDA board approve the plan of development. Once that happens, likely simultaneously, you would also be negotiating and approving an intergovernmental agreement. So those two steps would need to happen before a DDA becomes operational.

My 1A question, that would have a public process associated with it, including a public hearing, is that correct?

Yes, it does, including a public hearing, yes.

Great, thanks. My second question is, one of the things, what's that? Oh, Nicole's got a colloquy, go for it.

It's just related to that too. With regard to kind of the start point, right, when does the incremental, the growth start accumulating? Is that like from as soon as voters say yes? Is it after everything's in place? How does that work?

It's as soon as the plan of development is approved by the DDA board and by council. That triggers the TIF clock starting and setting the base year.

Right. And actually my next question is essentially a colloquy already on what you just asked. One of the things people have been wondering about is whether the first edition of the Sundance Film Festival will be included in the base year for the sales tax. Can you speak to how the base year would be calculated if it moves forward on a roughly anticipated timeline?

Yeah, absolutely. So for sales tax TIF, the base is calculated using the 12 months immediately preceding the DDA's creation or approval of the plan of development. So using an example, if the DDA were established in July 2027, it's ideal that if this were to move forward, the board wouldn't be appointed and the plan wouldn't be approved ideally until Q1 or Q2 of 2027. So let's just use July as an example. Then the sales tax base would be the collections from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027.

And therefore include the first edition of Sundance? Correct. Great. Thanks for answering my questions. All right. If, wait, did I? Sorry, Matt, did you have a follow-up?

Isn't it preceding? Isn't it the preceding year from the formation? Right, I think you said 2027, June 30, 2027. Wouldn't it be 2026 to June 30, 2025? Or 27 to 26?

Yeah.

Yes, okay, so I think we have the order. Yeah, just checking. Great, okay. Did you have something else, Tara?

All right. Seeing no other hands raised, we are going to go to the public hearing. So Ely should, I think, I'm not sure if everyone heard the guidelines before. Why don't we do those again to be safe?

Give us just a second to pull them up.

Okay. Well, while she's pulling that up, I'll note that unless people are pulling time, everyone will have two minutes to speak. And I will be strict about that in the interest of fairness. And we will also expect people when they speak to speak to the topic of the public hearing, so on one of these five ballot measures that we are considering. And if you're pooling time, we'll need for your poolers to be present either online or in the room.

All right, Emily's getting them up for everyone, but I'll go ahead and start reading them. Thank you again, everyone, for your participation at tonight's council meeting. we ask that you abide by the rules of decorum found in the Boulder Revised Code. This includes participants are required to sign up to speak using the name they are commonly known by. Individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online. No attendees shall disrupt, disturb, or otherwise impede the orderly conduct of any council meeting in a manner that obstructs the business of the meeting. This also includes failing to obey any lawful order of the presiding officer to leave the meeting room or to refrain from addressing the council. Our remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person. And lastly, obscenities, other evidence that's based on race, gender, or religion, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the meeting will not be tolerated. Thank you again for joining us, and thank you for listening.

Thanks, Alicia. I'm going to call three names at a time. If you can move towards the front as your name is called. Our first three are Robert Mathias, Don Poe, and then Sylvia Werba. So, Robert. Is Robert Mathias here? Not seeing him, then Don Poe.

Well, good hello. My name's Don Poe, and I live in South Boulder, and I am one of your city commissioners. I am the chair of the Downtown Management Commission, and I've been chair for four of the past six years. You recently re-elected me to my position. Thank you. I've spent about the past 18 months, starting in January 2025, working on the DEA, doing diligent research. The DMC, the Downtown Management Commission, has held many, many public meetings discussing the DDA and people have been allowed to come into our meetings. And so there's been lots of public opportunity for discussion throughout the whole process. I've helped guide some of the safeguards that I was looking for in the DDA, particularly around profit sharing around the TIF. That was something that was important to me, and I've had an opportunity to ask hard questions to Brad, Citi, and I am very satisfied with the whole process. There have been many opportunities for the public to provide input at our meetings. Lafayette is more vibrant now. They have a DDA. Fort Collins has renewed their DDA. They love it. DOWNTOWN DENVER HAS THE UNION STATION BECAUSE OF THEIR DDA. AND AN IMPORTANT FACT IS THERE IS OVERSIGHT TO THE DDA. I LIVE IN SOUTH BOULDER AND I WAS LOOKING FOR BALANCE IN THE DDA. BALANCE IS THERE BY UPDATING THE PROFIT SHARING AND I'M REPEATING IT ON PURPOSE BECAUSE THAT IS SO IMPORTANT TO ME. The city does need a robust downtown, strong tax base. But I also want a strong South Boulder Rec Center. And we need to be able to protect all of the income throughout the whole city. And the DDA, as it's outlined, can do that. Growing income in downtown is a solid investment. And that is also why.

Your time's up. Thanks for your testimony. All right. We've got Sylvia Werber pooling with David Farnan and Andy Saylor. Are they present? All right, I got Andy, do we have David? And David's online, great. Sylvia, you've got four minutes.

Okay, thank you so much. Mayor Brackett and council members, my name is Sylvia Werba. I'm the current president of the Boulder Public Library District of Trustees. So expressing concerns about the lack of collaboration with the library since the DDA discussion and planning has begun. I hope you had a chance to read that letter, but I'm also going to summarize some of those key points just in case you didn't get to do that. We were officially notified about the DDA in May. This is officially the first time that we are publicly allowed to participate or provide our input into this plan. And this is the day you're voting on it. So that's a little troubling to us. The trustees have not taken an official position on the DDA, mostly because we just didn't have time. We have been forced to unpack how this DDA could potentially work and how it would affect the library in a very short timeframe. The board certainly agrees that it is important for our downtown to thrive. The main branch next door sees almost 500,000 visitors annually. We are very fortunate to belong to a community with a long history of supporting the library, and we are aware that the library is responsible for a lot of the foot traffic that comes downtown. It should make sense to everyone that the library must have and should have had a voice and a seat at the table that includes participation and decision-making input. The library isn't just a member of the public. We should have been viewed as a community partner. Our letter outlines several requests if the council does decide to move forward. The current draft ordinance includes the creation of a board. And that should be made up of, apparently, I think the number right now is 11 numbers. We would request at the library that one board seat be allocated to a member of the library trustees. to ensure that we can fully participate and engage in decisions that are made. This could be done through an amendment to our current IGA and inclusion in future agreements. It would probably also require a change to the current draft ordinance and any other applicable documents or letters of intent. The city should also mandate that the library have its own IGA with the DDA. The letter outlines our specific term requests. But at a minimum, we ask that the library be named as an anchor institution, that an IGA be executed with the library within 100 days of the DDA's formation, and that the IGA contain terms that are no less favorable than those that would be provided to any other affected taxing entity. Some of the terms that we proposed included a guaranteed minimum share of property tax increment returned to the district, written confirmation from the city attorney regarding the treatment of base appreciation, a five-year review of revenue sharing with an option to amend the process with additional reviews every few years. And then we also request that the DDA plan of development fund a capital project at the main library. The specifics of the project should be selected by the library and completed within a number of years. If the projections are correct, there will be greater use of the main library branch, and we know that that library has needed a lot of investment and maintenance over the years. This type of project would certainly fall within the category partner with city on signature public spaces in the current draft plan of development. At a minimum, the library requests meaningful participation in the DDA formation and implementation process. Just as is for you at the city, every single penny matters to us at the library. We already face financial challenges due to the state property tax cap, which reduces our disbursement below the amount that was already approved by the voters. We must have input and a say in any action.

Time's up. Thanks for your testimony. And we did read the letter. Thank you. So thank you. Okay, our next three speakers are Jennifer Mabry, Laura Gonzalez, and Martha Piper.

Good evening, Council. My name is Jennifer Mabry. I'm a native of Boulder, and I wish to express my strong support for preserving the existing features, character, and amenities of the South Boulder Recreation Center. I support the bond language if the ballot measures ensure SBRC will keep its existing features and any reno replacement facility, i.e. the lap pool, basketball gym, outdoor soccer field, beach volleyball, and tennis courts. The facility is a vital hub for our community, providing essential wellness, social, and recreational spaces for residents of all ages. While I recognize and appreciate the city's ongoing efforts to evaluate and improve our public spaces, I do urge the council to maintain the core features that make this recreation center so valuable to the South Boulder neighborhoods. To that end, the only specific alteration I propose is the removal of the disc golf kiosks, which detract from the surrounding green space and multi-use flow of the park grounds. Beyond this targeted adjustment, the facility and its surrounding amenities should be retained in their current form. to continue serving the community effectively without unnecessary and disruptive overhauls. Thank you for your time and consideration of community feedback regarding our public recreation spaces.

Thank you.

All right, we've got Laura Gonzalez and then Martha Piper and then Dakota Seufer. Is Laura here? Not seeing her present. We'll go to Martha Piper.

Good evening. I'm Martha Piper and I'm a residential property owner downtown. I'm asking you to refer the DDA measure to the ballot because downtown faces a structural problem that requires sustained focus, dedicated financing and bold action. The DDA is the right tool, but only if it prompts transformative change. We residents have a direct stake in downtown's future. and an important perspective and role to play in what's happening and what could happen here. I see it every day as I walk around downtown. I've watched the vacancies creep up block by block in the last few years, and the numbers back what I'm seeing. This isn't a dip, and yesterday's solutions won't work today. We need to get creative. Doing that will require focused attention and financing. It can't just be another line item in the city's budget. That means that the DDA's plan of development needs to prioritize new ideas to redevelop underutilizes sites, attract a new set of downtown businesses, and bring innovative housing and business solutions to our empty second stories. It also means appointing a truly bold board. This doesn't have to be determined by a small set of landlords, as some would contend. The mayor and you, the council, have the final approval over the board and the development plan. So let's be bold. Let's connect downtown and the Hill as a vibrant place for families and young people. And remember that this is a tool that only succeeds if downtown succeeds, and that aligns everyone's incentives. So put the ballot on the measure and make it a tool for transformation, not incremental change.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Dakota Seufer, Rex Reinhart, and Eric Adal.

Mayor and members of the Boulder City Council, I'm here to speak on the DDA. My name is Dakota Seufer. I've been involved on the Hill over many years. I first came to the Hill as a CU undergraduate in 99 I'm the chef owner of Cafe Aeon, where we just celebrated our 16th anniversary. I'm also the chair and co-founder of the Hill Boulder Merchants Association and served on UCAMC for five years. Along with my decades on the Hill, I've spent the better part of the last year learning about DDAs and how one would fit in our city's core. The Hill commercial area's fundling is dwindling away. Its outdated parking-based approach is not set up to allow the district to successfully navigate our modern needs and challenges. A DDA is the best tool to address our current set of challenges. It addresses the years-long decline in sales and property taxes, allows for long-term planning and funding, as well as sets the course for decades of growth to come. In addition to these baseline successes, I would like to name two additional points worth considering. One, when our downtown and hill commercial cores succeed, the whole city does, with revenue sharing back to the general fund. And two, for the first time, we're charting a formal path for our historic University Hill and downtown Pearl Street districts to work in tandem, leveraging their individual character and strengths towards a common goal. In this regard, a DDA would allow for access to a sum greater than our parts. I respectfully request you refer the proposed DDA to the November ballot and allow our commercial cores a chance to vote on our future. Thank you.

Thank you. Now let's go to Rex Reinhart, Eric Adal, and Robin McClurge-George.

Good evening, Council. I'm here to talk about what's reasonable. Last year, you asked voters to assume a $350 million debt obligation for infrastructure, including rec centers. This year, you're asking voters to assume a $650 million debt obligation for infrastructure, including rec centers. That's exactly $1 billion you're asking me and everyone else here to take on for, among other things, rec centers. And yet, despite that $1 billion, No basic ballot language guaranteeing that the South Boulder Rec Center will keep its amenities has been included. That is unreasonable. We, the people, the community, your constituents, are not asking for anything we don't already have. We just want, in exchange for a $1 billion debt obligation, enforceable ballot language ensuring that, at a minimum, SBRC will keep the amenities we already have. If you guys choose not to include this reasonable ballot language protecting our amenities, then we will tenaciously campaign against this bond. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Erika Dahl, Robin McClurge-George, and Emily Reynolds.

Hi, Erika Dahl. Long, let's see, longtime resident, as in born and raised here, went to CU Boulder. I own a store on Pearl Street I've had for 19 years, and I'm also on the Downtown Management Commission And for the record, I did vote in favor of adding this to the ballot. I was going to take off this Casa Bonita sweatshirt, but then I realized what an excellent analogy. Casa Bonita is a great example of something that was once thriving and was, you know, a gem. And then with lack of money and investment in it, then it just kind of went to the wayside until Matt Stone and Trey Parker came around. So unless they are here to save downtown Boulder, We are going to need a DDA. I'd like to share a little story that a customer shared with me. So a customer comes in, asks me where he should eat tonight that isn't in the downtown area, which kind of caught me by surprise. And I had to ask him, well, can I ask you why you don't want to eat downtown? Is it your sixth night here and you're just tired of everything? And he said, no, I want to eat where you eat. And I said, oh my God, you think you're in Times Square right now. And I had to tell him, no, this is where I've celebrated every monumental thing in my life. This is where people from Boulder come. This is, you're in the heart of Boulder. My mom also owns a store on the hill that she's had for 53 years. And I just really want to point out that if you were from out of town and you landed on the Hill, there is no way that you would ever think that wasn't downtown Boulder. So I think those of us that are from here, we know we, we separate the two, but I think that if that's your first impression of Boulder and I love the Hill with all my heart, but I think we all know that it doesn't receive the love that it should. So I'd like to advocate for the Hill as well. And I think the DDA would be something that would be really beneficial. so that if that's your first point in Boulder, you're starting off on a good foot instead of maybe wondering if you should go to Denver instead. So thank you for your time. And also, I'm on here twice.

OK, we'll take you off the second. All right, now we're going to go to, well, quiet in the audience, please. All right, we got Robin McClurge, George, Emily Reynolds, and then Doug Hamilton on line.

Hello, my name is Robin McClure George. I'm here speaking about the South Boulder Rec Center Remodel or Rebuild. I swim at the East Boulder and South Boulder Rec Centers, and my two sons swam the Fairview High School swim team for four years. And I was a parent volunteer for the team for four years. So I have insight into how important the swim team is to the Fairview kids. And I want to make sure that Fairview kids don't lose the pool that makes participating on the swim team possible for them. So I am here speaking on behalf of the Fairview High School swim team and all swimmers in Boulder. I have attended several city council meetings regarding the South Boulder Rec Center and a meeting about the Rec Center at the George Reynolds Public Library. And I'm really, really frustrated because the exact same conclusions come out of all these meetings, yet somehow every new meeting I attend treats the subject like it is a brand new topic. What we all want is to keep the core amenities at all the rec centers, and a field house is not what the people of Boulder want. We want a real rec center. At South Boulder Rec Center, we want a lap pool, and this is absolutely a number one priority. We want a basketball gym. We want strength training and cardiovascular facilities. We're just asking to keep what we already have. We don't need anything fancy. We just want functional facilities. It is time for the South Boulder Rec Center to stop being ignored and pushed to the back corner. We need to prioritize the rec centers. Somehow, Louisville and Lafayette funded ballot measures for remodels and expansions of their rec centers. But absurdly, here we are in Boulder actually talking about closing down one of our rec centers. We need to make sure that if new money is raised, it is appropriated well. City Council, I'm asking you to listen to your constituents and do the right thing. Please add binding language to the bond measure for the South Boulder Rec Center to keep its existing features in a remodel or rebuild. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Emily Reynolds and then Doug Hamilton and Aiden Reid online.

Good evening, Council. At our lowest fiscal point in years, DDA would allow 2,200 business owners to reap all sales tax increases for 30 years. With 85,000 Sundancers visiting, there will be stunning sales tax increases, all of which will be diverted from basic city services people actually voted for, schools, fire mitigation, library, transportation, open parks and delivered exclusively to business interests. You're really okay with that? I urge you not to put that on the ballot. Another big problem is the lack of financial management. So the city now needs a $650 million tax bailout in the recreation and safety bond. Leaders already said they won't do anything about the South Boulder Rec Center without this. Where did the $50 million fund dedicated for this go? And sorry. And deviously tucked into this one is a massive property tax increase of $32 million per year. It's temporary, but if it lasts as long as the initial phase of DDA, Boulder will collect almost $1 billion from property owners over that period of time. This is not okay. Please do not put that on the ballot. Boulder's budget is a half a billion dollars. Who's in charge? Why no city auditor? Why no fiscal responsibility? Why has nothing happened over the last decade? Perhaps it's time for some fresh faces in city leadership. How about cutting all extraneous spending? How about no more expensive consultants? How about spending within your means according to what your constituents want? Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Doug Hamilton, Aiden Reed, and Jackie Richardson online.

All right. Can you hear me?

Yes.

All right. Thank you. I'm going to give you the one non-controversial measure that you can put on the ballot tonight, and that is the excise tax on vacant homes. Vacant homes are for living in, and neighborhoods are more vibrant when people are living in the homes in those neighborhoods, and not holding investment vehicles for corporations or hedge funds. So as the organizer of the ballot measure that we removed from the ballot earlier this year, we would implore you, 64% of Boulderites would vote for it, and you have a $6 million gap in your budget that could be filled with a tax on second homes. So I would implore you, please put the vacant homes ballot measure on the ballot and and do something that everyone in Boulder can agree on and tax these empty homes. Thanks a lot. Bye.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Aiden Reed, Jackie Richardson, and Lynn Siegel online.

Mayor, I do not see Aiden online tonight.

Let's go to Jackie Richardson then.

Evening, City Council. Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Sorry, while I get my phone organized here. So my name is Jackie Richardson, and I'm here tonight to urge you to place the residential vacancy tax on this year's ballot. This measure pulled the highest of all the proposed measures this year. In a head-to-head comparison, more than half of surveyed residents said they would vote for it, much higher than any of the other proposed measures. Furthermore, 70% said they're more likely to vote yes, knowing the tax applies only to second and third homes in Boulder. If you only choose to put one measure on the ballot this year, make it this one. It's a win for city council and a win for city residents. Boulder is facing a housing crisis that affects nearly everyone who lives and works here. Teachers, service workers, young families, grad students, and even longtime residents are struggling to find housing they can afford. At the same time, their homes sitting empty for most or all of the year, not because they're uninhabitable, but because they're being treated as investment assets instead of places for people to live. Housing is a basic human need. When homes remain vacant in the middle of a housing shortage, it drives up prices, reduces neighborhood vitality, and weakens the social fabric of our city. A vacancy tax is a practical, proven tool to encourage property owners to either rent out unused homes or contribute financially to solving the housing shortage that their vacancies help worsen. Importantly, this is not about punishing people with legitimate temporary absences or hardships. Exemptions can and should protect those situations. This is about discouraging long-term speculative vacancies in a city where housing is desperately needed. Cities around the world have shown that vacancy taxes can help return homes to the market and generate revenue for affordable housing programs. Boulder has an opportunity to lead with a policy that reflects our values, sustainability, community, and fairness. Please give voters the opportunity to decide this issue. They've already demonstrated that they're very likely to support the vacancy tax. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Lynn Siegel, then Yvonne Castillo and Mark Heinrichs in person.

Mayor, I do not see Lynn online.

All right. So Yvonne Castillo, you're up next.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

My name is Yvonne Castillo.

I'm a South Boulder resident and a member of the Parks and Rec Advisory Board. Tonight I'm speaking only in my personal capacity, but I'm here to make one request that you include in the ballot measure. So please include a clear commitment that if South Boulder Rec Center is demolished and rebuilt, it will be rebuilt with the core amenities our community depends on. I'm not asking for special treatment. I am asking you to recognize that this project is different. Most of the projects in this bond are going to renovate or improve existing facilities. South Boulder Rec Center is different because you're proposing to tear it down. And once it's gone, the programming like the lap pool, the gym, the fitness spaces, and the other amenities are gone too, unless this council commits to replacing them. That's why this has become a question of public trust. You're asking voters to authorize $400 million in borrowing for projects that will ultimately cost much more over time to repay. That's a significant public investment, and that's why I believe it's reasonable for voters to ask for an equally clear commitment about what that investment will deliver. Good public investment works like good agreements. Both sides make clear commitments. On the one hand, voters are being asked to make theirs. And on the other, we're simply asking the city to make its commitment just as clear. If your intent is to rebuild South Boulder Rec Center with those core amenities, then please put that commitment in the ballot language. If you do, I believe you'll find that many of us won't just be voting for the measure. We're going to be knocking on doors. We're going to be canvassing the community. We're going to be talking with our neighbors. We're going to be encouraging others to vote for this. And the reason we'll be doing that is because we'll know we're asking people to vote for exactly what the ballot promises. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Mark Heinrichs, Evan Fryrich, and Annie Dornbusch.

Hello. My name is Mark Heinrichs. I'm a dissent on the Hill. My brother and I have owned and operated the sink for 34 years, the same front door on the same street for over three decades. We also ran West Finland's brewing company on Pearl Street for nine years, and I have served on the boards of downtown Boulder, Boulder Chamber, and Visit Boulder. I want to offer you a perspective based on the Hill's history. Over the years, we've witnessed firsthand what a general improvement district can and cannot do. Simply put, the GID model on the Hill does not work. It is locked in the past and structurally unable to meet the needs of today's consumer economy. It is literally untenable to raise taxes enough under GID on the Hill to fund meaningful, lasting change. For decades, community efforts to improve the Hill have flamed out for a simple reason. There is little funding, no dedicated structure to manifest improvements, and no sustainable way forward. The DDA provides the tool we've been missing. Through tax increment financing, a DDA gives us the flexibility to finance improvements and leverage private investment in ways our current structure cannot. It will grow tax revenue for everyone. With a seamless, vibrant guest experience stretching along Broadway from the Hill to Pearl Street, a DDA will keep our local business core healthy, boost citywide sales tax, and ensure Boulder remains a top destination for visiting. And through its increase in tax revenue, the Hill will become a net contributor to the city. The DDA positions us to solve a problem that has persisted for generations. The DDA is a proven flexible model that will help lift all of Boulder. It will make our city a better place to live, work, and visit, a goal I know we all share. Something has to change, so the question is, if not a DDA, then what? Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Evan Fryrick, Annie Dornbush, and Margaret LeCompte.

Good evening, Council. My name is Evan Fryrush. I live just a block or two from here. And I go down the Pearl Street Mall just about every morning. I go out for coffee in one of our beautiful vacant buildings downtown. So like the other local residents, I feel the pulse of downtown. And the reason why downtown is so empty is because the buildings are empty. That is really the problem. And the reason why those buildings are empty has to do mostly with the way they were purchased. They're all locked into highly restrictive loan agreements, lease agreements, all those kinds of things. And nothing, your proposal with the DDA, changes that. Who do you think is going to get to vote on the DDA? I want to introduce the city to essentially the surrogate city council for downtown. It is Unico, who owns blocks of downtown. It is WW Reynolds. It is Steven Tebow at Tebow Properties. It's Morgan Creek Ventures. And it's Nichols Partnership. Those are the new city council. when it comes to finances in the downtown area. I don't know why you think so little of yourself in terms of tackling the problems downtown. I think you've done an excellent job with our city by and large. I do. I love living downtown. But I don't think that this is a solution because it doesn't tackle the problem of how are you going to fill those buildings. Some of them may need to be CONVERTED TO RESIDENCES. THERE ARE NO TOOLS THAT YOU DON'T HAVE THAT THE DDA, YOU'RE GIVING TO THE DDA ESSENTIALLY. YOU MENTIONED THE DDA FOR DOWNTOWN DENVER. SORRY. YOUR TIME IS UP. THANK YOU. THANK YOU FOR MY TIME.

ALL RIGHT. NOW WE'RE GOING TO GO TO ANNIE DORNBUSH, THEN MARGARET LACOMTE AND CHRISTINE BRESKEL.

GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL AND CITY STAFF MEMBERS. My name is Annie Dornbusch. While all the measures tonight matter, and thank you for your patience listening to all of us, I'm here specifically regarding the general obligation bond for community recreation, public safety, and capital projects. For years, residents have clearly expressed their desire for the Southwater Rec Center to remain open with its core amenities. A few months ago, my 12-year-old son skipped his own swim practice to stand right here and share what the Rec Center means to him. He asked one main question. that went unanswered that night. Who will make the decision regarding the South Boulder Rec Center? I wanted to tell them, we do. The people of Boulder, through the city council, we elect to represent us. But as this bond measure is currently written, it's dangerously vague. It leaves taxpayers with no guarantee of how their money will be spent. And it makes our voices feel less important. Having worked in nonprofits and education, I understand staff wanting budgetary flexibility. But when a nonprofit asks a donor for funding, that donor gets a clear binding agreement on how their money will be spent. You're asking Boulder residents to part with their hard-earned money, and we deserve that same accountability. We need binding ballot language. I've spent the last year speaking with community members about our rec centers, and frankly, there's a deep mistrust of city leadership right now. You're aware of this, as evidenced by your own recent letters to the editors. Making this ballot language specific is a direct way to show the community you are listening and to begin rebuilding that trust. We never asked for a new rec center. We just wanted our existing one maintained, functioning, and with its core amenities. Under this vague language, a new rec center might eventually get built, if there's money left over. Or, much like the border reservoir restaurant, the funds could be spent in ways residents never wanted, leading to further conflict. I want to vote for this tax increase. I believe in the good it can do, and I desperately want to show my son that advocacy works, that his city council listens.

Thank you. Thank you. Now, Margaret LeCompte, Christine Breskell, and Noah Maruska.

Good evening. I oppose the creation of a downtown development authority. Downtown really does need help, but city council already has all the authority needed to carry out everything the DDA would do. Therefore, council doesn't need to outsource its responsibility for reviving downtown to an unelected, unrepresentative DDA. Council members should go back to its 2021 facilities master plan. That would have accomplished much of what the DDA proposes. Except that since then, despite incurring $100 million in debt to execute it, council has left that master plan underfunded, unfunded, its project incomplete, or just not done. And this is not fiscal responsibility. Council must stop ignoring what taxpayers clearly want. The city's own hired pollster just showed that only 31% of Boulderites really support a DDA. In fact, Boulder voters are furious that the DDA would divert millions of their tax money from already long ago approved and crucial programs, open space, parks and rec, arts, culture, and heritage, and transportation in order to rebuild downtown. We voters did not agree to this. The DDA imposes taxation without representation, and it encourages further abdication of responsibility by the city council. Finally, reviving downtown is city council's job. Council should stop outsourcing its responsibility to unelected boards, consulting companies, or oblivion. We want council to start listening to citizens and do the job it was elected to do. That means reading their study packets, developing evidence-based plans, and executing them. In a word, governing. This job begins, but not with approving the DDA and its increases in the city DEMOCRATIC PARTNERSHIP.

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Thank you. Now we'll go to Noah Maruska, Frank Reinhart, and Mary Gorman.

Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council, city staff, thank you for this time to speak. My name is Noah Maruska, and I just wanted to speak in favor of the vacancy tax measure. I have a colleague who is a Colorado native, went to CU, cannot say enough about CU, loves it here in Boulder, works here in Boulder. And before moving to Denver, lived in Broomfield. Did not live in Boulder after he graduated. My sister transferred from a school on the East Coast to CU as well. Loved it here. And after graduating, immediately left Boulder. I moved here from the East Coast about two years ago. And when I made it out here, I got a job here in Boulder. And I would drive about an hour to get to that job. And I decided I want to live closer. When I looked at the prices of housing in Boulder, it was just outrageous. And I hear so many stories of people, especially people that I work with who don't live in Boulder. They live in the surrounding communities just like myself. And I think that this measure is a start to helping to bring down prices to a reasonable place. So I would just ask that you consider putting that on the ballot. Thank you.

Thank you. Now I'll go to Frank Reinhart, Mary Gorman, and Suzanne Bott. Is Frank here? All right, let's go to Mary Gorman.

Hello to you all. My name is Mary Gorman. I am a lifelong swimmer and a longtime Boulder resident, and I'm currently retired. I have seen both of the City of Boulder's indoor and outdoor pools refurbished and rebuilt over many decades. It is confounding that the basic upkeep of these facilities is lacking budgeted funds. Year after year, the outdoor pool operating hours are reduced during August and September months, while more record-breaking temperatures soar over 90 degrees for more days every year. It is frustrating to have the outdoor pools shut down when the temperatures are so hot, and once September is gone, there will only be two indoor pools available. User fees are obviously reduced when the pools or rec centers are not open. You can't earn money when the doors are shut. I will support the tentative November 26 bond ballot if South Boulder rec center refurbishing rebuilding plans are guaranteed to have all of the current amenities restored at the nearest possible date and spruce pool remains open in July, 7AM to 7PM and Scott carpenter remains open through September every year. I am objecting to any new taxation for the proposed downtown development plans. We need to prioritize repairs of our current facilities. Boulder citizens don't want taxes increased without reliable recreation along with basic fire and safety services. In the big picture, we're all wanting the rec center facilities to be open and operational more often. Creative, transparent implementations and well-being essentials are needed to prevent Boulder from sinking into a community depression. Thanks for your efforts to improve life in Boulder for all.

Thank you. Now we have Suzanne Bott and then online Bev Baker and Alejandra Beatty.

My name is Suzanne Bott. I'm here as an advocate and a frequent user of our open spaces and as a South Boulder resident who's concerned about the future of our rec centers. I oppose the DDA because it will strip future revenue increases from the voter approved dedicated tax funds for open space and for parks, as well as from other vital city services. I feel like we just had this conversation a few months ago. over the proposed over the public realm fund in which residents spoke loudly and clearly that they don't want funding shifts from the dedicated sources for which we chose to tax ourselves, especially open spaces and parks and rec. That we're here again discussing another way to shortchange these funds really makes me feel like our voices are not being heard or valued. Nobody questions that our downtown is in need of help, but it shouldn't override other critical needs of our city, such as maintenance and protection of our open spaces, funds for our crumbling rec centers and infrastructure, a topic that's been a high priority for council, or other crucial services such as schools, libraries, wildfire protection, and so much more. nor should the votes of a select number of downtown business owners override the will of the rest of the city's citizens who will have no vote on this matter. This is a complex issue, and I feel it's being rushed through before Sundance without adequate education or citizen support. Council has authority to make improvements to our downtown without siphoning money from all other of the city's critical needs and from the dedicated funds for which we have chosen by our votes to support. Please shelve this proposal, and I thank you for the time to give my opinions. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we're going to go online to Bev Baker, Alejandra Beatty, and Rachel Peterson.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Good evening, Council. This is Bev Baker. I'm speaking on behalf of the Boulder County Audubon Society about Ordinance 8763. We submitted written comments, so I'll be brief. We recognize that Boulder is facing budget challenges like every other level of government these days. However, we do not support any proposal for a DDA that would include using current or future dedicated open space funds for any purpose other than open space for any length of time. We do support council honoring the intentions of voters over decades of multiple votes, approving sales taxes dedicated to open space, and complying with voter-approved charter amendments providing long-term protection of our irreplaceable open space. Thank you for your time this evening.

Thank you. Now we have Alejandra Beatty, Rachel Peterson, and Carla Colleen.

Alejandro, your mic is open if you'd like to speak.

All right, Alejandro, are you able to speak? All right, why don't we come back to her in a minute after we go through the other virtual participants, which are next are then Rachel Peterson, please.

Good evening. Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Rachel Peterson. I'm a proud Boulder resident, and I care deeply about the future of our city. Pearl Street and downtown is the heart of our community, and I absolutely support investing in its long-term success. However, I respectfully ask you to vote no on referring the Downtown Development Authority to the ballot in its current form. This isn't a vote against downtown. It's a vote for taking the time to get this investment strategy right. The proposal asks Boulder to create a financing structure that could last up to 70 years, yet we still haven't clearly answered three fundamental questions. First, downtown clearly faces real challenges, but recognizing a problem is different from demonstrating that a DDA is the right tool to solve it. This proposal creates one of the city's largest long-term financing tools without the level of project specificity or fiscal guardrails that many residents would reasonably expect before redirecting decades of tax growth. Traditional tax increment financing is typically tied to specific redevelopment projects with defined public benefits, usually in underinvested and unactivated sections of the town. Here, there is no comparable implementation plan that explains why tax increment financing and a DDA is the appropriate tool. Second, Boulder is already making difficult budget choices. Every future dollar of tax increment committed to this DDA is a dollar unavailable to help address the very budget pressures this council continues to confront, from wildfire resilience and recreation to housing and other essential services. I hope council first considers whether existing tools can be expanded or better utilized. Finally, this decision deserves broader public participation. Fewer than 2,500 eligible voters would decide on a financing mechanism whose impacts extend well beyond downtown. A proposal with fiscal consequences measured in decades should reflect broader community input. Downtown deserves thoughtful investment. I respectfully ask you to vote no tonight and bring back a more focused proposal that has earned broader public trust. Thank you.

Thanks. Now we'll go to Carla Colleen, Tenzi Abietze, and then we'll check again on Lynn Siegel and Aiden Reed.

Hi, everyone. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, my name is Carla Colleen. I am the president of the Latino Chamber and I am proud to support the downtown Boulder District and its commitment to creating a downtown where inclusion, diversity, and belonging are reflected, not only in our words, but in our actions. Through my work with the Latino community and other underserved communities, I continue to see the need for greater access to economic opportunities, stronger representation, culturally responsive resources, and intentional pathways for entrepreneurs and community members to participate in spaces where they have historically been underrepresented. A thriving downtown should reflect the diversity of the entire community when we create meaningful opportunities for people from different backgrounds to start businesses, build connections, share their culture, and feel that they belong. We strengthen both our community and our local economy. I support the continued efforts to make downtown Boulder a place where everyone has the opportunity to be seen, welcomed, represented, and successful. And as a business owner, I wouldn't take the opportunity to have a business in downtown Boulder if there wasn't a downtown district authority. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Tenzi Abietzi and then Lynn Siegel and Aidan Radin.

Good evening. My name is Tenzia Biazzi and I appreciate the time given here to speak tonight. I just wanted to say a few words regarding the proposed tax increases and the DDA. I just feel like city council doesn't understand that there has been a complete breakdown of trust. I've lived in Boulder for 15 years and I've approved every single tax increase that has been asked for over that period of time. Now that there's this $400 million gap and now recently there's this downtown authority measure, where you want to siphon even more money away from allocated resources? You're going to have a lot of people asking questions and wondering where all of our money went. I think we need an independent audit, a task force to determine where all that money was spent. Who is responsible for this failure? Is it the city manager? Then she needs to be fired. And if you can't hold each other accountable because you're all our friends, then I think it's time for a change in leadership. I was listening to an interview with Mamdani, the New York City mayor who inherited a 12 billion deficit. And this is what he said. I've talked about wanting city government to be remade into the image of a struggling New Yorker. One aspect of it is, is that we be as careful with our money as working New Yorkers are with theirs. One of the many reasons for that is that this is their money. This is the attitude I want our mayor and city council to have about the money we give them to spend. McDonough created chief savings officers across departments. We need an independent auditor and we need a chief savings officer. And I also believe that the city council membership should be a full-time paid position so that they have the time to fully understand all the issues. New York City is obviously a much larger and more complex city to run. So if they can be fiscally conservative, so can we. Thank you.

Thanks. Now we're going to go to Lynn Siegel.

Yeah, Lynn Siegel. Yeah, on 8758, the 400 million bucks or whatever it is, South Boulder, North Boulder, and the West Senior Center, we need South Boulder, North Boulder, West Senior Center, and East Senior Center. And the West is the most important one because it's central. And it can't, there's no way it's going to fit into the North Boulder Rec Center. There's the apartments on one side, unless we own some more buildings there. But this is a big scam. It's 80 buildings that Bobby Yates has found are, you know, like in deferred maintenance. And so we can unload them and bail ourselves out of the debt. And Nuri has been working on the last two weeks for our budget, you know, because it's in crisis. And you should listen like the last person with Mondami. You know, yeah, we can have a vacancy tax at $87.59. That's okay. $87.61 firefighters, that's good. Great. But the debt limit going up, no way. No way. This is like a tactical scam on the voters and the taxpayers to create this fake money, which is the mechanism of the money. And the DDA is not good. It's not going to improve. The sales tax revenue is going to go down anyway, because all the people outside of the district are the ones who have to come in and pay the sales taxes. And the problem is we have a national emergency of this president and this economy, and we need to tighten our belts. And the city has proven that they don't tighten their belts. They just imagine more money and these tax interim... tax TIF funding schemes. As far as the early childhood, that's another thing of $400, $600 a year for that. And the city bought me a retrofit for $55,000 that I'm not even using and that now I'm burdened with having to get rid of it.

Thank you for your testimony. Is Aiden Reed online yet? Do we see him?

I do not see aid and read online.

Okay. Well, we'll check again later potentially. All right. So now our next three in person are Tammy door, Andrew Shoemaker and Casey Easton. Turn the, turn the. There you go.

OK. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I'm Tammy Dorr, serving as CEO of the Downtown Boulder Partnership. This is a defining moment for Boulder. For years, the community has created thoughtful plans through extensive public process. These plans were used in the evaluation of a DDA plan of development. But what has been missing is a tool to turn those plans into reality. Tonight, we can begin to change that. A DDA is not an experiment. It is a proven economic development model used successfully across Colorado. It's been used to catalyze investment, leverage private capital, and transform downtowns. You have received all of that information around success stories with DDAs, so I won't reiterate that. But downtown should be the economic engine of Boulder. Instead, its contribution is eroding. Inflation-adjusted sales tax has declined over the last six years. Offense vacancies continue to grow. This vote is not an approval of a final plan. scarcity mindset that causes us to fight over the remains of decreasing tax revenues is not effective. We must work together to grow the overall tax base. This alternative will help us grow it. Tonight is an opportunity to move this forward. Invest in downtown, invest in the hill, create the vibrant city center that attracts investment, creates opportunity, strengthens city finances, and benefits all of our residents. The status quo is an eroding downtown. A DDA is the catalyst to build the downtown and the Boulder that residents deserve and that serve as the economic engine that it should be. This is a pivotal moment. The work's been done to get us here. The opportunity is now. I urge you to vote yes for the future of our downtown and for the future of our city. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we have Andrew Shoemaker, then Casey Easton and Deborah Moulton.

Mayor Brockett and members of Council, my name is Andrew Shoemaker. I reside in the Hill area. I own businesses in the proposed DDA. I've served on City Council, the Planning Board, UKMC, and the Downtown Boulder Partnership Board, and I support the DDA. I've been working on Hill revitalization for nearly 15 years, and it's been a two-pronged approach. One is to bring in the anchor tenants that we now have, the two hotels. The second, though, is to create a Hill with a clean and safe connection to downtown for residents and tourists, and provide a sustainable and functioning funding mechanism for programming and maintenance. Currently, the UGID funding model is antiquated and inadequate. Years of neglect have left the core of the hill in a dismal state, yet it's the first thing tourists see when they come through the limelight of the Moxie Hotel now. The DDA allows us to address these issues by combining the hill and downtown funding and governance. But it's not just the hill. The downtown needs the DDA as well. You've seen the data. On the path we are on, we're going to be left with chain stores and empty storefronts. We want to change that. It's an existential threat to Boulder's brand and the historical engine that has generated revenues. Some who have opposed the DDA have complained that beloved institutions like OpenSpace would have to share some portion of the revenues that the revitalized downtown generates. I cherish these institutions as well, but they've been misled. And it's John Thayer referred to it in an article, a smokescreen. Because none of these institutions are saying they're against this. And they've not identified one program that would be effective negatively or that it's an existential threat to those organizations. No matter how much smoke people put in the air, You can still see central Boulder is drowning. And the state has given you a tool, a lifeline. And I urge you not to withhold from the hill and from the downtown the same lifeline, the same opportunity that so many other cities in Colorado have been allowed to do.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

All right. Now we'll go to Casey Easton, Deborah Malden, and Yvonne Bennett.

Hello.

Hi. Thanks for being here and having us and the opportunity for all of us to talk. First of all, I'm so glad I live here. I've lived here since 1999, and we are all lucky, no matter what side of anything we're on, that we live in such a beautiful place. I'm here in support of the DDA. I've had a business downtown since 2014, and I have seen a little bit of crumbling in the downtown. One thing I think everybody here, no matter what side they're on, can agree with is that we need help downtown. And there's a lot of problems being talked about, but not a lot of solutions. And I think the DDA can be that solution. You know, during COVID, obviously everybody's businesses took a hit. Mine took a big hit. And there was a time where I was all over the place. I was trying to plug these holes. I was like, which way do I go? And how do I pivot? And the one thing I realized is that I had to take the heart of my business and pour everything into that. because once that was stable and once I had that stable foundation, then everything else was going to start to grow and I could hire more people and I could pay more, pay more, and I could open another location. So the reason I'm saying that is because I didn't cut off all the arteries and make my business fail because I put everything into the heart of the main part of my business. And I feel like that's what the DDA would do is that we would get everything back to the heart of downtown and then help kind of spread the wealth a little bit throughout it. So that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Deborah Malden and then Yvonne Bennett and Christopher Shears.

Hi, I'm Deborah Malden, Arts Liaison at the Boulder Chamber and Board Chair of Create Boulder. Tonight I'm speaking on behalf of Create Boulder to urge council to refer the proposed DDA to the ballot. Boulder's arts community has a real stake in your decision. The arts blueprint was developed with input from nearly 2,000 community members. Both the blueprint and the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan recognize arts and culture as essential civic infrastructure that supports economic and community vitality and helps create vibrant, welcoming places. The Arts Blueprint specifically identifies tax increment financing and district-based tools like DDAs as ways to advance multiple community goals. A DDA offers Boulder a sustained way to invest in downtown vitality, public spaces, and cultural infrastructure. It could also deepen efforts to develop the civic area, a major city priority, and deepen connections between downtown, the Hill, and CU. The key now is to put the tools in place to translate these plans into tangible results. Arts and culture are part of Boulder's small business economy. Artists, creative businesses, and arts organizations employ people, purchase local goods and services, and draw customers to nearby businesses. They also help make public spaces more active and inviting and reinforce Boulder's identity as a creative community. Across Colorado, DDAs are investing in arts, public space improvements, and cultural infrastructure to strengthen downtime vitality. Boulder needs to keep pace. This is an opportunity to put the city's plans into action. Thank you.

Thank you. And we're hearing some snaps occasionally, audience. Please no auditory things. If you want to show support, you can use jazz hands. We have Yvonne Bennett, followed by Christopher Shears and Chin Liu.

Good evening mayor and council members my name is Yvonne Bennett and I am part of the reimagined South Boulder Rec Center advocacy group. For the past few years the South Boulder community has shown up. We've attended meetings and sent an enormous amount of emails as you know. Organized our neighbors and collected more than 4,000 petition signatures asking for one simple thing. Protect the South Boulder Recreation Center's core amenities. We elected you to listen to your community and advocate for the people you represent. Yet the ballot language before you tonight does not reflect what thousands of residents have consistently asked for. It is not binding, it does not guarantee the amenities we've spent years fighting to preserve, and it leaves too much open to future interpretation, especially since Boulder Parks and Recreation has hired Perkins and Well, an architecture firm, to develop a proposal for a 70,000 square foot field house in our neighborhood. We want to support this bond because we believe in investing in Boulder. But we cannot ask our neighbors or ourselves to approve a blank check. We cannot support a ballot measure that doesn't tell voters exactly what they're paying for or legally guarantee the amenities this community has fought so hard to protect. If the city truly intends to preserve South Boulder's core amenities, then it should have zero hesitation putting that commitment into the ballot language. So I have one simple question. If you want this ballot measure to earn the support of the community, why not include the guarantees that more than 4,000 residents have been asking for? Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Christopher Shears, Chin Liu, and Cheryl Liguori.

Good evening, Mayor and members of Council. I am an architect, a planner, and an urbanist. And the focus of my work and my company's work has been downtowns locally. regionally and nationally. Locally, I've had the opportunity to lead design efforts in downtown Boulder and University Hill. The 15th and Pearl parking structure years ago, a city project, Pearl West and the new Marriott Moxie Hotel on University Hill. Through these projects, I've become aware of the issues associated with our downtown and the hill. Although I live in Boulder, My company has been in lower downtown Denver for 30 years, a stone's throw from Denver Union Station. I've experienced the remarkable success of the DDA that enabled the station and environs to be repurposed through a public-private partnership. The residual benefits to downtown and the city have been enormous. As a board member of the Downtown Denver Partnership, I am knowledgeable of the recent expansion of the DDA, to include all of downtown Denver. Denver is experiencing the same post-pandemic issues as Boulder. Already, the expansion of the DDA is having a measurable positive impact on the vitality of downtown. The strongest policy argument for putting the DDA authority on the ballot this November is not necessarily an argument for voting yes on it. Rather, it is an argument for those immediately affected that they should have an opportunity to decide whether this long-term financing tool is appropriate for downtown, the Hill, and the greater Boulder community. I urge you to place this measure on the November ballot. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Chin Liu, Chair Liguori, and Bill Shrum.

Good evening mayors and council members. My name is Ching Liu. My wife and I are the owners of Kucha House of Tea on Pearl Street. Twenty years ago, we made a decision to open our business in downtown. We weren't just opening a tea shop. We were investing our futures and our savings in this community. In the early years, My wife and I worked every day ourselves. We opened the doors, we swept the sidewalks, and we greeted every customer. Slowly, we built our business one company at a time. Downtown Boulder gave us that opportunity. For that, I will always be grateful. Today, after 20 years, I still believe in Downtown Boulder. I have seen the best of downtown Boulder, the four sidewalks, thriving local business, and people coming to enjoy everything that make downtown Boulder unique. But I also have seen the challenges of recent years. Like many small business owners, I have watched business close, storefront become vacant, the retail just become ever more difficult. But I don't believe in The answer is to do less. I believe that we should invest wisely and continuously. That's why I support Downtown Development Authority. DDA will help us to improve public space, accessibility, safety, events and bring all the experience and bring people to downtown and help to support the local business. 20 years ago, my wife and I made a decision to invest our future in this community. So today, I'm asking you to make the same choice, to invest in this downtown that supports local communities. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to Cheryl Liguori, Bill Schrum, and then Mike Mills online.

Hi. Thank you.

My name is Cheryl Liguori. I'm with the Fox Theater on University Hill, the Boulder Theater. downtown. I served on the University Hill Commission for about nine years and I'm currently serving on the Boulder Chamber Board. I'm here to request that tonight Council provide the stakeholders the possibility to vote on the DDA for the benefit of the Hill and downtown Boulder and the greater Boulder community. I'm a stakeholder who's operated businesses for over 30 years here. And during that time, over the past 10 years more specifically, we've been exploring the best tools to address and fund long-term necessary district improvements, especially on University Hill. Working together, we saw the tangible result and the positive impact with the opening of the Moxie Hotel. which took a decade to plan and get there. This wasn't possible without Council's belief in the project and the support. And I request one more lift on behalf of the Hill and downtown, because I believe the EDA can be a powerful tool for Boulder as it has been for Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Denver, and other thriving communities together. Stakeholders can plan effectively and responsibly to keep Boulder as a world-class city. Thank you, and we'd appreciate having a voice this November.

Thank you. Now I'll go to Bill Schrum and then Mike Mills and Carol Joplin-Jack online.

All right. Good evening, Council. My name is Bill Schrum. I live in Martin Acres. I chair the Boulder Urban Renewal Authority. and I'm the Director of Operations for Downtown Colorado Inc., which is a nonprofit that has helped Colorado communities with URAs, DDAs, and BIDs for 44 years. I'm not speaking for either of those tonight. I'm just expressing my personal opinion as a really well-informed resident. I'm asking you to refer the DDA measure to the ballot and let the district electors decide. Personally, I opened a coffee shop on University Hill in 2005, and I've started several businesses there and chaired the UDID commission for six years. I've also been the assistant town manager in Eagle where we formed a DDA, and I've helped communities statewide form DDAs since then. DDAs are the one tool in the state statute built for deterring blighting conditions rather than remediating it. That's why it's exactly the right tool for University Hill and downtown. No Colorado community has adopted a DDA off of a template. The statute requires a public board to draft bylaws and a plan of development and requires the council to adopt them. This is where the tool gets tailored to Boulder's conditions. Much of the opposition I hear features misinformation or grievances using the DDA as a proxy. What stands out here and has been named directly is the distrust of government. And where there's distrust, the logic does not land. So the formation process matters as much as the vote. I urge you to be transparent with the public beyond the district boundaries. The questions about the amount of sales tax share back are legitimate and deserve policies that can resolve these questions with transparency and predictability. There are several examples of how Colorado DDAs have done that, and you can draw on those during your formation efforts. Thank you for this consideration.

Thank you.

Now we're going to go online to Mike Mills, Carol Joplin-Jack, and Jadri Wood.

Good evening, Council. My name is Mike Mills. I'm a member of the Transportation Advisory Board. I'm speaking as a Boulder resident tonight. I'm asking you not to refer the DDA to the ballot tonight. Downtown Boulder isn't like Fort Collins or Longmont where a DDA helped transform areas with genuine, well-defined investment needs. Boulder's downtown is already a great place, but nobody backing the DDA has laid out a specific plan for how the money would actually be spent. So the pitch amounts to fund it first, figure out the plan later, which is a hard ask when the city's own budget is already under pressure. Staff has confirmed there is no concrete plan for converting roughly 40% office vacancy into something else. This is a hypothetical cost. The sales tax TIF baseline is set in nominal dollars with no inflation adjustment. Over 30 years, inflation alone cuts the real value the city retains by more than half. This applies to all city sales tax, including those that we voted to dedicate to open space and transportation. Property tax TIF captured by the DDA is a real loss of future revenue to the Boulder Valley School District and Library District, both of which depend on that growth and were not consulted in the development of this proposed DDA until about a month ago. I'm concerned about a DDA board and who would actually serve. Steve Thibault already pushed back on the redevelopment of Broadway and Spruce lot because it would compete with Zone Hotel. A board appointed to represent this district could easily end up working for a handful of large property owners like him rather than the city as a whole. There are safer tools that could help, allowing more housing downtown to rebuild the customer base. simplifying permitting in the historic district, raising floor area ratio limits so owners can actually add housing above existing buildings, undoing the one-way street loop. Thanks.

Thank you. Now we've got Carol Joplin-Jack, Jadri Wood, and Daryl Monley.

Hi, this is CJ Joplin-Jack, and I live in Gun Barrel. I am 72 years old and partially disabled. I am speaking in support of keeping the Spruce Pool open now and into the future. Spruce is not just a swimming pool. It is a sanctuary and a community gathering place. It has a unique, peaceful ambiance and is the only public outdoor pool in Boulder that caters to senior and disabled swimmers, as well as families with small children. In stark contrast, Skark Carpenter is like a water park. It is very noisy, crowded, and filled with highly competitive swimmers, and teenagers tend to be rude. Parking there is next to impossible. I have been enjoying Spruce since I moved to Boulder in 1997. I have many fond memories of swimming there with my late husband and grandchildren. One particular memory stands out. My husband was killed in an accident in June 2010. As you might expect, I could not sleep at all that night. The next morning, I asked myself where I could go to find some solace I so desperately needed. I realized the one place I wanted to go was the spruce pool. I do hope my story will convince you what a special place spruce is. I have no doubt many others have stories similar to mine. The spruce pool truly is a sanctuary and simply must be preserved. Thank you.

Thank you, CJ. Next, we have Jadri Wood. And I'm sorry if I am mispronouncing that. Virtually.

You got it. Thank you. Good evening, Boulder City Council members. My name is Jadri Wood, and I'm the Government Affairs Coordinator for the Colorado Restaurant Association, testifying today to encourage you to refer the proposed DDA to the ballot. The CRA has nearly 5,000 members across the state, and our industry depends on vibrant downtowns. Restaurants succeed when downtowns are places where people want to shop, work, and spend their time. In other words, success for the hospitality industry does not happen in isolation. When commercial corridors struggle, restaurants are some of the first businesses to suffer the negative effects. Over the past several years, Boulder has dealt with declining commercial activity, increasing vacancies, and growing economic pressures. These compound with what restaurant operators contend with every day. Fewer customers, higher operating costs, and a more difficult business environment, just to name a few. This is one way in which you can support local small businesses. This form of long-term reinvestment is imperative for the success of the hospitality industry in Boulder. Tonight's decision is about allowing businesses, retailers, and property owners the opportunity to decide how they want to invest in the future of downtown Boulder. We all have a stake in creating a downtown that is vibrant, welcoming, and economically resilient. We respectfully urge council to refer this measure to the ballot so the conversation may continue with voters. Thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Jadri. Next, we have Dariel Monley. in person and right after that Terry Berndtchich in person. Darielle, are you here? Okay. I don't see Darielle so we will go to Terry.

Okay. Hi there. My name is Terry Berndtchich and I'm a resident in Boulder. $60 million, that's what it will take to save South Boulder Rec Center. Yet the narrative being pitched by members of this council is that if the voters don't approve the $650 million recreation and safety tax measure, they will be to blame for the closure. If you can look voters in the eye and honestly say that you have scrutinized every other possible option and combination of options for finding $60 million to fund SBRC, options like selling buildings, cutting overhead, scaling back construction, and evaluating lease options. If you've done all of that and you still conclude that this $650 million tax measure is the only way forward, then by all means, refer it to the ballot. But if you are saying yes to this measure without having done that work, you are telling the voters something else entirely. You are telling them that it's on them to find solutions to a problem that you haven't fully worked through, that you would rather burden them with the entire cost of this very real problem rather than shoulder any of it yourselves. When this tax measure fails at the ballot box, it will not be because voters didn't care enough. It will be because you didn't do the work first. You asked voters to pay before you'd earned the right to ask. The polling has already told you how the public feels about this ask. I hope you will do the right thing and listen. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Jim Gentile, Montserrat Palacios and Lindsey Shaw.

OK. Well thanks for hearing me tonight council. Appreciate it. My name is Jim Gentile. I live at 9th and Pearl Street. I'm originally from from the Philadelphia area and then moved into the Lehigh Valley and I'm bringing that up because I am bringing an example to you today of something like this that worked as we know we all talked about as you go down through all the office space upstairs is gone you know the retail shrinking we have a problem I think everybody knows that so I'm not going to keep talking about that so I'll go back to this And I'm going to quote Billy Joel, okay? Because this is the city of Allentown. And what he wrote is, I'm living here in Allentown. It's hard to keep a good man down. But it's getting very hard to stay. I'm living here in Allentown. And I watched Allentown living there go downhill. Just like I'm starting to see this. This is the beginning of degradation. And that was in the 80s, 90s. and then a new legislation came along called the NIS, Neighborhood Improvement Zone. The NIS was just like this, all the people that, and I don't blame them, they're not informed, but this is not easy things to understand. So they're hearing things and saying them, but if you really know how to read this legislation, all the things you're hearing about the negatives are not true. So we put the news together. And, uh, I, I, I'm a master builder. So I developed, designed and built, and I was picked by the lead company that went in and said, I'm going to go for this. And we completely turned the city around. There's a New York times article that you can look at it, but it's called, uh, Alan Townsend, a former industrial.

Your time is up, but thank you for your testimony. You can send it to us if you'd like. All right. Now we're going to go to Montserrat Palacios, and then I understand we have Alejandra Beatty and Aidan Reid online now.

Good evening, mayor and council. My name is Montserrat Palacios and I'm here tonight to speak in support of establishing a downtown development authority to support the arts because a thriving downtown and a thriving arts community go hand in hand. The reality is that downtown is facing real challenges. Sales tax revenues are declining. Nearly a third of downtown space sits vacant and foot traffic has dropped. A struggling downtown is not a friend to the arts. In Denver, the Downtown Development Authority recently invested more than $600,000 in large-scale public art installations that activate public spaces and bring people downtown. It also helped fund a permanent creative hub in a formerly vacant commercial space. In Colorado Springs, the DDA led the creation of 51 affordable live-work homes for artists, complete with commissioned murals and public gathering spaces. These investments weren't just about art. They were about economic vitality. Art creates destinations. It gives people a reason to linger, to explore, and to return. Boulder has that foundation. Pearl Street, CU, and The Hill together create a unique cultural corridor with the potential to become one of Colorado's most vibrant destinations. What we're missing is a dedicated organization with the resources to activate that potential through public art, events, temporary installations, and creative partnerships. Boulder has an opportunity. We can create, continue reacting to the challenges facing downtown or we can invest in the tools that will help help us shape that its future the DDA give us the opportunity to be proactive to bring people downtown support local businesses and strengthen the cultural heart of the community. I urge you to give the DDA a chance by placing it on the November ballot that's give our community the chance to choose a more vibrant resilient and creative downtown. Thank you.

Thank you.

now we're going to go to alejandra beattie online and then aiden reed hi hopefully you're able to hear me this time yes oh goodness gracious zoom is always union busting it is absolutely not user error uh alejandra beattie president for boulder area library council uh i want to just give a quick shout out to my uh local local 900 my union brothers and sisters I'm super excited to see collective bargaining get onto the ballot, and I will encourage everybody to, yes, please vote. Let us strengthen our unions and our public sector as fast as we can. Our council was not able to provide an endorsement of DDA because we were not able to evaluate this project until really just recently. We were not approached until last week on a consideration of whether or not we would endorse And at this point, my council is structured democratically and I require a vote. So we were not able to bring it to that. But my council did want to make sure that some concerns that we have get put forward. One of our most obvious questions is, well, where's the worker's voice? Where are we hearing from workers? Not just those who are residents and workers there, but the workers who are actually coming to that space. And how are you making sure that the voice of labor and workers is present and accounted for in these kinds of decision-making processes? Since we were working on protecting wages, we didn't have time to look at this project. But this is also where I want to encourage the council to very closely consider wherever we are using tax money, we should be considering where's the voice for the workers and how are we making sure that they're INPUT IS WEIGHED IN. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND APPRECIATE THE CHANCE TO HAVE INPUT AND THANK YOU FOR COMING BACK TO ME.

THANK YOU. ALL RIGHT. NOW LET'S GO TO AIDEN REED AND THEN IN PERSON LINDSAY SHAW AND MARY SNEWAZ.

GOOD EVENING, COUNSELOR. ARE YOU ABLE TO HEAR ME?

YES.

GREAT. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR GRACE AND YOUR PATIENCE. I APOLOGIZE FOR THE ERROR EARLIER. My name is Aiden Reed, and I'm here this evening to ask you to oppose the Downtown Development Authority proposal before you. I'm not convinced that taking tax dollars away from things like the library district, open space, and related public services will make our downtown or community any more vibrant. I think that funneling taxpayer money toward a small district of, frankly, wealthy developers and business owners is not in the best interests of Boulder at the moment, nor its future. The DDA planning group argues that this proposal is about creating tomorrow's economy, but strengthening tomorrow's economy shouldn't come with the expense of Boulder's economic well-being today or the people who rely on its social services most. The Boulder Public Library, for example, will see likely greater use in 2027 to a Sundance, but under the proposed DDA, it would not see a proportionate growth in tax revenue, but in fact less, as it would be paying more for staffing and services, but wouldn't see the requisite growth in tax revenue to offset it, which would instead go to the DDA. Boulder's downtown is increasingly not an economic driver, but this is because people cannot afford to recreate and spend there, and they have less disposable income. Rather than pump money into a district with little guarantee it would supply the kind of economic revitalization need, I hope you'll instead pursue policies that would allow Boulder's residents, particularly its working class, to enjoy the downtown as consumers, rather than focus solely on courting private investors. I think things like a universal basic income program or a commercial vacancy tax are worth pursuing. Finally, I hope that you will add the residential vacancy tax to the ballot rather than the DDA. Thank you again for your patience tonight.

Thanks so much. Now we have Lindsay Shaw, then Mary Snawaz, and Emiliano Le Carrera.

First of all, I commend you for your patience and listening to all these speakers. I really think it's phenomenal. This is my first meeting ever, and I really think it's amazing how long you guys can sit here Way to drink those sodas. So anyway, my name is Lindsay Shaw. I own Lindsay's Boulder Deli at Hagenau's on Pearl Street Mall. I've owned it for almost 25 years. There's three things I just need to address that really weren't in my speech. The support of the workers. If you support the DDA, which I am here to try to put on the ballot, It brings money into downtown. So if you brought money into downtown, I could expand my business and I could hire more people. So that helps the workers. The thing, I want South Boulder Rec to survive. I really do. I want open space. I want all that stuff to survive and be awesome. But I'm a small business owner and someone said, these business owners, they're taking it home in wheelbarrows. I'm not taking home in wheelbarrows. I've been working for 25 years. If you've come into my shop, you've seen me. I'm standing there. I'm standing there every day. No Thursdays, no Sundays. But that is it. So please, I'm urging you. I sit on the board of Downtown Boulder Partnership. And tonight, I'm just speaking as someone who's invested my time, my money, and my future in downtown Boulder. I personally just invested, borrowed, $250,000 to renovate my shop to make it better for all of Boulder, to make it better for tourism, to make it better for people to come. Every restaurant owner knows that standing still is not an option. Customers' expectations change. Buildings age. Competition changes. You either continue investing or you slowly fall behind. Downtowns work the same way. Over the past several years, we've all felt the effects of changing shopping habits, remote work, and declining office activity. I don't know if anybody in this room knows, but no one eats lunch downtown. Mark Wolf eats lunch downtown. Thank you. Kat eats lunch downtown. There's a couple people in this room that eat lunch downtown. Thank you. But nobody else works downtown. So if you don't work downtown, you don't eat my restaurant. And I need people. I need people to invest in downtown so they will eat at my restaurant so I can support my six-year-old.

Your time is up. Thank you so much. Thank you. No, no, no. Sorry. No applause. No applause. All right. Now we got Mary Snewas and then Emiliano Le Carrera and Daniel Howard. And quiet in the audience, please.

My name is Mary Snubice. I'm a 24-year resident of Boulder, and I'm a user of all of the rec centers. I'm here tonight for South Boulder Rec Center. After two years of advocating to keep the existing amenities of South and going door-to-door to help obtain thousands of signatures for a petition to signal to all of you that this isn't just the whim of a handful of residents, tonight I'm here to say that I cannot support the bond measure as currently written. Although South Boulder Rec Center is mentioned as one project that may receive funding from this bond, there's no mention of the essential amenities that we have been fighting for to retain for the past two years. This is not an acceptable solution to those of us who use and love the South Boulder Rec Center. If the city is actually planning to keep our existing amenities in a new center, it can simply include lap pool, basketball gym, exercise equipment, outdoor soccer field, and tennis courts in the bond language. Clear, specific language. would demonstrate to residents that the city is committed to core amenities at South Boulder Rec, and it would go a long way in building trust. Additionally, the current language is non-binding, such as language, which means it's not even legally enforceable as currently written. How can you expect voters to pass another $400 million of debt without telling us with some specificity where the money's going? Many of us thought that South Boulder Rec was being funded from the CCRS extension last year, but here we are again. I truly believe that most of you are supportive of keeping the existing amenities itself, but good intentions are only that. We fear that five or seven years down the road, a different council might approve a field house or some other magnet facility in place of the rec center, which is exactly what residents do not want this bond to fund. Without protections in the bond language, we're assured of nothing. Commit to your constituents, make the language binding, shall language, and add South Boulder Rec Center's existing amenities to the bond. We, the residents, the taxpayers, the voters, deserve that much. As currently written, not only can I not vote for the measure, but I will actively oppose it. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we have Emiliano Le Carrera, Daniel Howard, and Lynn Soka-McCaleb.

Good evening. Thank you. Hello, my name is Emiliano Le Carrera. I'm with Visit Boulder, representing the visitor industry, which brings in friends and family of residents, as well as out-of-town and regional visitors for economic benefit for Boulder. I'm here because I believe in Boulder, and because I believe our voters deserve the opportunity to decide its future. For years, Boulder has searched for a stronger winter economy, and last year we finally caught a break with the Sundance Film Festival. Two weeks on a global stage during our bleakest economic season. This is a real reason for hope, for all of us. But we have 50 more weeks to think about the rest of the year. Boulder has a soul in its open space and a heart in its downtown. Downtown is where the jobs, sales tax, and independent businesses that make Boulder feel like nowhere else come alive. It's not easy or cheap to run one of those businesses if you're listening to Lindsay or anyone else that works downtown and lives here. Downtown needs a strong heart if we want to keep that character instead of losing it to vacancy and corporate chains. This summer, business has been flat. Downtown sales tax remains about 10% below pre-pandemic levels after inflation, and commercial property values are down nearly 20%. Sundance gives us a spark, yes, but two weeks of a festival can't carry that alone, nor should we expect them to. An empty storefront on a global stage isn't who we want to be when the media shows up. We used to say that Boulder was 25 square miles surrounded by reality. Today we're surrounded by competition. Greeley has a DDA. Fort Collins has a DDA. Longmont leveraged over $200 million in downtown investment with theirs. 25 Colorado communities figured this out. My Boulderite pride is hurt and wants us to be the city that the other towns look to for innovation. And on this one, we're well behind. Referring this to the ballot tonight doesn't commit us to anything, and it doesn't take a dollar from open space, transportation, or schools. It's not a blank check. It simply gives the people who live here, work here, and love this downtown a chance to decide his future for themselves through their votes. Please send this to the ballot tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Daniel Howard and Lynn McCaleb and Brian Marone.

Dear Boulder City Council members, speaking as its representative, the Indian Peaks Group Executive Committee of the Sierra Club opposes the creation of a Downtown Development Authority because its task to increment financing would reduce funding for important environmental-related programs, including open space, transportation, and welfare prevention and resilience. Supporters of the DDA maintain that investments by the DDA will pay off in higher tax revenues. That may or may not come to pass. We are not sufficiently confident that the TIF would result in positive gains for important city programs. Furthermore, it will take years for such results to occur. We must note that the TIF will also reduce revenues that would otherwise flow to other local governments, including the library district, the county, and the school district. We all like to see investments in downtown and University Hill. These would indeed help the city, but we think that wildfire resilience improvements is more urgent. It deserves more funding right now, not after some theoretical improvements in tax revenues from downtown. Your own Fund Our Future survey showed that the city residents generally share our opinion that wildfire is a top priority, way above economic development. If you do move forward with the DDA, you may consider the following items within the ordinance and IGA negotiations. This includes direction to carve out specific dedicated taxes, such as climate, open space, transportation, library district mill, and RTD mill from the increments for the DDA, capturing the general fund portion only. Also, bind the plan of development to environmental criteria, as in no new subsidized structured parking, all electric new construction, a district thermal feasibility requirement, and explicit green canopy and green infrastructure performance targets. The same urban greenscapes and green canopy language from the BVCP should be central to the DDA, and if formed, it would be the entity with the money to actually build it. In any case, please do not make this 30-year commitment lightly. If you really want to move ahead with the DDA, take time to consider broader budget and environmental impacts, then submit it to the general electorate for an advisory vote, not to the select and extremely undemocratic electorate mandated by the state DDA law. With regards, Daniel Howard, representing the Sierra Club Indian Peaks Group Executive Committee.

Thank you.

we'll go to lynn mccaleb and brian marin and edward connolly hi good evening mayor brockett city council members my name is lynn ciocca mccaleb and i'm here as a city resident i think the timing is absolutely right to place ordinance 87 63 regarding the downtown development authority on the ballot in november i believe our downtown economy needs stimulation now and certainly more day-to-night activation. It's become less of a destination for me and many I know. I live in North Boulder, and I'd like more reasons to come downtown. Plus, communities nearby have become a lot more competitive. They either have DDAs or have made significant investments in their cities. I asked the city council to place the DDA on the ballot to let the voters decide in November. You know, and I came in here also wanting to talk about Ordinance 8758, the Recreation and Safety Bond. And I was going to say, you know, it was really premature to put this on the ballot. And as I listened to everybody, I've completely changed what I wanted to say. And now I say it is incumbent on us not to put it on the ballot as it is currently written. because it's not specific. I listen to how many people here talk about South Boulder Rec. I don't live there, but it seems to be very important to this community and something that really needs to be addressed soon. I saw all of the buildings you put in on the slides. Those also need to be addressed, and I am so saddened that it's gotten to this point. I don't know how it has. It sounds like it's been around for a while, and perhaps we already should have done something about it. I am disappointed, and I really feel strongly this language needs to be rewritten if it goes forward. I'm not sure that it should go forward. I came in thinking it shouldn't go forward at all. But it sounds like there's some really important changes that need to be made. So I beg you, please make them. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll go to Brian Marin, Edward Connolly, and Benita Duran.

Good evening, Mayor. Good evening, Council. Good evening, city manager and everybody else here. My name is Brian Marin. I'm the president of the Boulder Association of Firefighters. Tonight, I'm here to speak on behalf of our ordinance in regards to collective bargaining. So I do believe the city manager gave a good rundown of how we got to this spot. We initially intended to run a petition and gather our signatures over the summer and put that in front of voters. It was early on in that process that we sat down and started having discussions Really good conversation with city leadership. Those conversations brought us to the point we are tonight where we can put this in front of you with full support of all of our membership and the support of city leadership. And to be in that spot is a win-win for both of us. We're proud of the work we've done. We've had very candid conversations to get to this point and a lot of good understanding and good intents on both sides put that conversation that piece of legislation in front of you, hopefully to be referred with full support from council tonight. I know you have a lot of big decisions that you're making this evening. I hope this is an easy one for you. We fully support it. City leadership supports it. It may not have on the face as big of an impact as some of the other decisions you're making, but for us, it does. It gives us a platform and a seat at the table to continue to fight for our membership, to continue to attract and retain the best firefighters around to continue to work for the city of Boulder. And that seat at the table is important for us. We urge you and we ask you to fully support our measure and send it to the voters. Thank you.

Thanks very much. We'll speak to that in a minute. Right now, I've got Edward Connolly, Benita Duran and Terry Takata Smith.

Good evening. My name is Ted Connolly. Thank you for allowing me to speak tonight. I'm speaking tonight regarding the 2026 ballot measure to secure funding to rebuild South Boulder Recreation Center. My family and I have been fortunate enough to be part of South Boulder Recreation Center community for over 25 years. South Boulder Recreation Center is not just another building. It's a cornerstone of a 15-minute neighborhood concept, centrally located in a large residential community within walking distance of seven schools. It's also a safe haven for Fairview High Schools in the event of a school shooting. The Fairview swim team practices there, and it serves families, seniors, students, working adults every single day. It's honestly quite an honor to have such a facility in our neighborhood. I feel very grateful for such a resource and a spirit of community. My request, please commit to investing in South Boulder Recreation Center and commit to preserving the core features. I would appreciate your willingness to protect the below amenities in the ballot language, a 25-yard, six-lane lap pool with a diving well. an indoor double court basketball gym, dedicated strength training and cardio fitness area, dedicated group exercise classroom. Lastly, be transparent on all and any potential plans for South Boulder Recreation Center amenities in the ballot measure. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we're going to go to Benita Duran, Terry Takata-Smith, and Jonathan Singer.

Good evening. Mayor and members of City Council, Benita Duran, longtime Boulder resident and trustee of the Boulder Library District. I'm going to follow up on the Boulder Library District Board President Sylvia Werber's comments. And I want to emphasize the theme of genuine engagement. So if you go forward, we respectfully request meaningful engagement with your, our existing tax district, which has a main building of our operations and programming in downtown. In this main library building, we experience book readers, researchers, meeting planners, meetings, coffee drinkers, travelers, creatives, program participants at the Canyon Theater. And we also have a lot of visitors and guests who may or may not have a library card. They come to visit our public restrooms. We welcome everyone and everything. But public restrooms are few and far between in the downtown. We know that. And we're certainly doing our part. But we have hours and limits to our ability to do this. So I mention this because our facilities will be positively impacted as we'd anticipate by the DDA. And that's why we desire a seat at the table. We want to be involved in a genuine and meaningful way. And in this way, it directly impacts our services to our public. And as a trustee, I was involved in working on the IGA between the district, the city, and the county. And we had negotiated this IGA in record time. We met weekly for several months to get the IGA in place. So if you pursued this vote, please consider including the library on the working board and also include individuals representing broad and often unseen diversity in the downtown and the hills. So drafting a possible IGA might be a good thing to do now so that people could see possible terms that would help better inform us all. This first board, if seated, needs to be diverse, needs to be genuinely reflective of Boulder's downtown, and the library district board with, let me just say, with the majority of women.

Your time's up, but thank you for your words. Thank you. All right, now we're going to go to Terry Takata-Smith, Jonathan Singer, and Mackenzie Selke.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Terry Takata-Smith, the Vice President of Marketing for the Downtown Boulder Partnership. I'm here tonight to read the remarks on behalf of our Board Chair, Aaron Speer, who couldn't be here. He also serves as the Market President for the Bank of Colorado. Mayor and members of Council, tonight you're being asked to make an important decision about the future of Boulder and the future of its commercial heart, downtown Boulder, University Hill, and the civic area. We know our commercial districts have experienced years of declining economic performance. We know that businesses are struggling. We know that private investment has slowed. And we know that without meaningful intervention, these trends are unlikely to reverse on their own. This isn't about downtown and University Hill alone. These districts are economic engines for our city. They support jobs, generate significant tax revenue, and shape how residents and visitors experience Boulder. When they struggle, impacts are felt far beyond their boundaries. We have before us a tool designed to help change the trajectory. The proposed DDA wasn't created overnight. It has been shaped through months of work by the community planning group, informed by decades of city planning, and evaluated by experienced economic development professionals. It is a proven tool that communities across Colorado have used to leverage investment, encourage redevelopment, and strengthen commercial districts. The status quo is not working. Council, this is the time to act. I urge you to vote yes. Thank you.

Thank you. Our final three speakers are Jonathan Singer, Mackenzie Selke, and John Thayer.

Good evening, Mayor and members of Council. I'm Jonathan Singer, Senior Director of Policy Programs for the Boulder Chamber. Too often in this debate, well-meaning and politically charged what-ifs have often overshadowed the measurable what-ifs. What is happening is clear. Commercial vacancies are up. Businesses are struggling. Sales tax revenue is going down. And in tonight, instead of simply asking why are things the way they are, let's ask why not. And tonight's opponents make a lot of the points of why we should create this DDA. Why not create a workforce housing system that is safer and more welcoming for everybody? The Fort Collins DDA helped bring 79 affordable apartments into the heart of downtown, invested in Old Town Square, and transformed downtown alleys with lighting, accessibility, art, and pedestrian improvements. Why not preserve history while building for the future? Denver's DDA transformed Union Station, created public gathering places, and actually had transportation improvements with green canopies? Or why not create a downtown that belongs to the whole community, like the Green Spaces Market Collective did, providing affordable space for local artists, nonprofits, and small businesses? And why don't we negotiate revenue sharing like Fort Collins did to improve their schools, as well as their own library district? These are not historical promises. These, after the creation of DDAs, are proven possibilities. We can make everyone thrive together with this. Postponement tonight is not the same as prudence. No single delay is a death knell, but waiting will become its own decision with its own consequences. So vote yes tonight. This is your last opportunity this year to signal that Boulder is ready to invest in its future. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, we've got two people left, and we're getting some noise over here. I'm not sure what's going on. Alicia, do we need anything to do anything here? We don't have a record of it, so I'm sorry, we'll not have an opportunity to speak. Okay, please quiet. All right, we've got two speakers left. We've got Mackenzie Selke and then John Thayer.

Mayor, Council, thank you so much for being here tonight. Staff, thank you so much for your service. I'm Mackenzie Selke, and I am the Executive Director of Boulder County Farmers Markets. where we gather for the last 40 years in the civic area. And if the hill is the brain of downtown and Pearl Street is the heart, then we're the neck in that connecting area. Um, it's a good metaphor. There's a lot of gristle, a lot of tendon and a lot of connection making on a vibrant market day. There is people on the bike path. There are folks walking from downtown to the university. There are people intersecting and meeting each other and being together at a place that's gathering. And that is an intentional design that the city has planned for and implemented and worked on over several years. with a lot of time and energy and effort. And that connection I believe deserves some investment from our community. From my perspective, the Downtown Development Authority is a concentrated and dedicated tool that helps build partnerships between those three important body parts. It also allows us to reinvest in our public spaces and into the kinds of programming, activation, lighting, public restrooms, and other amenities that we'd like to see in this community. So I would respectfully ask you to think about what it means when you invest in these areas where people gather the farmer's market knows that putting money where your mouth is has consequences and impacts beyond the district. And I would respectfully ask you to refer this to the ballot. Thank you.

Thank you. Our final speaker tonight is John tear.

Thank you. Mayor members of council, John tear Boulder chamber president. As you probably sensed from the testimony of many other business leaders who stood before you this evening, we are frustrated, we are exhausted, and we are at wit's end. You've heard hours of testimony of waning business activity, declining sales tax revenue, and high vacancy rates in our core downtown and university zones. Recognizing the dramatic turn in our downtown area, the core of our community's tax revenue picture, and the core of our community's character, city council authorized staff to identify strategies for correcting current trends toward further decline. For two years, city staff, with input from a wide cross-section of knowledgeable community members and consultants, reviewed all the available investment tools and strategies for supporting a troubled downtown. And when we landed on suggestion for a downtown development authority, this council told us Everything looked good to progress forward and offered encouraging words of support. And now, as we face the decision to make the first step toward building the infrastructure of a DDA, mind you, the first process step in forming a DDA, not any implementation steps of concern that were expressed tonight, we worry that you will not receive the majority support to move forward with the DDA. This, after we are told that you can see through the smoke screen of concern that misrepresents the basic facts of the DDA. This, after you tell us that you will support the DDA at some other point out in the future when you know it is truly the final decision point. It is, we are frustrated, this is exhausting, and we are at wit's end. Please support the putting the DDA on the ballot. Thank you.

All right, well, thanks everyone for coming out and speaking to us tonight. We really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your thoughts with us. So we have five separate ordinances to consider here. My thought is generally to take them in the order that they're presented to us, but I'd like to make an exception if council is willing which is to start with ordinance 8761 regarding collective bargaining for firefighters, if that would be all right. And I can kick us off just by saying to our union representatives who are here, to Brian and the rest of you, so appreciate you sitting down at the table with the city manager and with the negotiating team, and so delighted we could come to this win-win solution to get an agreement to put this on the ballot and get what I expect to be overwhelming voter approval. the fall so I'm very supportive of this and excited to vote it on to the ballot any other thoughts before we get a vote going seeing none do we have motion language ready for these things okay does somebody want to take this one yeah Rob do you have some connection to the topic a little bit yeah I know some of these guys I actually watched

I watched some of these guys start as firefighters and now they're speaking on behalf of the entire union, I love it. I'd like to make a motion to adopt ordinance 8761, submitting to the electors of the city of Boulder at the regular municipal coordinated election to be held on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026. The question of amending the Boulder Home Rule Charter to add a new section 73, collective bargaining for firefighters, creating a charter guaranteed right for full-time fire department employees to bargain collectively, specifying the form of the ballot and other election procedures and setting forth related details.

Second. We have a motion and a second. Did you want to speak to that at all?

Sure. Brian said something and I wrote it down and I forgot, but it was basically, it's communication. It's collaboration. And I'm just really happy that everybody was able to sit down, our city manager, staff, and local 900, and nip this thing in the bud before it even had to go for a signature. So I'm really stoked for everybody. Thank you.

Very good. Not seeing any other hands raised. Alicia, can we have a roll call on this, please?

Yes, sir, thank you. We'll start the roll call for the adoption of Ordinance 8761 with Councilmember Benjamin.

Yes.

Mayor Brockett.

Yes.

Councilmember Kaplan.

Yes.

Marquis. Yes. Shuhart.

Yes.

Speer. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Weiner.

Yes. And Council Member Adams.

Yes. Ordinance 8761 is hereby approved, adopted unanimously.

Very good. Well, congratulations and thanks again and look forward to seeing a successful outcome on the ballot this fall. All right. Now, well, let's go back to our first one here, which is Ordinance 8758 regarding the RECREATION SAFETY AND CAPITAL PROJECT BOND. IF WE CAN GET THAT LANGUAGE UP THERE, I'M SURE PEOPLE HAVE A COUPLE THOUGHTS ON THIS OR I DON'T KNOW WHO WOULD LIKE TO GET US STARTED ON DISCUSSION OF THIS ITEM.

I wanted to just make a motion for us to consider. I would like to make motion to adopt Ordinance 8758, submitting to the electors of the City of Boulder at the regular municipal coordinated election to be held on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026, the question of authorizing the issuance of general obligation bonds for the purpose of financing community recreation, safety infrastructure, and other capital projects, specifying the form of the ballot and other election procedures, and setting forth related details.

Do we have a second? Second. Second. I think Matt got it. So we've got a motion and a second. Nicole, would you like to speak to your motion?

Yes. I continue to believe that this is something, I don't know if the community is going to support it, but we've got a lot of people and groups in community that are ready to get behind this measure, including our Police Officers Association, including the Play Foundation. I believe our Parks and Rec board was supportive. I see at least one member back there. So we really do have a lot of people here who are advocating for this measure. The polling we did, it wasn't spectacular, and at the same time, we didn't know that all these groups were going to come forward and support it. As Oh, gosh, now. Oh, that's sad. I am the longest serving member of our financial strategy committee now. Unfortunately, I used to not be able to say that. But this is something we've been moving toward for quite some time. It checks all the boxes in terms of what we are heading toward in creating a more sustainable, equitable, and resilient city budget. And we have plans in place now to make sure that we Not we, because we will not be here anymore, but future councils will not be in this position where they are having such a backlog of maintenance and having to replace that. So it is the right thing to do from a financial strategy perspective, and I hope we'll support putting it on the ballot and let the voters and all the advocacy groups decide from there.

Thanks, Matt. You speak to the second?

Yeah, I thought what Nicole said was spot on. I'll just add that, you know, We can Monday quarterback this and how we got there till we're blue in the face, but that doesn't change the situation that's presented directly in front of us, which is massive needs of capital infrastructure. And we have really one vehicle to do that. We've exhausted many other options to look at figuring how to do this. And there's two things, cheap, fast, good, pick two. And we have needs that are urgent. So we have to do it fast, which means are we going to sacrifice quality or expense? Well, it's going to have to be good. So which means it ain't going to be cheap. So this is how project management works. And unfortunately, this is what we're in front of us. So Let's pay it forward and make sure the future generations aren't saddled with yet an even more expensive bill because we kick the can or don't do the work that's needed now. So I'm just appreciating that staff actually has recognized the problem that has been pushed that is here over decades of some neglect and just unforeseen black swan events that have put us in this position and we're ready to tackle it. And hopefully the voters will see that this is a chance to pay it forward and get it done. And we can actually build this community the way out everyone envisions. Thanks. Yeah, Tara.

I'd like to make an amendment to the language to include, instead of aquatic, what is it, aquatic paraphernalia.

So you're talking about the description of the South Boulder Rec Center?

Yes. I want to, yeah, is this the time to do that? Okay, I would like to add a lap pool. and a children's aquatic area, as opposed to just the general, what do we have, aquatic, somebody tell me, amenities?

Yeah, okay. Well, maybe we can start with a question to city staff.

Is that possible?

I understand the proposed amendment to be replace aquatic amenities with a lap pool and a children's, Aquatic area. Yes, that's possible.

Michelle, did you want to speak to that?

Yeah, thank you for the question and thank you for the proposal. And we appreciate hearing everybody's comments and have been hearing the feedback for a very long time. And through our Future of Rec engagement, which was highly informative to just point out how much the entire community supports aquatics, pools, in particular lap swimming, but also all the other core amenities that were discussed and have been shared around fitness. One thing I do want to point out, just for clarity, is that we have had a history of building what we say we would build. We said on the first CCRS tax that we would build a North Boulder library. We built that. We built a fire station. We said we would build. We're in the process of East Boulder Community Center building that, and two new fire stations. So we do have a track record for what it's worth of building those things. But they all started with, once those measures passed, with community engagement. And we really do want to engage the community. We don't want to preclude that. We are very supportive of putting a pool in that language. To be clear, that is what we have priced. As a pool, I think there is a nuance of a degree of specificity that then precludes us asking the community about those very specific details around whether it's a youth pool or the different lanes. So I think that's where we would recommend not that degree of specificity. We also heard that from the Parks and Rec board on Monday night that there was a no vote on being that specific ahead of really a robust community engagement when this comes forward. So pool, I think we would love to support that. So pool, but not lap pool? I would hesitate on that degree of specificity until we're allowed to really engage the full community.

Okay. So pool and then children's aquatic area?

I think we would recommend and we would suggest pool.

A pool.

A pool. And that would be something that would be the exact features of that. would be informed by a community engagement.

But we already did have community engagement, a lot of it. So I thought we did.

Well, what we have done is, so we had a couple of phases. Our first phase was on our future of rec, which was across the entire system. What we heard in that was, again, broad support for pools, for lap swimming, for warm water fitness, and those core amenities, gyms, cardio space, fitness space. Then on the East Boulder community center. And as we get focused, we have engaged on a second round that gets specific around those facilities. That is what we would propose and want to do on any one of these projects is, is have that opportunity.

Okay. Let me just say one more thing. I promise this is it after this is if we want to pass this ballot measure, we need the South Boulder people with us, or it already pulled poorly. So not at least even saying a lap pool, I'm worried that, you know, I brought it from six lane, this, this, and that, down to a lap pool. So I feel like putting the word lap in there would be a good thing.

Lap pool, yes. I think the additional, yeah.

The rest of the specificity, I think we're... Allie, did you want to speak before we...

My name is Ali Rhodes. I serve as director of parks and recreation for the community. I just wanted to chime in that the engagement has been clear and consistent that yes, our community wants ever more lap lanes. And I support the conversation here. What we're trying not to preclude is an entire community conversation. And I hear the concern from the neighbors in South saying they have had conversations. They've been knocking on doors. That's fair. And what council wants to do with the language. I think we will go out to the voters and see what happens.

So the question from Tara is, are you comfortable with the language about a lap pool, I think, Allie?

I think it's fine. And I'll add to what Michelle said. That's what's been cost estimated at this point. Council Member Weiner, you recommended and a children's aquatics area. I think that degree of specificity, I'll note that it has an additional amenity. It's not necessarily been cost estimated. And that's where I'd leave it, to cost estimating, to community engagement, and to the process that happens when we actually have a funded project.

OK, take it back then. I'll just do lap pull.

And Nicole's got a burning point or question.

Allie, I just, well, Michelle, whoever can answer this. So as I understand, just thinking about the design, right, we're dealing with just some different things than when it was first built in the 1970s. Like, for example, we didn't have gender-affirming restrooms at that point, right? We didn't have such an aging population so that, for example, a caregiver might need to go into an area with somebody. And as I understand it, thinking about just the site design, there may need to be some reconfiguration in order to accommodate some of these 2020s, 2030s kinds of requirements, right? So if we were to put something as specific as lap pool there, is there a possibility that as we're reconfiguring the site, we might actually end up with, say, only two lanes of a lap pool or something like that? To me, I guess what I'm wondering is does this potentially lock us into something that people may not appreciate in the future?

I'm a little nervous about speculating because you've heard even folks say tonight that there's going to be a field house. We've been very clear for over a year that we don't intend to replace the recreation center with a field house, and yet this persists. What I think is very real to say is that to lock in something in is concerning. That site is incredibly constrained to support accessibility in lots of ways. That's why staff have recommended a new facility to engineer this 50-year-old building that was not built for accessibility. It's really complicated. The building form really limits all types of accessibility. And to lock in any type of specificity, yes, it's concerning. There's an and here that you all have to balance. Our community has been very clear for a very long time that they love to lap swim. All day, everywhere, all the time. And so I just, I think, you know, that level of a lap pool and guaranteeing that, I wouldn't say how many lanes or what types or whatever, but I think to pretend we've not heard that I think would be maybe a miss.

Okay. Thanks for answering that. Tayshia? Well, I think we're about to get the formal amendment. So why don't we get that motion on the table and then we can, any further discussion. So do you want to, okay. I think what you're looking for Tara is to move to amend the motion.

I would like to amend the motion motion.

I move to amend the motion.

I would like to move to amend the motion to add a lap pool. I'm not even doing this right. Help me here.

To replace the words aquatics amenities with a lap pool.

You're so good to me. To replace the words aquatics amenities with lap pool.

Okay. That's what I'd like to do. That's the motion.

That's the motion.

I'll second that. And now we can have discussion. So we'll just start. Did you want to speak to it? I think you already did. I did. Okay. And I think a little additional specificity to give comfort to folks that we would include a lap pool with the South Boulder Rec Center rebuild is helpful. That's my thought. Go ahead, Taisha. Thank you.

I concur with that thought. And again, if the high school wasn't using it as their primary practice area, I might feel differently. But since that is one of the key uses of that area, I think we need to be specific. And although I appreciate the comment that we have been very consistent with a strong track record, we have not been 100% consistent. And so in these times of tenuant and trade-offs, et cetera, I think it's very important that we get specific about a community need that has been there. And I don't want to have a whole lot of community engagement around it more. Let's get it on the thing and let's get it done. Thank you. Thanks, Tasha.

Ryan, you've had your hand up for a while. Do you want to speak right now?

Mayor, I just had a general comment in support of this before we got into the amendment. So I like the amendment, but... Should I wait? Maybe I should wait for the general comment or just do that now?

We'll get to you. Great. Okay. So we've got a motion to amend on the table. It's been seconded. All in favor of the motion to amend, please raise your physical hand. We've got, that looks like eight. So that passes eight zero. So the motion has been amended with Tara's amendment. And so now we're back to the original motion as amended. Does anyone else want to speak to that before we vote on that motion? And Ryan, this would be your chance.

Thanks, Mayor. I just had a couple of things to add to Nicole and Matt's good comments in support. So, you know, just for clarity, this is an opportunity to fund all of the facilities citywide in a way that is going to be the lowest cost over time by getting at it, this worsening deferred maintenance now. It's going to get us passed. competing for resources between the police station, firehouses, and rec centers. And it's not gonna require that we spend the 400 million, but it's gonna create the chance now to make this happen. And I also wanted to just acknowledge, there's a lot of people which I would include myself in, who really want to see a dedication to better cost efficiency, assurances that we're spending our money well, that we're making our budget understandable. And the community should expect a lot from us on that. We are on a path of continuous improvement. It's a journey. That path has direct involvement by council, And I do think it's important that this council, as we go forward, continue to focus on that and incorporating ideas that we hear from the community regarding how to make sure that council has the oversight from a continuous improvement standpoint, and we just keep getting better and better as we go. Happy to support this. Thanks. That's right.

Terentation.

Well, we've gotten a lot of pushback on this and it's polled poorly. And I do understand why. And I don't disagree necessarily because we haven't really, in my opinion, done our due diligence in regards to transparency and details of usage, what will we do with the money, and accountability, assuring that we'll use it for what we say we will. which is why I'm excited that we have this amendment. So originally I probably wasn't going to be for it, but I'm so excited about this amendment that I'm taking it back, and I'm going to say yes to this for that reason, because we're being more specific and answering community needs that we can't do the South Boulder Rec Center any other way, I don't think. So I am supporting it for that reason. Thanks.

Tayshia?

I just wanted to get specific on what I would love to see with that reporting and transparency, specifically just more budget versus actuals on a regular and ongoing basis. I also have some concerns around how we're going to prioritize, and that piece is not there. We'll have five seats up for election in November, so I'm hopeful that Some of those conversations can happen now, but it will really fall to those who get elected since that will be the majority of council at that time. I also have concerns around the safety center, just recognizing that policing receives a significant amount of our budget, and then to have the capital expense on top of that is concerning. Thank you. Yep. Tina?

Yeah, so I am going to support this, but I also am appreciative that we're looking to make these budgets clearer, and particularly the formation of a citizen advisory panel I think is critical because we just don't have... enough visibility into our community and we need to get more people engaged in our facility and deferred maintenance plan so that we become more practice at talking about it in a regular scheduled way and are clear how we're heading out and maintaining our buildings 20 years down the pike. As I've mentioned before, I think the school board just does an excellent job on this. It was predictable. I could have recited at any point what needed to be done and why we were doing it, and I think we need to get to that place. So I'm really encouraged that that is where we're headed so I can support this in better faith. Thank you.

Thanks, Rob. Then I'll call on myself.

Thanks, Aaron. Thank you, Nuria, for talking about having transparency moving forward. I hear the community's distrust loud and clear and lack of transparency. I do want to point out that we didn't get here over the last decade. This started in the 70s. We didn't have a replacement fund for our facilities. 2021, we had our first facilities our comprehensive facilities plan. And then we've been adding to those replacements since we got hit with COVID. We had a flood. Those pulled out some of our, our funds from the, our reserves from the general fund. This wasn't a linear change. situation but I do I do hear you it's not easy for me as a city council person to go in and find the data that I want it takes a lot of work and a lot of effort and the one thing that I would like to really focus on moving forward is the transparency so people can see when you're asking for a $400 bond obligation, where is that going? And it turns out to be about $650 million with the debt service. So I think it's really important for everybody to see moving forward, rebuild trust, rebuild transparency. But if we don't do this, we're kicking the can down the road. Inflation is outrageously climbing and I don't see an end in the near term and I think we need to fund these things now the longer we wait the more expensive this gets.

Thanks. I'll call on myself. I'm supporting this as well. This bond will is critically important for deeply valued community amenities with South Boulder rec center being right at the top of the list. And if we pass this bond we will be able to rebuild the South Boulder rec center with the amenities that people are expecting, and that's incredibly important. They're also very important for our first responders, the two fire stations that it would renovate or replace are in desperate need of that work, and the public safety building is also very desperately in need of it. So these are critically important community needs. I'm looking forward to voting for this in a moment and moving forward to the ballot. Not seeing any other hands raised, then Alicia, I'll go ahead and ask for a roll call, please, on the motion in front of us.

Okay, let me see if I make this known correctly. The motion to amend and pass. Ordinance 8758 will begin with mayor Brock.

Yes.

Councilmember Kaplan yes. Mark was yes to heart. Spear yes. Mayor Pro Tem Weiner?

Yes.

Council Member Adams? Yes. And Benjamin?

Yes.

The motion regarding 8758 is hereby amended and passed unanimously.

Thanks so much, everybody. All right, let's move on to 8759, which is about the residential vacancy excise tax. Can we see? It's already up on the wall there. Would somebody like to get us started? Matt?

Go ahead and make a motion to adopt Ordinance 8759, submitting to the electors of the City of Boulder at the regular municipal coordinated election to be held on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026. The question of raising taxes in the City of Boulder by the adoption of a vacancy excise tax imposed on homes that are occupied for 183 days or less per year, with such amount to increase annually in accordance with the Denver Aurora Lakewood Consumer Price Index Act. to support general city services specifying the form of the ballot and other election procedures and setting forth related details.

Second. Very good. Motion to second. Do you want to speak to it?

Yeah. I mean, I've been a long advocate of this really since I got on council. And so I think it's great that we're at this place where we can look at not just thinking about change behavior. But in many ways, this is repatriating sales tax revenue that would otherwise come to our community if these houses were occupied. If you want to have a long-term lease, great. People are spending money in our city. If you want to have short-term leasing, great. People are spending money in our city. But to have a house to just sit on it empty is actually causing more harm to the city than is necessary. And so I think it's just critically important that we do this. It's an important message for Sundance that we are saying, hey, don't just come in here and gobble up our homes and do a supply shock to our system and unnecessarily inflate home prices because that is not going in the right direction for our community as well. So I think this is a great place to start. I'm looking forward to an ordinance that follows up that allows us to deal with some, I think, very common sense exemptions. like if your house is in probate because someone passed away, then obviously I think we would want to create a way for that person not to be unfairly taxed by this. So I think there's some common sense things that we can look at, but this is a great start, and I think it's good for our community going forward. Thanks. Tina?

Yeah, you know, we talked about this a couple years ago, and it took some time to get it on the ballot, and I'm hopeful it's successful. I also did want to appreciate our partnership with BARHA, the Boulder Area Rental Housing Association, that provided feedback and made sure that we are considering some of the different things that might happen and unintended consequences and thanking our legal staff who assured all of us that those exemptions are possible so that as we learn. Also, you know, we'll be able to measure or Define empty homes will be coming up with ordinances and we'll be able to also learn and evolve and find out what works there's not just one way to do that and So we're new to this so I feel confident that our staff can Learn at best practices as we did. Thanks.

Thanks any other comments before we go to a vote.

Yes, Nicole Yeah, I'm still no I I continue to think that a fee is a better approach here for myriad reasons that I've already stated many times over. Don't need to reiterate them tonight, but I do appreciate what folks are trying to do here. I do think community will pass it. But yeah, I feel like I still need to advocate for that one more time, even though I'm going to lose.

All right. Seeing no other hands raised, let's have a roll call, please, Alicia.

Yes, sir, we'll start the roll call for the adoption of ordinance 8759 with councilmember Kaplan.

Yes.

Mark was yes. Yes. Spear no. Mayor pro Tim Weiner yes. Councilmember Adams, yes. Benjamin yes, and mayor Brock yes. Ordinance 8759 is hereby adopted with a vote of 7 to 1.

Thank you. Can we go to ordinance 8762 now, please? So this is about changing the calculation of the city's debt limitations. Would anybody like to start on this one? Tina?

Can I just make a motion? Yeah. All right. I move to make a motion to adopt Ordinance 8762, submitting to the electors of the City of Boulder at the regular municipal coordinated election to be held on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026, the question of authorizing an amendment of the Boulder Home Rule Charter to modify the calculation of the city's debt limitation as set forth in the ballot, specifying the form of the ballot and other election procedures and setting forth related details. Second.

Would you like to speak to it?

Yeah, I think this is a good idea just to come in line with the other municipalities around us, and it also benefits the city. I thought the staff did a good job explaining this.

Cool.

Another thing that we're doing that is in alignment with our long-term financial strategy work, so thank you, staff, for all your work on putting this together and giving us another way to try to get our budget to a better place.

Thanks. And I'll just note that this is bringing us in line with all the other Colorado cities and how they Approach this as well any other comments before we go to vote Seeing none roll call, please Alicia Yes, sir.

We'll start the roll call for ordinance 87 62s adoption with councilmember Marquis. Yes Shuhart yes Speer yes mayor pro Tim Weiner Yes councilmember Adams Yes Benjamin yes Mayor Brockett?

Yes.

And Council Member Kaplan?

Yes.

Ordinance 8762 is hereby approved unanimously.

Very good. Well, thanks everyone for your patience while waiting for us to get to Ordinance 8763 regarding the Downtown Development Authority. Who would like to get our discussion started on this one? Nicole? Do you have a follow-up question?

Yeah, I did. Sorry, I didn't get a chance to ask it earlier. This was just around the timing. I remember reading in the packet that the DDA wouldn't generate a lot of revenue initially, and noticeable benefits are likely to be years in the future. So just wondering, for all the amazing downtown businesses that have turned up for us tonight, reasonably, how long is it going to take them to start seeing impacts?

Thanks for the question, council member. There are several investments outlined in the plan of development that are smaller in scale that we could get to work on right away, specifically towards small business support. It mentions things like facade improvements, grants, tenant improvements, pop-ups, things of that nature. That's just one bucket of the five investment and priorities, but there are several smaller scale investments that we could start making right away.

So when, you know, one of the things in the slides that was showing us sort of the, what we could expect, right, with and without a DDA. So to get to that with DDA level and a time, do you have a timeline there? I see Mark coming up.

Good evening, Council Mark Wolf, Assistant City Manager. And I do eat Lindsay's sandwiches. To your point, Nicole, I think for those transformational investments, some of the items outlined in the plan of development would take some time. It's one of the reasons why the proposal tonight is not to ask voters for debt issuance, because there simply won't be the tax increment there for the first at least three, four, five years at a minimum. And so there are some short-term investments, mostly through the mill levy that is being requested, that would be available. But for those, you know, larger investments, that'll take some time to grow.

All right. Who wants to start the discussion? Tara?

Why not? I'll start. Okay. Great talk today. I just want to say that what made my decision to want DDA was I actually called up different city councils, mayors, who did the DDA in their cities and towns. And Lafayette was very interesting because, first of all, not one city said, I wish we didn't do it. That's first of all. But Lafayette's is a very interesting one. And I just want to take a second to tell my council members about it because I think is very interesting. It says the newly formed DDA focuses on activating vacant sites, supporting small businesses. They have something called the Downtown Improvement Grant Program, which offers matching grants up to $25,000 for interior and exterior capital improvement projects within the DDA boundary. So because Lindsay... how to do these changes, these fixes on her own, I think that this will be the perfect thing for Lindsay. And Lindsay is a person who we want to be successful. He's awesome. OK. But for real, DDA isn't just some sort of pie in the sky idea. It will affect people's lives. And the local businesses are not these giant corporations. They're little businesses that they put their whole lives into their businesses. And in a sense, their lives are on the line. And 100% that we will increase the amount of employees that work here, it will be good for the workers. So for me, that was the most important thing besides all the other cities, is that some of our biggest problems, which is helping the small businesses and doing something about our vacant spaces, can be helped with the DDA. That's first of all. The second thing is, is now I'm going to tell you my dream. My dream is to have a way to get from the hill to the downtown farmer's market. And by that, I don't mean the Arboretum Path. Because it's not nice. Just sorry. It's not. I visualized some sort of a High Line or something. And I think this would be splendid. But too much? Too much work? Too much work? I didn't. I said High Line. High Line. If you haven't been to, there's no gondola at the High Line in New York. Don't worry. Anyway, the point is we all have our dreams. We all have different dreams for what we'd like to see. And I think without a DDA and the financing tool, which is a very important part of it. I know people have said, oh, well, we could just do it on our own. No, we can't do it on our own. We do need the financing tool. That is the point of it. And that's why all the cities love it, because of the financing tool. Or else they wouldn't do it either. I mean, every city, including Denver. So long story short. I'm going to say that DDA is not a solution in itself and a success. This I got from somebody's email, by the way, I think Tammy, the success depends on thoughtful planning, strong local leadership and public accountability. But here's what I am concerned about is the library district trustees. They shouldn't have been left out. So I'm going to stick up for them and say, I appreciate what they said. They are a major stakeholder in the downtown. And I would like, they want the success of the downtown because their biggest library is there. And I think we should include them and the other stakeholders as well. And the other stakeholder is going to be open space because we got a carillion zillion letters from open space people who want to be assured. And this is what I said to them. If we have more revenue coming into the downtown, we will have more money for open space. I moved here for open space. That's my most important thing. Well, besides the downtown. Just kidding. is open space. And so I want to increase the amount of money that we give to open space and we use for wildfire mitigation, which is very expensive. And so that is another reason why I'm supporting the DDA.

Thanks, Tara. Who'd like to go next?

Rob? Thank you, Tara. So we did get a ton of letters about open space. And I spoke to staff at open space. They've got a $47.9 million budget. Staff was saying that it might, for the first five years of the DDA, it might cost them $100,000. But the net benefit after that is going to help fund them even further. Over 90% of their budget used to go to land acquisition, and now it goes to operations. They're good. Their budget for wildfire is increasing from 3.4% to 5.6% this year. They had no qualms about the DDA. I can't say any names. I just said I wouldn't say names, but they're full support of the DDA. Hearing some of these people, Casey Easton, Lindsay Shaw, Ken Liu, just pouring their hearts into their businesses, I think there's this perception that there's this big conglomerate of greedy businesses that are just getting filthy rich. These people are working their tails off every single day And they're employing people as well, and they're local, and they're keeping us vibrant. I think that's huge. Jennifer Mallory's, you know, be bold. And we do have to be bold. You have to take risks sometimes. I have taken calculated risks when I opened up my bike shop, literally when I became a firefighter with commercial real estate. You have to assess it, and you can't do the status quo. Otherwise, you're just going to end up probably trending down in our case. Erica Dahl, who spoke earlier, the need for messaging. The DDA has so many aspects of it that can help. We have full support from what I can understand from our arts community. I mean, McKenzie from the farmer's market, what an anchor and what a testimony to that. I think if we don't do this, then we're betting on economics. We're betting on staff that's overworked right now. And whether you believe they're overworked or not or whether you believe whatever you want to believe – We don't have the resources to put into it as we need. You have a group of people that are passionate about it, and they're working on making it a better place to drive economic development. That tiff will spill over into the rest of Boulder. confident of it. I know it's a risk. I'm not saying it's not a risk, but it's a risk that I think is well worth taking. It's calculated. It's measurable. I heard somebody else say that you have 2,200 businesses voting for this. That's not true. It's 559 leases, 536 property owners, and 1,100 residents that vote. These aren't just greedy property owners, they get one vote. Even if they have 20 properties, you've got 2,200 votes. We've got a member of city council on the board. City council will approve the plan of development. They'll approve the budget. There are a lot of checks and balances here. So I've talked too long, but obviously I think this is an opportunity for us to really supercharge our downtown, the hill, make a connection there. And with Sundance coming in to Loggie, we have a chance for like a huge synergistic push for the city.

Thank you. Thanks. I got, thanks Rob. I got Matt and then Ryan.

Thanks Aaron. I've been saying for quite a while that the city needs to move to a mantra. Those of you that watch Ted Lasso, they believe over the door. Ours should be much a little bit more focused, which is yes and here's how versus no and here's why. And for far too long, the city has said no and here's why. And yet, the few councils I've been a part of have been talking the talk about we are open for business. We are saying the taboo word of economic development. We are creating a brand new department to focus on economic development. And yet, here we are. This is where we get to put action to the superlatives, to the words of affirmation that I've heard every member of this council say, that we care about a thriving economy. We care about small businesses. Here's our chance to prove it. Because what I haven't heard are alternative ideas. And until those are present, this is our best idea we've got right now, and it is worth moving forward. For long enough, we've looked at this, and we haven't seen alternatives. So if you're saying no, come to this with a viable alternative. Because one thing is certain, if we do nothing, we know exactly where this ends. We know this continues to show decline. And all those dedicated funds that we care about from parks to arts to open space will continue to get less and less money each year. So the risk is actually putting our head in the sand and doing nothing because everything we love will be jeopardized by that action. What we do have is an opportunity to take the wheel here and steer it towards change. Council has made things only more expensive for businesses and others in this community. Here's a chance to drive economic development and increase revenues to give businesses and those that live around there a chance to actually make up for those increased taxes and fees. We talk about the plan of development, and a lot of community members have said, hey, well, what about the things that we want to do with this? We have a process for that. As soon as you go to the voters and the voters pass this, we get to work on this plan of development. And that's where real engagement is in there. Do we want to do things like look at the Wells Fargo parking lot? We know that surface parking lots are the worst usable place for land use ever. We know that. So let's talk about that. What about the one-way loop? We can talk about that. Pedestrianization and activation? We can do that. Downtown and hill connections, like Tara mentioned? We can do that. We can talk about public restrooms. We can tackle vacancy issues. We can do all the things that we've talked about. We just have to actually say yes to this. So at the end of the day, I think one thing sort of sums up, I think, which is kind of fascinating, and I led with this earlier, which is we would be the only city ever, or at least certainly in Brad's long history of doing this, to go down this path and then say, no, thank you. So sometimes being the only city to do something isn't a badge of honor. It's actually something worse. It actually invalidates this perceived sense of exceptionalism. So let's do the right thing and let's pass this DDA and give ourselves the chance that we know we don't have if we don't do anything.

Thanks. Ryan?

Thank you to staff and the community partners who have contributed to this really substantial work in building such big foundations. I'm a no and I have an alternative. On the no part, there are a couple of standards that I just don't think we've met that we need to. We do have clarity around the idea of DDA as a financing tool, but we don't have clarity about the underlying policy ideas that it is based on and that it would implement. For example, how much does revitalizing downtown on the Hill call for really concentrating on commercial vacancies directly versus addressing the wider landscape in the public realm? What's the role of private building owners, managers, and investors in the solutions? And what measures are they more and less likely to respond to? How much of the public investments that we're going to make will go to public amenities versus refurbishing privately owned buildings and inducing private deals? What tools besides spending money are available and how do they factor in? These are hard questions. They are also questions that will need to be answered to move forward with the DDA. As I have followed this process, I have tried to take a what would it take approach and in listening and learning, I have come to believe that it is the responsibility of the elected council to tackle these questions so that there's a change model that the community can understand and evaluate and then take up with its electeds before we commit to a 30-year financing program and hand it over to a lower body. The DDA calls for really big decisions and commitments to get going that I think we have plans in place yet for. The second issue is Boulder has a high level of citywide voter-approved dedicated taxes. I don't know that it's unique but it does seem like we have some notable characteristics. We've got that for open space, dedicated for transportation for parks, and that this proposal would impact those. So we do need to make bets, but we can't make bets with other people's money without their permission. And we need to have a really high bar for respecting the wishes and the comfort of our voters with the process that would give the decision on what to do about citywide funding approvals approved by voters, the whole city, and give that over to 2,000 to 3,000 voters concentrated in one geographical area. The DDA might be right, but we just don't have the level of support from voters representing the whole city, as well as other key partners like the county and the library that the DDA will impact at this point. So I said I have an alternative. We do need to keep working on downtown and local economic development in a way that is symbiotic with the city's budget. And to do that right, we need decisions that serve the city's long-term financial health, which means reducing dedicated funding, not increasing it, and making the strategic questions about a commitment this big held at the elected level and not delegated. So whatever is council's will, we should develop a clear, evidence-based change model for what policies will actually drive the intended outcomes and how we will measure success before making major commitments. Then we can start to move forward. We can do that with the DDA. We can do it without a DDA. We can do it now and start to build investments in pilots. But that's where we should focus, and that's what I propose we do. Thanks.

Thanks, Ryan. Got Nicole?

Thank you. My comments are going to be a little bit similar to Ryan's, but I just want to start with the fact that Plan Boulder and Boulder Progressives agree on something is truly unprecedented, as is the volume of emails that we've received this past week. I've never seen in my five years on council anything like the level of opposition that we've been seeing to the DDA. And that does give me pause to move this forward without more support for the broader community. And that is not because I don't care about every single one of you in this room. Right now, many people in our broader community are also feeling exhausted and frustrated and at wit's end. And I think it's important to acknowledge that shared sentiment between residents and businesses. Some of our neighborhoods are also getting more and more vacant and seeing declining property values. I think this is why so many people outside of downtown and the hill reached out this week to say that they'd feel left behind by this plan. Where we do have broader community input to inform decisions, the DDA and even economic development more broadly do not emerge even as a minor priority. Only 4% of likely 2026 voters in the city said the economy should be the city's top priority. On the Fund Our Future engagement, you have to go 18 items deep to find the word economy as a community priority, and that's for circular economy and zero waste. If you look for the word business, you find business incentives as one of the few things the community wanted the city to spend less money on. It came in 23rd in people's ranking of city priorities out of 25. Leaving out the library district and the county which sent us a letter outright opposing the DDA may have added to why this is feeling to community rushed. And it's really unfortunate that worker perspectives also were included in our broader economic development conversation because workers have some pretty brilliant ideas. And I would point you all to New York City's upcoming city sponsored parents night out as a great example. I really do appreciate the work that's gone into this from staff and the committee. I appreciate the urgency of what our local independent businesses are experiencing right now. I also appreciate the desire to grow the pot that we all have over time. That's a goal that the entire community should be moving toward. That is again the rub for me. The DDA is tapping into broader concerns and I don't think this is necessarily fair, but I think this is where we are. around trust in government, anger over corporate bailouts, especially when households are struggling to get by, and a feeling that democratic processes even locally are eroding. And I'm concerned that pushing this forward over so much united opposition is going to work in opposition to the success of the DDA. I also continue to feel this proposal goes against our sustainability, equity, and resilience framework. We're trying to get less dedicated funding, but this feels like more. And we're aiming to move away from sales tax to more SER-aligned revenue streams. But we seem to be doubling down on the sales tax approach here. Downtown has long been our community living room. And if we're going to focus more heavily on it, to preserve the amenities that we love in other areas of town, we need a majority of the community behind us. We don't have that and I don't think moving forward without it is going to end well for our independent businesses or the broader community in the current climate. I really would love to think about how we have more inclusive, also fast, conversations to think about how we can get more of this community buy-in, but I really want an effort like this to be as successful as possible. And I'm deeply concerned about the level of opposition that I'm seeing here from the broader community.

Thanks. All right, who'd like to go next? We got Tina.

Yeah, thank you, and thank you for all coming out. Whether you are in support of the DDA or whether you're opposed to it, I appreciate your comments. One of the things that throughout this whole process has been trying to, first, I think there was common ground, there is common ground about the need to do something in the downtown, which the city council identified as a priority. What we're seeing, as Nicole mentioned, is tremendous opposition from throughout the community. And I don't think I would characterize it as a smokescreen or misleading. I think instead we did not reach out to all of our partners in a timely way, specifically the county, the school district, and also the library. I think that with that level of opposition and when we're asking a smaller group of electors to make a decision, it behooves us to reach out wider to the community that is impacted by that decision. I think instead we did not take that final step despite staff doing an excellent job throughout the whole process. So I think that I was trying to play this out. So how could this work? How could we move forward and get the community engagement that we need in the buy-in? So one, I thought there were two possibilities. So one possibility is to send it to the ballot and and make a motion to create a working group that includes the library, the county, the open space board, the transportation board, and of course the planning board, which actually has a role in the DDA process, which hasn't been mentioned. And to see if that group in a six month time frame, well before the July date, could provide recommendations to the council to create a development plan or specifically terms of agreement that work with each of the entities. I would be hesitant to have an IGA specifically with any taxing district because if they don't find agreement, the DDA would not move forward at that point. So that's one possibility. The other possibility is to not put it on the ballot and create a working group and do the same thing. So I was trying to think, because either way, I think we should be pursuing this concept. But with this level of opposition, I don't see it being successful. So I was trying to put my shoes in the thousands, I mean, the hundreds of people who oppose this. What would they prefer? How would they buy into this? If I put it on the ballot and then I explain, or if we create this six-month working group to provide recommendations, do the listening, create the engagement that we heard from the library, answer the really good questions from the county that was in our letter, have the time to finally engage with the school district, which the schedule did not work for them to weigh into the DDA, and then to incorporate the feedback from the different boards and commissions that are impacted. So I feel that it's more authentic to put the ballot on next year after we have worked with these groups and done the wider community engagement. I think it's important because with five new council members, we don't know who's going to be coming in. And if we can bring them together with the community in this process, I feel the DDA and the board that we appoint will be much more effective, much healthier. and more successful than anticipating the next six months of groups trying to say, I want to take the funding out. I don't want transportation touched. I need to make sure these four people are on the board. So I don't think we're set up for success right now. So for me, I would like to make a motion that we create the working group I described to have a six-month timeline to put it on the ballot in 2027 and hope that then we have a successful, healthy, and united way to address these issues with this TIF. In addition, I'm going to add to go on forever, and I'm so sorry, but we also formed a bureau to look at an area that they're considering blighting using the same TIF mechanism. That project is also important. The TIF conversation needs to happen in the community sphere because we're going to be facing this again, those who are on council, next January with an update in December. I think we need to talk about them so that people understand why we're using this increment, which feels like a taking, but really can be a growing. So that would be my suggestion for this council. I can make that motion, but I try to do no surprises, but I've just been a little all over the place on this one and I apologize. Oh, the last thing I want to say is that I do apologize. When we had that public realm issue and we received the hundreds of emails about open space, I should have been sharp enough to say, whoa, we have a problem. We need to change the way we're doing engagement on the DDA because the exact same thing is going to happen. We literally had that happen four months ago, and I didn't do anything about it. And I apologize that I couldn't connect that. And it really made this effort less successful that we didn't reach out and get that engagement. So that's it. That's my suggestion.

Thanks, Tina. Taisha, and then I'll go. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone. This has been quite the process. I've spoken to many of you, read lots of emails. I appreciate the staff's back and forth and my fellow council members and various conversations that we've had over the months that we've been considering this. I honor the decisions that have been made by other councils. And again, I think it's important for me. Somebody mentioned taxation without representation. In addition to the restricted funds, which has already been extensively talked about, I also have to mention that our tax dollars and our voters in 1978 created that Pearl Street Mall. And there's recent efforts, additions and updates that are being made around $3 million. I tried to get that 1978 money. but wasn't able to get it in time. But my larger point is we've invested as taxpayers in the downtown, and my biggest challenge to approving this tonight is the fact that only 2,200 would be a part of that. And although I appreciate my colleague mentioning 1,000 of those would be actual residents, I'm most concerned about the possibility of corporate personhood In Delaware, businesses that own property are now allowed to, in one town, are allowed to vote in municipal elections. And I have significant concerns with any model that begins with corporations who don't even live here. And I honor that 85% of our businesses downtown are locally owned. If it was 100% locally owned, I might feel differently. But the fact that it is not... And that there are people in entities and other who don't even live in this state who would have more authority over starting something that impacts our whole community. then the community members that have been investing in our town, the community members that voted for restricted funds is extremely concerning to me. I also commend and agree with my council member, Shuhard, regarding the vacancy tax, sorry, the commercial vacancies as the largest issue. And although I appreciate all of the incredible things that can come from this DDA, I'm still unconvinced around the commercial vacancy as an entity. I agree with my colleagues around the lack of community engagement, especially in the fact that such a few only the people in the district would be allowed to vote to start it. I would recommend a group like similar to the group that worked on the tipped wage and went to the state to get changes. I would be very much open to putting this on the ballot if every voter in our city was able to vote on this since we'll all be impacted. And then, let's see. I think I got that. I got that. Oh, and this is the thing. I feel like a broken record. We are in unprecedented times. This is not business as usual. I would argue that the status quo is dead. And I beg us all to please consider our water supply anytime we are doing any kind of long-term strategy. You are talking 30 years out. The Colorado River, one third of our water supply is under threat. There is not a climate scientist in the world that disagrees. Please stop giving us financial projections without any consideration for water supply. Not to mention the food crisis, the energy crisis. And I know we can't quantify everything, but our team has quantified the impacts for our water supply. in the July 2025 water supply study. Please, can we use what our team has put together to support us when we're making these projections? Not to mention air quality. It is about to be 102 degrees again. You're talking about a sales tax, and I'm thinking, who is walking Pearl Street Mall when it's 102 degrees? I'm not suggesting that we can't do anything. I just need us to really think deeply about the climate impacts that are already coming. We are past the event horizon. So although I appreciate this model, I strongly believe that we cannot allow for taxation without representation. I'm concerned about corporate takeover. the municipal level making decisions and i continue to be concerned that we are not accurately and realistically addressing the climate chaos and catastrophes that we are already in thank you thanks all right i'll wrap this up i'll try not to go on for too long i do support moving the dda forward to the ballot this fall i appreciate all the people who spoke powerfully about its

potential for improving and transforming downtown and the many vibrant small businesses that are located there. So I do see it as a really valuable tool that could help finance and make transformative investments in ways that would benefit small businesses, the downtown as a whole, and the entire community. So I am in support. I have heard clearly the many people who have concerns around this, and I feel like their concerns have been, voicing those concerns has been really important and has helped us think more clearly and deeply about how this might move forward. So I am supportive of doing it this fall because we would then have at least six more months to craft an intergovernmental agreement and plan of development. And so I feel like The public outreach and the engagement to some of these entities could be done thoroughly in that time period. So, for example, Daniel Howard, speaking for the Sierra Club, talked about different ways that people needed to be involved. I appreciated the library district talking to us about their interests. We got a letter from the county with a number of different questions. BVSD would need to be engaged. So I feel like all of those concerns are really critically important, and we could address them in the next steps. So I'm comfortable moving it to the ballot this fall, and then we can address all of those concerns as we move forward to the IGA, including, I will say, one of the ways that this benefits the whole community and doesn't take away from general fund or from funds like OpenSpace is by doing the cost sharing, potentially at a 50-50% level. And so that means that the rising tide rises all boats and is not taking away. So that's what I would be interested in seeing. But how about we move to a motion so we can suss out the will of council. Matt, did you want to? I'll take it off.

All right. I make a motion to adopt Ordinance 8763, number one, determining the necessity of establishing a Boulder Downtown Development Authority, and two, submitting to the qualified electors of the proposed Downtown Development Authority at the regular municipal coordinated election to be held on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026. The question concerning the formation of of the Boulder Downtown Development Authority and a ballot issue to waive applicable revenue and spending limits in the city of Boulder, Colorado, declaring the necessity for an election on November 3rd, 2026 concerning the formation of such authority pursuant to Colorado Constitution Article 10, Section 20, and the statutory revenue limitations for such authority allowing the city to pledge tax increment funds on behalf of the Boulder Downtown Development Authority, determining organizational aspects of the Boulder Downtown Development Authority Board, specifying the form of the ballot and other election procedures and setting forth related details.

Second. All right. We've got a motion and a second. I think we've all spoken to this already. So roll call, please, Alicia. Yes.

Can I make an amendment to the motion?

Um, let's see, you just seconded the motion, but yes, I mean, you can make an emotion to, can I get Robert's rules? Can you do a motion to amend your own emotion that you have seconded?

I don't believe so.

Okay. So, so Rob, you would have to withdraw your second. Okay. I withdraw my second. I'll second.

Okay.

Um, I'd like to make a motion to amend.

Okay.

Let's hear it. move the DDA structure to the November ballot, but before the city finalizes a plan of development and signs an IGA implementing the DDA, the city will engage in a process that engages our community for the purpose of seeking and incorporating public trust and input.

I like where you're going with that. Can you explain a little bit more the specifics of what you're envisioning?

So what I'm hearing, and I'm even hearing it from some council members, there's some confusion on process from the state statute, like wanting to know the IGA before we even do an LOI. You just can't do that. And I'm also hearing, I want to know what's going to happen, and it's the state statute that precludes us from doing that. So in order to work out an LOI, what we do is we PROPOSED, WE MOVE THE NOVEMBER, WE MOVE IT TO THE NOVEMBER BALLOT, BUT BEFORE WE FINALIZE THE PLAN OF DEVELOPMENT AND SIGN AN IGA, WE'LL GO THROUGH A PUBLIC PROCESS OF ENGAGEMENT FOR THE COMMUNITY FOR INCORPORATING PUBLIC INPUT.

I GUESS WITH THE SPECIFICS OF THAT ENGAGEMENT TO BE DETERMINED LATER.

TO BE DETERMINED BY, YEAH.

OKAY. SO WE HAVE A MOTION TO, THANKS FOR EXPLAINING THAT. WE HAVE A MOTION TO AMEND. DO WE HAVE A SECOND FOR THAT MOTION? OK, so we've got a second for that. Do we want to have any more discussion on that amendment? Yes, Nicole.

Yeah, I'm not convinced that moving it forward to that. I liked where Tina was going with what she was saying. I'm not sure that moving it forward to the ballot and then asking for feedback to kind of guide it is a signal that we actually want feedback. And I guess part of it is I understand the urgency for the business community. There is urgency for so many in our community right at this moment. But why are we trying to push it to this particular year? I don't understand what sort of the hang-up is, right, other than the urgency that everybody is feeling, whether you're a business or a resident. What's wrong with next year? What's wrong with doing this process, bringing people together? getting buy-in throughout the community, getting Plan and Boulder Progressives to agree again, but this time in support of this process, why not? So I'm going to be saying no just because it doesn't feel like we're actually asking for engagement and feedback if we move it to the ballot and then say, oh, and so what do you think?

Okay, thanks. Tina? Tina?

Yeah, I'll just echo that. I think the word trust has come up a lot. And I know there's a lot of distrust right now with the business community, probably with me. But there's a lot of, I think that it was Bill Shrum who was talking about the need in his comments that he recognized this distrust of government right now. and the incredible need to be transparent. And I don't think that we can be transparent if we move it forward and then do the engagement. The other piece is on the timing, because we've already committed to not initiating the timing until July of 2027. We could have this ready to go in Q4 of 2027, only losing two months, but having the support of the community, and with any luck, not having fights about every single detail of the DDA and negotiating every factor. That is my, but I appreciate, I have also received feedback that there's a momentum issue, obviously a disappointment, and I recognize that. I do think we need to involve our partners in the districts on the front end.

Thanks. And Nicole, maybe I'll just speak to the question since I'm on the side of moving it forward. This year is that I would see that we would have as much as a year before getting to the point of signing an IGA. And that feels like a lot of time to do authentic and complete engagement with the public and with the different entities involved. So that's why I'm willing to move it forward this year. Yeah, Matt. Yeah, Taishi, go.

I concur with what Tina said and actually meant to mention that in my comments and I also appreciate the clarification around the timeline that this would only make a two month difference and so it actually wouldn't take another year it would just be a two month and it would allow us to have I mean and again as I said I already feel a way about corporations being able to vote so that's just on the cuff but But I would feel much more comfortable if there was more momentum and agreement from the key partners. The fact that the library wasn't engaged is very problematic. And, again, I really appreciate the comments around the Plan Boulder and the Boulder Progressives, which, again, just speaks to the need for you can't pass something and then say we're going to do community engagement afterwards. That's not a signal that's going to signal trust, in my opinion, and the opinion of those who I've spoken to extensively about this issue. Thank you.

Matt, and then maybe we can get to the vote. I'll try to clear this up. So the plan of development gets done after you pass the DDA. That was always the process, the known process. That's always when and where the engagement would take place, because that's the only time in which you can define the plan of development. So it can't be done on the front end. That's the process in which it works. So Aaron's right. I mean, front running this doesn't really do anything. Because you have to do that work after you've established the DDA. And then you have the sequence. It's the sequencing that we have here. And the idea that somehow it misses two months, I don't know how that math works. Because you still have to go to the ballot. And you still have to then go to the ballot, go through the exact sequencing process that's there. So you didn't delay anything two months. You just delayed it a year. plus some. So that math doesn't add up. So let's not try to sugarcoat things I think is important. And let's just remember what the process is. We have time to do the outreach. And all that passing the DDA does is establish the next step of doing the plan of development and the IGA work, which we were going to do anyway. And all this amendment does is recommit to saying, with certainty, we are going to deeply engage and get as many people to the table as possible so when those things are developed, we have the maximum amount of information to do so. That is the time in which you do that work. So I'm not sure why we're twisting ourselves into pretzels over here. And I'd like to get us to a vote.

All right. So we've got a motion to amend on the table. So let's have a show of hands, all those in favor of Rob's, motion to amend. And that's four. So all opposed?

Raise your hand.

OK. So that's a 4-4 vote. So that amendment fails. So now we're back to the original motion, which Matt made. So if we can have a roll call vote, please, Alicia.

Yes, sir. Thank you. We'll start the roll call on the adoption of ordinance 8763 with Councilmember Schuhal.

No.

Speer. No. Mayor Pro Tem Weiner. Yes. Council Member Adams. No. Benjamin.

Yes.

Mayor Brockett.

Yes.

Council Member Caplan.

Yes.

And Marquis. No.

All right, so that fails on a four to four vote.

That motion was defeated.

Yes. Any further direction. I think I've heard I've heard what I think is unanimous interest from the council in continuing to move forward with engagement with the community on this topic. Am I wrong about that. Well I mean we could start a process into motion Tina are you thinking about something specific.

So I would like to make a motion to consider the DDA in the upcoming year with the intention of placing it on the next ballot in 2027 by creating a working group. Sorry.

Okay. And, yeah, Teresa, do you want to speak? Because I think we need to.

Yeah, so as you all know, you can't bind a future council, so you cannot commit to putting something on a ballot in the future. Right. You could provide staff direction with a nod of five to continue engagement for the DDA for the remainder of this council term.

So I'll just put that right out onto the table then for us to – I'll ask for not a five for us to give direction to city staff to continue engaging with the community about the DDA for the remainder of this council term. And I actually got Ryan first and then Matt.

Thanks. I, yeah, I had, I just had it up for a bit. I just wanted to weigh in on the general question of thinking about looking ahead. My perspective is that the, There has not been a case made that we need a DDA. There's a problem. There's something of a problem statement that we need to revitalize downtown and our local economy. And to me, the first order of business is to get our arms around what is our... What is our policy plan? What will make a difference? What is the thing we need to do? And then if that indicates that we need a program of public investment, then that could point to a DDA. But I'm not there that I'm ready to say we are talking about commissioning a DDA. The front end that's not been done yet is that evidence-based problem statement that does involve bringing stakeholders together and coming up with some kind of a framework. And not everybody has to agree with it, but everybody needs to understand what the thing is, not just we need a financing vehicle, which is where I sort of feel like we're at right now. It's like, well, we need to articulate the problem statement with a policy idea at first.

So, Ryan, yeah, I appreciate that. Right now the thing on the table is whether we're directing city staff to continue engagement with the community on the DDA for the rest of the council term. You can support or not as you prefer. But I would really like to wrap this up. But, okay, Matt's gone first, and then I'll get to Nicole.

So my question has to do with staffing, right? I think a fair amount of staff were expecting this to be buttoned up one way or the other and move on to other projects. So what are we giving up?

We have talked about that, and I'm so glad you asked, because it would be inconsistent of us not to say if there is additional work placed on, there are trade-offs. And so, Mark, perhaps I'll turn to you as we have had discussions about what are the projects that could be impacted, and then perhaps what additional clarity we may need in terms of the type of engagement that you may be looking for.

I appreciate the tee-up. I think any specificity from council would be helpful for us. We did not have on our work plan significant engagement from now through the end of this council term. I think it's very likely that engagement would extend beyond this council term into 2027 and also the work to continue to consider this for the ballot next November. And so I think it's likely that staff would ask the next council whether or not the DDA continues to be a priority. So that would be one piece. Staffing-wise, again, specificity on working group, the role of council in that working group, how members of the working group would get chosen. If that's all up to staff, I think we would need to take some time to design that correctly and make sure that it is meeting your goals and a potential timeline of what that engagement looks like. Obviously not all of that can be fleshed out tonight, but depending on how extensive that is, other work plan items that our office has on the plate would certainly yield if that is the direction of council.

Mayor, just appreciating a suggestion given the time, and I know that there is one more item waiting. If there is a desire, perhaps the direction could be for staff to think about some of these issues and maybe scope or share out or come back to council with some suggestions versus continuing to try to hash it out this evening.

I was just thinking the same thing. I think that would be great. So let me change the nod of five to change that to ask staff to think about what next steps would look like, scope that out, and bring it back to us for another check-in in the near future. Sarah.

It seems like we do have a nod of five, though. from the discussion to go forward with community engagement?

I think it's the scope. The question is what the scope is.

So can I just say that we've mentioned the library, open space, all the different entities.

Is that not good enough? We're just asking them to scope it out now. Now the ask is for them to scope it out and come back to us. So we're not trying to figure out the details right here on the dais.

Is that a nod of five, or can that just, like, nod of three? Like, I guess for where we are in the year, right, and what staff has capacity for, and I know you all have spent, what, the last eight or nine days in budget sessions, so.

It's been a long time with budget lately, and we're not done.

Just trying to, like, think about, you know, for scoping, like.

I think this is just a, what we need a nod for is to see if you want us to move some scoping, because it could be that there are some that do not want us to do anything further, and so knowing that there is a desire to move forward and do some scoping would be what we need.

Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and ask if there's that nod of five for that scoping. All in favor, please raise your hand. And I got six. All right, so six in favor. So that's a nod of five plus.

Thank you. We got what we need.

Thanks. All right, that brings us to the end of that agenda item. Thanks to everyone who came out to speak to us about this and took your time and energy to weigh in. We appreciate your engagement very much. All right, I need to check in with council as people are heading out. It's 1042, so it's late. We have one agenda item left, which is the comp plan. That is time sensitive. I'm hopeful we could get through it quickly, but I would need council. I think we might even need a vote on it at this point.

Yes, Mayor, that's right. According to the rules of procedure, you may not take up a new item after 10.30 at night. You could waive those. You could, upon motion, waive those rules of procedure for the evening.

I'm just going to check in to see if Council is willing to continue with the comp plan item. All in favor, please raise your hand of doing the comp plan item. All right, we got a seven anyway out of eight. So we will go to the comp plan item. So Alicia, this is our next public hearing item, please.

Yes, Sir, thank you our last item on tonight's agenda is our public hearing item 5 be it is the continued item for the boulder Valley comprehensive plan adoption the consideration of one or more of the motions to one approve or amend conditions of approval to the boulder Valley cop plan update made by the planning board and Motion number two is to approve or amend conditions of approval to the Boulder Valley Comp Plan update made by the Board of County Commissioners. And our last motion to consider is number three, to approve or amend recommended amendments to the Boulder Valley Comp Plan update made by the Planning Board, County Planning Commission, and the Board of County Commissioners.

Thank you. And for the benefit of brevity, I'm going to go send it straight to staff who've been working on with multiple bodies on trying to get our next COMP plant approved. So KJ, up to you.

Thank you, Nuria. And I will just offer a deep thanks and gratitude to council for staying a bit later tonight to help us get through this next round of review. I think you all know me, but my name's Christopher Johnson. I'm the Comprehensive Planning Manager Sarah Horne and I are here tonight for the second round of consideration by this body on the recommended Bowler Valley comprehensive plan update. We are here to present the remaining conditions and recommended amendments that still need to be reconciled after we have gone through two rounds with the four bodies. Before we get started, I do want to offer just a little bit of additional context on staff's perspective of these remaining items to be discussed this evening. So while we as staff, we do still believe the originally proposed recommended update to the comprehensive plan is responsive to the community process that has been conducted since October of 2024. We also have appreciated the dialogue between the approval bodies and the community during the recent public hearings. So we recognize that reaching full consensus agreement on all the proposed edits is likely infeasible at this moment. And we believe that the remaining items that we'll review tonight represent a satisfactory and strategic compromise. The team is confident that we have existing processes in place and other ways to share information in response to the changes. So, staff is comfortable accepting these and we encourage you to support them as well. Thank you for your consideration. I will now pass it to Sarah to walk us through the presentation. Just a minute.

I understand where I'm in some technical difficulties. Okay. Do you need Emily to pull it up?

Have you, can you promote Sarah?

Yes, yeah, we can promote you.

Apologies, we did join the Zoom late.

Can you pull them up? Yeah.

I believe we are now sharing the screen, but.

Screen's up there. Yeah, we can't hear. Let's go. Oh, there we go.

It's just not gonna be.

Yep. We're so scared.

We've learned our lesson.

Okay, is that okay?

Does that work?

I believe so. Are we ready to go? Mayor, why don't we try to pin the presentation to the screen to make it larger?

Can you please just move forward? Yes.

Okay, okay, hi. Hello, I'm Sarah Horne, senior planner. Hi, guys. And as KJ mentioned, we're here this evening to get your feedback on the remaining conditions of approval and recommended amendments for the comprehensive plan. So for our agenda, we'll quickly go over a process update. Then we'll walk through the remaining items for consideration and the other approval body's latest actions related to these. There'll be time for clarifying questions and then you'll have time to discuss and take action on the items we review. Okay, so related to the process, as you know, we've completed the first round of review and are now moving through the second round, and you're our last stop on that round. As we go through the presentation tonight, you'll see some items you've seen before. These are the items where all four approving bodies have not yet reached agreement. After tonight, we'll bring any outstanding items back for a third round of reviews in August, and staff have already reserved dates for these meetings. Before we start the review, I'll just quickly explain the symbols you'll see in the tables on the following slides. In the fourth column of each table, which shows the conditions or amendment language, red text indicates proposed additions and strikethroughs represent proposed deletions. For the votes, which are noted in the last four columns, a green checkmark indicates support for the proposed condition or recommendation. A red X means the item is not supported. A blue square, excuse me, indicates a body remained neutral and would approve the plan with or without the proposed change. And a gray circle means the body didn't vote on the item because it wasn't applicable. applicable to them and One other note tonight. We're focusing on the current status of each item So the symbols and proposed edits you're going to see reflect where each item stands today and the most recent actions taken by the other bodies Okay, so on to the remaining conditions of approval for your consideration we'll begin with the Board of County Commissioners conditions and In the second round of review, BOCC reaffirmed their condition of approval to remove the history section from the plan. Planning Board voted not to support this condition, but they also made a second motion to approve the plan with or without the removal of the section. If Council accepts this condition, the item will make one last stop at County Planning Commission. If you don't support it or request additional edits, the item will have to return to both the Planning Commission and BOCC. So the next condition relates to Policy 79, Municipal Airport, which Council needs to reconsider. BOCC offered an updated condition that removes language Planning Board added at the end of the policy, which implicated the county to a degree they weren't prepared to commit to. The updates are reflected on this slide. Planning Board reviewed BOCC's suggested edits and approved their amended condition. If Council accepts it, it will be included in the final plan. If you don't support it or request additional edits, this item will return to planning board and BOCC. The third BOCC condition of approval for your reconsideration relates to the future land use map. During their second round of review, two of three commissioners on BOCC reaffirmed their condition to change all neighborhood one future land use designations in planning area two, the urban edge, which is outside of the limits to . Okay, so I'll just talk louder. So as you know, I don't think it's on. They want to change, there we go, all of the planning area, planning area two, which is out in the county, to rural lands and take away neighborhood one. Planning board accepted this condition, recognizing that the city has annexation policies in place that can address a land use change in the future outside of the map. If council also accepts this condition, the map change will be incorporated into the final plan. If you don't support it or request additional revisions, the item will have to return to both planning board and BOCC. Okay, so this goes with that. If the BOCC future land use map change is accepted, the rural lands designation definition would also have to be amended because the original definition didn't anticipate applying rural lands to area two properties in the county. So staff, KJ, drafted revisions shown on the screen in the unhighlighted red text and strikethroughs. BOCC supported the revision. Planning Board then recommended additional language highlighted in yellow on the screen to more clearly describe how future land use map changes would be handled upon annexation. If Council supports this additional language, this item will need to return to Planning Commission and BOCC for final approval. If you don't support it, the definition would revert back to the staff revision version. Then it would only need to go back to planning commission for final review. And any additional edits from council would require another round of review by all three of the other bodies. Okay, now to planning board conditions of approval. The first relates to the urban design section of the neighborhood one feature land use designation. Planning Board submitted a proposed edit in round one, which is the strike through you see on the screen. It wasn't reviewed by council at that time, so they've now submitted it as a condition so you can weigh in. Their concern is that the original language is too broad. They feel it could be interpreted to support the larger setbacks found in some of our existing neighborhoods, which may not be consistent with the more compact housing and neighborhood serving commercial uses envisioned for neighborhood one. If you accept the condition, the amendment will be incorporated into the final plan. If you don't support it, or if you make changes to it, the item will have to return to Planning Board. And the last condition of approval for your consideration relates to Policy 82, Housing Diversity and Supply. Planning Board reconsidered their condition after BOCC removed the reference to the county, which made it a city-only policy again. The board offered a slightly revised version for council to consider in an attempt to clarify their intent related to housing affordability, which you see on the screen. They also made a motion to approve the plan with or without this edit. So you make the final decision tonight on which version of the policy will be included in the plan, the version on the screen or the original policy language. Okay, that's it for conditions and now we'll move to recommended amendments.

Yes. What's the blue ones again? I'm so sorry. That's okay. What's the blue?

The blue means that they, the green might mean that they approved it or not, and the blue is they are neutral. So they are okay with or without it.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah. Okay. So the first amendment for your consideration relates to the rural land use class land use goals. BOCC proposed an edit to clarify that rural lands are working lands. It's supported by Planning Board and Planning Commission. If you accept this addition, it will be incorporated into the final plan. If you request revisions, the item will need to return to all of the other three bodies. The Second Amendment relates to the Future of Housing section in the Vision and Values chapter of the plan. Planning Board removed the Near Transit addition that Council recommended in Round 1. This version has also been accepted by Planning Commission and BOCC. If you accept it, the change will be made. If you don't support it, the policy will revert back to the original language, which is the language without the red text you see on the screen. If you request additional edits, the item will have to go back to the other three approval bodies. And the last recommended amendment we have for you relates to Policy 89, Fire Adapted Communities. And as you remember, Council proposed this amendment. Planning Board didn't support it as proposed. Instead, they recommended the slightly revised language, which you see on the screen, which just removes the phrase, that affects residential density. They stressed that emergency management planning should apply to all uses within mapped wildfire ignition zones, not just residential development. They also expressed concern that the original language could unintentionally limit expanding future housing opportunities in the future. So because this edit only applies to the city, Planning Commission and BOCC won't review it. If you accept it, the revised language will be included in the final plan. If you don't support it, all of the edits, including your original recommendation, will be removed from consideration and it will revert back to the original language. Okay, so that's it for the remaining conditions and recommended amendments. We do have three draft motions prepared to help you. The first includes all of the planning board conditions. The second includes all of the BOCC conditions. And the third includes all the recommended amendments. We can also just pull up each condition and recommended amendment as we presented them and move through the motions for each one if you would prefer to deliberate and vote that way.

So I'll turn it over to you, Mayor.

Great. Well, I have a clarifying question on that one. Are those motions exclusive of each other or do you need all three?

We would need all three because they are individual and related to each of the either conditions or amendments proposed by each of the .

That's what I thought. So you're looking for all three? Yes. Okay, great. Any other questions for staff before we go to the public hearing? Not seeing any. Let's do the public hearing. We've got eight people signed up to speak. Everyone will have three minutes. And please do confine your comments to the specific amendments that we're considering tonight. Our first three speakers are all online. They are Carla Colleen, Lisa Spaulding, and Lynn Siegel.

Mayor, I do not see Carla or Lisa online tonight.

Let's go to Lynn then.

I don't approve anything about the Boulder Valley comp plan. It's much too nonspecific. And I think I'm just not supportive of the council, the groups in town that are moving forward with the comp plan policies that promote growth, basically. without, for example, checking in on water because of the Colorado River Compact and the whole issue. And it seems like Boulder Valley Comp Plan, for all of the different groups that are involved or the county commissioners, with the planning commission, with all the groups that weigh in on it. When I hear it at planning board, it's always non-specific, these generalized comments to benefit the community. And a lot of times I hear folks in the council making recommendations that are really good recommendations, but they're for the wrong end product. They're actually doing the opposite of what the people are moving forward with that statement for. And mostly it's about growth and development that is unsustainable and there's no impact fees. And there's, there's nobody's at the wheel. Um, and, and yet it's used as this body of information that everyone relies on and it's not specific enough and, and it's lofty goals and changing zoning and promoting more housing in a constrained environment of, you know, ecological and situations in our society that aren't applied within it. So I don't support anything that the Boulder Valley Comp Plan puts forward as it's, as as it's been brought before the people for the last at least 10 years. It's just not what it used to be, and it's not specific enough. And so just say no to all of it. Water is the whole issue.

Thank you.

All right. Our next three in-person speakers are Laura Gonzalez, Daniel Howard, and Daryl Monley. I don't believe Laura Gonzalez is in the room, so Daniel.

Hello again, Boulder City Council members. With regard to the BVCP, I'm speaking on an individual level and not on behalf of the Environmental Advisory Board, given I had only joined the board after the meeting when I had last discussed the BVCP. I would like to recommend three specific considerations that might be part of final deliberations about finalizing the BBCP, and if not, as specific amendments given time constraints and Mayor Brockett's specific request on specificity for the discussion today, perhaps as part of implementation. First, add extreme heat to policy 3.146. Considerations of hazards. This section lists floods, droughts, wildfires, slopes, erosion, soil, and subsidence, but not heat. Yet this policy says the city carefully regulates urban development and redevelopment in these areas. Heat currently lives only in aspirational texts. Given our recent heat wave in March 2025 Boulder reporting lab summary, by 2030 Boulder could see 28 days over 95 degrees and nearly 200 high fire risk days annually. By 2050, those numbers rise to 42 and 230 respectively. Adding heat makes a clearer site design factor and future significant planning and actions taken as informed by the BVCP. Second, restore a street tree and street scape policy. The 2021 plan had section 2.38, importance of urban canopy and street trees and street scapes, committing the city to regulations and programs. In the 2026 draft, street trees survive only as descriptive land use narratives under neighborhood one. The BVCP should include a chapter three policy that the city will establish canopy, soil volume and shade standards for public rights of way and prioritize planting in the lowest canopy, highest heat blocks. Green spaces and green corridors A central feature of Net Zero City's literature to address urban heat island effects and create active cooler mobility options should be prioritized explicitly on all public spaces, especially rights-of-way and core arterial networks, and not just neighborhood parcels. Lastly, give streets or rights-of-way a home in the future land use map. The systems class is currently set to include parks, greenways, and open space. Rights-of-way, plausibly a fifth to a quarter of city land in the largest municipally controlled land asset, appears nowhere. but the glossary defines public realm to include streets. Streets and transportation corridors should be explicitly recognized within the systems class. Otherwise, the existing greenways overlay should be modified for a designation set of streets that would also connect into the Boulder Creek, Goose Creek, Waterloo Creek, South Boulder Creek, and others as a continuous network. Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to any continued discussions you have with myself and colleagues, as well as any ongoing collaborations with the EAB to effectively collaborate on environmental issues with Boulder residents within the context of the BVCP ratification and most importantly, future implementation. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, we're going to go now to Daryl Monley, then Robert Mathias, and then Jennifer Mabry. And then Lisa Spaulding has come online. We'll get to her after that.

Yes, I'm Daryl Monley, and I have been watching the envisioning of the 15-minute neighborhoods that are part of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan Since March of 2025, the inception of that community assembly, and it's what to me seems an unconstitutional makeup of a 48-member randomly chosen group that didn't have to be citizens of the United States. And that in itself seemed very odd, that this group would include people that

So, ma'am, we're considering these specific amendments to the comp plan tonight. If you could speak to those, please.

Are we talking about what these people were talking about?

We're talking about the specific amendments that the presentations were about.

Yeah, this is really confusing because I, you know, I received an email that said we were talking, you know, that you're considering adopting this comprehensive plan. And the 15-minute neighborhoods are part of this comprehensive plan. So I'm assuming that basically I can say something about how I feel like I've been left out of the actual...