City Council - Special Meeting

Go ahead and call us to order for the Thursday September 3rd 2026 special meeting of the Boulder City Council. Can we have a roll call please Emily?

Yes and I guess it's still afternoon. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us. We'll start tonight's roll call as usual with Councilmember Adams.

Present.

Benjamin. Present. Mayor Brockett.

Present.

Kaplan.

Present.

Present.

Marquis.

Present.

Shewhart. Speer. And Mayor Pro Tem Weiner.

Present.

Mayor, we have our quorum.

Thanks so much. So if we can go to our one item, agenda item for the special meeting please.

Yes, absolutely. This is going to be for item 2A, and this is for consideration of a motion to call an executive session of the City Council pursuant to 24-6-4024A of the Colorado Revised Statute and City of Boulder Charter Section 21A-2 to receive confidential legal advice regarding authorized uses of the city open space.

So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. Can we have a roll call please, Emily?

Absolutely. We'll start the roll call with you, Mayor Brockett.

Yes.

Councilmember Kaplan.

Yes.

Marquis.

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Weiner.

Yes.

Adams.

Yes.

And Councilmember Benjamin.

Yes.

The motion to convene into an executive session is hereby approved unanimously.

VERY GOOD. SO I HAVE A FEW WORDS TO SAY BEFORE WE GET STARTED ON THAT. THE COUNCIL CALLS A SPECIAL MEETING SO IT MAY MEET IN EXECUTIVE SESSION OF THE CITY COUNCIL ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2026 AT 430 P.M. AS AUTHORIZED BY SECTION 2464024A AND I'LL ANNOUNCE THE ACTUAL TIME A LITTLE LATER, CRS AND CITY OF BOULDER CHARTER SECTION 21AA2 SO THE COUNCIL MAY RECEIVE CONFIDENTIAL LEGAL ADVICE REGARDING AUTHORIZED USES OF CITY OPEN SPACE. The following provisions of the Colorado Open Meetings Act authorize an executive session to discuss this matter, and that is conferences with an attorney for the city to receive legal advice on specific legal questions, CRS 2464024B. The topic announcement provides as much detail as possible without compromising the purpose for which the executive session is authorized. I will now entertain a motion, an additional motion to convene an executive session pursuant to CRS section 246424 for a conference with the city manager and attorney for the city for the purpose previously stated. Second. So moved. Second. Very good. Emily, should we do a roll call for this as well or a show of hands?

Show of hands is appropriate.

All in favor, please raise your hand. Okay, that passes 6-0. A motion for executive session must pass by two-thirds of the quorum present, but that was unanimous. So the motion has passed. The council will now recess and reconvene immediately in executive session to discuss the matter previously stated for the purposes previously stated at 4.33 p.m. FOR THE RECORD OF ANY PERSON WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE EXECUTIVE SESSION BELIEVES THAT ANY SUBSTANTIAL DISCUSSION OF ANY MATTER IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE MOTION TO GO INTO EXECUTIVE SESSION OCCURRED DURING THE EXECUTIVE SESSION OR THAT ANY IMPROPER ACTION OCCURRED DURING THE EXECUTIVE SESSION IN VIOLATION OF THE OPEN MEETINGS LAW, I ASK THAT YOU STATE YOUR CONCERNS FOR THE RECORD. SEEING NONE, THE TIME IS NOW and we conclude this executive session and to return to the public city council meeting. Looks like OK and we're almost done here. We're now back into our regular special meeting. THE TIME IS NOW 5 18 P.M. AND THE EXECUTIVE SESSION HAS BEEN CONCLUDED. THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE EXECUTIVE SESSION WERE TAISH ADAMS, MATT BENJAMIN, AARON BROCKETT, DAN BURKE, ROB KAPLAN, TINA MARQUES, CHRIS MESCHUK, JANET MICHAELS, ZUNERI RIVERA-VANDERMEYER, TARA WEINER. FOR THE RECORD, ASK AGAIN IF ANY PERSON WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE EXECUTIVE SESSION BELIEVES ANY SUBSTANTIAL DISCRETION OF ANY MANNER IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE MOTION TO GO INTO EXECUTIVE SESSION OCCURRED DURING THE EXECUTIVE SESSION. OR THAT ANY IMPROPER ACTION OCCURRED DURING THE EXECUTIVE SESSION IN VIOLATION OF THE OPEN MEETINGS LAW, I ASK THAT YOU STATE YOUR CONCERNS FOR THE RECORD. SEEING NONE, I NOW CONCLUDE THE SEPTEMBER 3, 2026 SPECIAL MEETING. WE'LL COME BACK AT 5 30 FOR OPEN COMMENT.

Emily, do we have Channel 8 ready to go?

Yes, Channel 8 is ready to go.

All right. Well, welcome, everyone, to the Thursday, September 3rd, 2026 regular meeting of the Boulder City Council. I'm going to go ahead and call us to order. And Emily, can you do a roll call, please?

Absolutely, Mayor. We'll start tonight's roll call, as usual, with Council Member Adams.

Present.

Benjamin?

Present.

Mayor Brockett.

Present.

Marquis.

Here.

Schuhart.

Here.

Speer.

Who?

Does not look like Speer is here. Nicole's not here yet. And Mayor Pro Tem Weiner.

Present.

Mayor, we have our quorum.

Thanks so much. Emily, can you go over the public participation guidelines, please?

Absolutely.

Absolutely. Just for the record, Rob Kaplan is here too.

Okay, did I not get you? I'm here. I'm sorry about that. Thank you. Okay. All right. Well, thank you everyone for joining us tonight for tonight's city council meeting and your participation. We ask that you abide by the rules of decorum found in the Boulder revised code, including 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 auto 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 lawful order of the presiding officer to leave the meeting room or refrain from addressing the council. All remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person. 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 so much.

Thanks, Emily. All right, we have 19 people signed up to speak because one person withdrew. Every person will have two minutes to speak, and I will be strict with those time limits in the interest of fairness. The first three speakers are Shree Sigmund, Harry Pullman, and Carolyn Martin. So Shree, come on up.

Good evening, Mayor and members of City Council. My name is Cherie Sigmund. I live on University Hill, one of the many neighborhoods that will be affected by the potential closure of neighborhood schools. While I understand that BVSD controls our education system, the consequences of closing neighborhood schools extends far beyond education policy. It affects housing, transportation, traffic, climate, neighborhood vitality, and whether or not Boulder remains a place that families can realistically live. That is why this is a city issue. Boulder Comprehensive Plan has been anticipating the future population growth and housing while BVSD is considering permanently eliminating neighborhood school capacity. Our own planning vision calls for walkable, connected, 15-minute neighborhoods. Removing neighborhood schools works directly against the school, sending more families across town and putting more cars on our roads. There's also a serious question of proportionality. Is there enough benefits in their proposal to justify permanently dismantling established school communities and disrupting roughly 1,800 students? I am asking this council to formally request BVSD to delay their September 22nd vote for just one year. Use that time to reconcile enrollment projections with Boulder's growth plans, evaluate traffic and climate impacts, and determine what happens to the closed school properties. These are just a couple of the unconsidered aspects of their proposal. I know that all of you value well-thought and comprehensive plans. This is not one of them. Boulder cannot have one public body planning where future families will live while another permanently removes the neighborhood infrastructure those families will need without evaluating those plans together. Please give Boulder the chance to make the right plan. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Now let's go to Harry Pullman, Carolyn Martin, and Elaine Winans.

Excuse the speed with which I'm going to read this. My name is Harry Pullman. I'm a retired physicist who came to Boulder in 1965 to work at Boulder Airspace, and I've lived in the Kuwaitian and Fraser Meadows subdivisions ever since. I live at 225 Le Pen Way. Fraser does a wonderful job with independent and assisted living. And over many years, my wife and I have had many good friends and neighbors living and working there. And my wife and I have been on their waiting list for years. However, I strongly oppose Fraser's latest proposal as it presently stands for several reasons, including the fact that it works away from Council's stated goal of increasing affordable housing in Boulder. I therefore request that you call up LUR202500056 and the proposed ordinance 8756 to give pocket place to them. In that call-up, please show the specific benefit that this huge facility and its attendant vacation of pocket place provides to the public. Right now, I only see a benefit to Frasier at the sacrifice of modest homeowners and neighbors, the people your desire is of helping in Boulder. In that call-up, please also review the project's weakening of the city's own codes regarding height, setback, harmonious transition between zones, etc. Presently, at 55 feet, these structures will be higher than the Great Wall of China as they loom over modest neighborhood homes. For all the years of inevitable noise, dust, disruption, and congestion of pedestrian and automobile traffic during construction, followed by a degradation of the overall neighborhood because of more huge facilities, At least those facilities should have to meet the city's height setback and zoning transition requirements. Finally, I appreciate all the time and effort you spend, and I hate to lay one more thing on you, but I urge you to personally look at the overall neighborhood and the specific areas being impacted by this proposal. Drawings alone cannot adequately display all that is so disturbing about it. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Now we'll go to, and if we can have quiet in the audience, you can wave your hands like this if you support something that's said. We've got Carolyn Martin and then Elaine Winans and then Margaret Lecomte.

Hello, I'm Carolyn Martin, and I live at 4965 Ricara Drive. And I just wanted to say thank you so much, all of you, for your service to the City of Boulder. I'm asking you please vote for a public hearing to reconsider or call up land use review 2025-00056 involving the high-rise Fraser Meadows Retirement Center proposal. And I'm also opposed to the proposed ordinance number 8756, which would give away Ponga Place to Fraser Meadows free of charge. While I absolutely agree with you that we need affordable housing in Boulder, the proposed expansion of Fraser Meadows does not accomplish that goal. This project provides for luxury retirement housing for wealthy individuals. This is not affordable housing. In doing so, it sacrifices lower priced single family homes in my neighborhood. We desperately need to maintain reasonably priced single family homes in Boulder. This proposal is causing neighbors to consider selling their homes, displacing them from where they have lived for decades. And there are troubling inequities in resources and rights between developers and community members. Numerous engineering firms and consultants have been paid by Fraser Meadows. Their drawings presented at the planning board hearing inaccurately represented the homes across the street on Sioux Drive. The Fraser Meadows proposal requested numerous building exemptions, the most egregious in my mind being the height modification from the standard 35 to 55 feet. There is no buffer zone at all in this proposal. Single family homes are directly across the street. I am perfectly fine with the retirement expansion that respects the normal 35 foot building height, but I'm not okay with the rules being disregarded and a height modification being purchased. Allowing this project to proceed will also set a precedent and other builders with multimillion dollar projects will request similar exemptions in the future. Lastly, Ponca Place should not be vacated.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, now we'll go to Elaine Winans, Margaret LeCompte and Barbara Steinmetz.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. There may be alternatives that deserve serious consideration. A smaller senior living development could potentially be built on the adjacent Mountain View Methodist property being acquired by Fraser Meadows without vacating Ponca Place. Before giving up a public right-of-way, shouldn't the city fully evaluate whether a smaller project could meet the need? While preserving this important connection, I especially ask Council to consider punk a place is an open thoroughfare not simply a pedestrian pathway. For residents along the long stretch of Sioux drive to drive is like an artery and punk a place is the connecting vein to party drive and ultimately baseline road. Thunderbird and Mohawk drives can always and already become heavily congested. Ponca Place provides an important alternate route when those roads are backed, blocked up, or compromised. It's also an important connection for emergency vehicles. Closing Ponca Place is like cutting off a vein from an artery. It reduces our options precisely when we may need them most. The 2013 flood demonstrated how quickly access in South Boulder can be disrupted. With increased density, we need reliable emergency access and multiple routes, not fewer. This is about more than one development. Thank you.

Your time is up, but thank you. Now we have Margaret LeCompte and then Barbara Steinmetz and Davis Hart.

Good evening. I live right across the street from the Fraser Meadows retirement community. I'm speaking to request that tonight City Council call up the Land Use Review 2025-00056 regarding the luxury high-rise apartment proposal submitted by Fraser Meadows Manor, the applicant. and include in that the proposed ordinance to give Ponca Place to the applicant in the call-up. We Frazier Meadows neighbors respectfully request the city to vote for a public hearing on this entire project. We feel a public hearing is needed so city council can seriously consider the planning board's recommendation to go forward. We hold the project absolutely provides no benefit to the surrounding community or the city of Boulder overall. It meets none of the city's stated objectives, it violates nearly all limits on building construction, in the Boulder Municipal Code, and Boulder does not need more million-dollar luxury apartments. Further, Planning Board's decision-making has been remarkably data-free, justified mostly by Planning Board's assertions that are unsupported by any evidence whatsoever. We neighbors hold that most of the assertions are insupportable. Moreover, this project has been planned without transparency or listening at all to the neighborhood. Both our concerns and our reasonable requests for modification have been ignored, and once again, we simply have not been heard. We also oppose giving Ponca Place to Fraser Meadow for free in the middle of a budget crisis. Despite planning boards saying that it isn't, Ponca Place is a much-used public roadway for local residents, employees, visitors, parents, and kids. It's also critical for evacuation in case of wildfires, floods, and emergencies. Blocking it off forever with steel bollards is incomprehensible. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Barbara Steinmetz, Davis Hart, and Robert Ketterhagen.

Hi, I'm Barbara Steinmetz. The spruce pool we're trying to save is the asset to our city, much like open spaces, more than financially valuable, valuable as the heart of the summer gathering place for lucky, hundreds of boat rights. It is now also known nationally. I mentioned Spruce Pool on the American Cancer Society annual swim fundraiser website as the safe, simple symbol valued in my town, where I was able to, as an almost 90-year-old, swim 21.6 miles safely, comfortably under the watchful eyes of the devoted lifeguards. The name of Spruce Bowl Boulder, Colorado is seen nationwide as this is a national event where I personally thanked Spruce Pool for being the place I could safely accomplish my mission. The picture of our beautiful pool has now been spread across our country. Things I want you to consider carefully when you debate the efficacy of keeping this boat or landmark open. Safety, safety, life-infusing safety for those who are aging with disabilities. They come here because it is safe for a woman with long COVID on oxygen, that she can put her oxygen can on the side of the pool, not worrying that somebody is going to kick it over. With her long tube, she keeps her body functioning by water walking up and down the 25-yard length for two years, and now with a post-surgical leg, she's again using the pool. This is a real person. Peter, an 81-year-old lifelong Boulder resident with a back that may prevent him for continuing his life.

Ma'am, your time is up, but thank you so much for your testimony. Thank you. Now we'll go to Davis Hart, then Robert Ketterhagen, and Darla Hench.

Hi, I'm a resident of the 1000 block of Grant Place just west of 9th Street. Our street is the image of small town living, families with kids of varying ages, young professionals, retirees. We held our 50th annual block party last year and we socialized regularly. Earlier this year, a developer purchased a single family home in our block and applied to build a 12 bedroom duplex as a student rental. I'm speaking tonight on one question. Do we want this development to become the poster child of what densification means in Boulder? This isn't a privileged NIMBY screech. By all accounts, we support diversification densification in service of affordability. Most of us are fortunate at all to be able to afford to live where we do and can't simply upgrade to get away from the noise. However, we're seeing the result of a well-intentioned policy going wrong. The zoning for affordable housing ordinance aims to promote densification by allowing duplexes on small lots near transit corridors makes total sense generally, but how it plays out is very neighborhood specific. On Grant Place, we live in both the WUI, the Wildland Urban Interface, and the SUI, the Student Urban Interface. If you don't know what that means, come on up on a Friday night. In our case, densification is bringing along with it disorder and unaffordability. Students bring disorder because our policies tolerate it. Just a few nights ago, students up the street decided that a bonfire would be a great idea. Police were called and students were given merely a warning in a property that receives hundreds of calls for trash and noise violations every year. Student development also brings unaffordability. This development will gross the owner $250,000 a year while taking a property off the market that could have gone to long-term residents. So I ask you, is this the image of densification that we want? My neighbors are saying no, and they're saying no by grasping at any tactic, no matter how blunt, including a historic neighborhood designation that no one was talking about five months ago, because these are the tools that are available to us. Signs are in the yards, local reporters are covering this, and it's coming now to city council. Policy change is hard and messy. But I don't believe the answer is to avoid the change. The answer is to be ready to iterate when it's not working. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Robert Ketterhagen, Darla Gench, and Ed Simmons.

Hi, Robert Ketterhagen here, and I would like to first say that I appreciate Taisha Adams' stance on divestment. Her courage is incredible. The rest of this council, in their infinite wisdom, continue to invest in Caterpillar, Microsoft, the U.S. Treasury, and this is nothing short of aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza. And please don't conflate this with anti-Semitism. I love many Jewish friends, many of whom feel the same way. Judaism, absolutely. this Nazi regime of Benjamin Netanyahu, absolutely not. This council has become comfortably numb, comfortably numb to the steady drip of death of innocent Palestinians, comfortably numb to the flattened landscape of Gaza with many thousands buried beneath the rubble, Comfortably numb to the systemic rape and torture of Palestinians in Israeli detention. Comfortably numb to the systemic killing of 260 journalists to date in Gaza alone. This is the issue of our time. This is morally reprehensible. This should be at the top of your agenda. We should be investing in our community. We're green, eco-friendly companies, more in line with the values of our communities. You all need to get out of your heads and back into your hearts, back into your humanity. Furthermore, this witch hunt against Laura Gonzalez is a waste of resources. She is simply speaking truth to power. Thank you.

Thank you. Oh, quiet in the audience, please. No, quiet in the audience. Okay, now we'll go to Darla Jench, Ed Simmons, and Diane Bohan.

uh good evening council this is john morse darla is online please press star six to unmute your phone good evening my name is darla gent and i'm here tonight to expose the severe systematic loophole in Our justice system that has left myself and my two children and an ongoing danger for three years. This isn't the first time I've had to fight for justice or watch critical evidence be ignored. When I was 12 years old, my best friend went missing. He was finally found 33 years later. And to this day, I firmly know and believe the evidence I provided to authorities was highly significant to solving her crime. I learned at a young age that evidence matters and ignoring it has devastating consequences. Yeah, here I am facing the exact same dismissal from our system. For three years, my family and I have been subjected to severe identity theft, severe financial fraud, and stalking that directly targets our housing stability and safety. As a mother, I have done everything I know from filing police reports, spending thousands of dollars on private investigator and cyber reports, up and as long as my son, my 10-year-old son, and I both having to continue with the witness statements. The concrete evidence to solve my crime and protect my children. I have been in the hands of officials for years, but instead of being forwarded to DAs, there are some laws I would like to look into. I would like to propose a direct to DA evidence mandate, a law requiring that if a local police department refuses to review certified expert basket evidence packets within 14 days, that says that citizen has a direct legal mandatory right to submit the evidence to the district attorney's office. Two, mandatory verification receipts. I'd like legislation to enforce a strict evidence intake registry requiring law enforcement to issue a formal written receipt detailing every piece of evidence from being ignored and why. And three, emergency evidence-based orders, a legal framework allowing citizens such as self holding verified forensic proof of property or vehicle or tampering to instantly secure a court enforced restraining order against unknown John or Jane Doe. I'm calling on all the members of the council, city lawmakers, listening in and the media to help me find and start to produce new laws to protect not only mine, but all Colorado families. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your testimony. Right now we're going to go to Ed Simmons, then Diane Bohan and Annabelle Stevens.

Yes, hi. My name is Ed Simmons. I'm a 20-year resident of Fraser Meadows. I live on Mohawk Drive. In an attempt to further minimize impacts and a long-term maximize values envisioned by everybody here who's been involved in the Ponca Place project, There are some additional opportunities that should be considered. Landscapes, trees, maintenance should be echoed and implemented on the adjacent properties to best fulfill the intent of a zoning transition that's been much debated in many of these topics. Examples of what's happened to or what's evolving in Boulder neighborhoods where there are 55-foot tall, 300-foot long structures that coexist and Neighborhood with 60-year-old family homes, a church, a school, apartments, etc., all constrained with the interconnects and infrastructure, that should be provided. It hasn't been provided to date. Temporary access roads from and to Foothills Parkway for the construction phase, followed by a long-term access road for first responders and emergencies are a must, given the volume of traffic and the constraints on and at baseline in Mohawk. Access roads will minimize the multitude of concerns associated with the vehicles entering and exiting the site during the construction phases. They'll serve as the pedestrians and the vehicle safety concerns. It'll mitigate property, street damage, insurance claims costs, you name it, with all these trucks driving up and down the roads for two days with thousands of people that go around there. And it'll enhance, obviously, first responder response. In conjunction with what all my neighbors have said to date, I hope you seriously consider what you're trying to push forward with regards to Ponca Place. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Diane Bohan, Annabelle Stevens, and Nathan Ratledge.

I'm Diane Bohan.

If you can speak into the mic, please.

I'm sorry. I'm Diane Bohan. I also live in Fraser Meadow community, have for a number of years. I am happy for Mountain View. I'm happy for Fraser Meadows. I think that they do provide. I'm glad that the church will be sustainable. I'm glad that the community can meet some of their needs. However, I think it's a big mistake. to have these allowances. If it was reasonable in size for this community, if we had the infrastructure to support this, it would be fine. But raising it to 55 feet, allowing a whole nother story on all of those buildings, resulting in 96 homes like that. adds an immense amount of traffic and we're already very congested in our neighborhood. We have a school right in our neighborhood, right across from this facility with drop off and pick up. These kids are crossing the roads. We just had a bottleneck created in the front of our community with new bike lanes. So one of our right turn lanes was omitted. We have a concrete structure that causes an incredibly difficult turn into our neighborhood. Now I sit through two lights to get in and out of my neighborhood. Add 96 more houses with visitors and take away a road that was a thruway to the athletic club and that was a thruway to the library. And you're taking away alternatives. You're adding a lot of stress to a neighborhood. And I think it's making us less safe.

Thank you. All right, now we're going to go to Annabelle Stevens, Nathan Ratledge, and Joel Rosenblum.

Stand up, stand up.

Flatirons Elementary has helped teach me to do hard things like talking in front of a big group of adults like you. Hello, my name is Annabelle Stevens and I'm a second grader at Flatirons Elementary. Last week I learned terrible news. My school is going to close along with five other schools in Boulder. This is not good for our neighborhood. BVSD on its websites. states that walking to school is a brain boost, but you're going to send me to a school where I can't walk. Why are they taking this away from me and adding all these cars on the road? This is not good for the environment. This is not a good plan. Will you also be closing my new school in just a few years? So we will have to go through this mess all over again? What I don't understand is why you're closing such a high achieving school. At Flatirons, we work so hard. I know all my classmates try really hard. Did you know Flatirons is in the top 10% of all Colorado schools? I know I'm not alone. My teachers, friends, and Flatirons community are all sad and disappointed. My parents tell me to be kind and respectful to others, especially to other grownups. But in a survey, BVSD put out 64% of respondents said they didn't want kids to be separated and split up into different schools. But that's what the plan does. Why aren't the grown-ups in charge of listening to us? They're not being kind or respectful. Please don't close Flatirons. It's the place where joy, community, and learning meet. No to school closures. Thank you.

Wow. Annabelle, that was amazing. Thank you so much for coming and testifying to us. I don't know how many second graders we've had here at council, but I'm glad that you could come join us. But now we'll go back to being quiet in chambers after that delightful testimony. Okay, now we'll go to Nathan Ratledge, Joel Rosenbloom, and Mark Johnson.

Thank you, Annabelle, especially for being so polite. I'm Nathan Ratledge. I'm a father of three BVSC children, homeowner on University Hill. and the CEO of a growing Boulder-based company. I want you to very briskly discuss two critical issues and how the city can immediately respond. First, as you heard, the Hill and Chautauqua neighborhood is being overrun by adult party houses. This is not the same problem as five years ago. Since Governor Polis eliminated occupancy limits, landlords have aggressively increased home conversion, and the city has done nothing to illustrate the problem as another gentleman did. A house on our street had probably 15 noise complaints last year. Your data says zero. Zero represents how misinformed the city's perspective is. Further, this huge party house pays lower property taxes than us and is expanding. We are literally subsidizing the degradation of our community. We're living through a community's death by a thousand cuts and this has enabled the second problem. The second problem Last week, BVSD announced they were closing Flatirons, the neighborhood school. The process across BVSD, so affecting all schools, not just us, has been extremely rushed and risked decades long negative community impact. But why should the city care about this issue in Flatirons? Flatirons is the bedrock of this community. It's why people move there, right? It represents nearly every priority in the city's master plan. And allowing it to close for some rushed purpose puts a literal hole in a family-friendly, walkable community. It's a death knell, right? The combined situation is at a breaking point, full stop. And it's time to prioritize the families and homeowners that are your tax base. Here's what you can do today. Immediately direct staff to compile recommendations to address stealth dorm expansion, including impact fees on landlord-owned properties. Two, contact the BVSD directors and attend the September 8th meeting to express your concern about their rushed process. This is an easy ask. All we're saying is ask them to defer their whole proposal by just one year in order to account for the city of Boulder's comprehensive plan. These are simple but effective actions to promote the priorities of the city. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Joel Rosenbloom, Mark Johnson, and Julie Schaefer.

Hi, thank you for hearing me. My name is Joel Rosenbloom, I've lived at 230 Le Pan Way in Fraser Meadows subdivision for over 33 years in a modest tri-level house. Our neighborhood does need more affordable housing for middle and lower income people. I think that that's a great objective for city council. However, building 96 luxury units with no affordable housing doesn't help anyone achieve our goals, our mutual goals, especially for lower and middle income seniors. We live in Fraser Meadows. Excuse me, um the height modification Given ostensibly for offering affordable housing. It's not actually offering affordable housing at all It was bought on a nine point two million dollar cash and new contract Doesn't help anyone in the Frazier now Frazier Meadows neighborhood and doesn't provide any affordable housing It doesn't provide any benefit to the community at large, only to the developer and the corporation managing Fraser Meadows Manor. The traffic study paid for by the developer was inadequate, doesn't account for having Horizons K-8 across the street from the proposed expansion. Horizons is a magnet school, and kids are dropped off and picked up on Pawnee, on Sioux, and Mohawk. Mohawk is really the only access route that construction trucks are going to be able to get out of our subdivision adequately. And during pick up and drop off, Mohawk is a disaster. given the modifications that were made to baseline and Mohawk to that intersection, it's going to be extremely difficult for trucks to get in and out. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll go to Mark Johnson, Julie Schaefer, and Jason Strauss.

Good evening, council members. My name is Mark Johnson and I live on Sioux Drive directly across from the proposed Fraser Meadows expansion. I'm asking you to do two things tonight. First, please call up the planning board's decision on the Fraser Meadows expansion, the 350 Ponca Place site review and give this project a full city council public hearing. Second, please do not give away Ponca Place without greater scrutiny of what the public is losing and what it receives in return. Boulder site review criteria require an appropriate transition when a project is adjacent to properties of substantially lower intensity, mass and scale. Yet serious questions remain about whether the transition between the 55 foot four story development and the single family homes directly across Sioux drive was adequately addressed. Two planning board members supported meaningful changes to height and setbacks. This tells us the issue isn't settled. And Ponca Place deserves a closer look. The city's own agenda describes what replaces this public right of way as a new private drive. And vacating Ponca Place helps make this development possible. Once a public asset becomes private, we can't pretend that nothing has changed. I support Fraser Meadows and senior housing, but this project asks too much of the surrounding neighborhood. These are significant questions and I respectfully ask you to allow them to be addressed at a public hearing. Please call up the planning board decision and do not give up Ponca place until these issues have been fully examined. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Now let's go to Julie Schaefer, Jason Strauss, and Scott Allman.

Hi. As I listen to the issues being raised by my fellow community members surrounding the closure of BVSD schools, party houses, high-end development, affordable housing, I would add to that list the proposed closure of Spruce Pool. Spruce Pool has always represented the values of the community I love, a town focused on the health and wellness of its citizens. It feels like Boulder has lost its way. We need Spruce Pool because it's the best demonstration of a walkable 15 minute city. One of the goals the city says it holds. A pool in the urban core accessible by bike, foot, and bus. In fact, I was swimming last summer when the governor and his kids walked over to use Spruce Pool. Imagine. We need Spruce Pool to attract and maintain a high quality of life for families seeking a swim experience rather than a water park. We need Spruce Pool because it serves the social, emotional, and physical needs of our aging population. Spruce Pool is a remedy for our loneliness epidemic. a place that legions frequent to experience community, health, and connection. Why is Parks and Rec forced to reckon with a revenue-based budget of scarcity when other city services seem to operate from a position of abundance? Since Spruce Pool is over 100 years old with an interesting and important history, we must consider its historic value. How is it that at a time...

Your time's up, but thank you for your testimony. All right, now we'll go to Jason Strauss, Scott Ullman, and Deborah Fryer.

Who waits for me? Okay. Hi, City Council.

My name is Jason... And can you get right into the mic, please?

Hi, my name is Jason Strauss. I live on Sioux Drive in Key Waden Meadows or Fraser Meadows. And I'm here tonight to ask city council to consider a hearing, a public hearing on the expansion of Fraser Meadows and the vacation of Ponca Place. I bought my first home a few years ago on Sioux Drive with my wife and six-month-old in Labrador. Now we're two little boys in an older Labrador. This is the neighborhood we used to walk to the library, walk to school, walk to Big Daddy Bagels, walk to Safeway. And the site review actually leaves, and city code, and planning board, leave a lot of interpretation. Things like the transition, things like massing, things like the grounds on which they're allowed to exceed the height. And when you consider that transition, I live closer than almost everyone in this room, less than 100 feet from the 55-foot development that's going to be built. I don't understand how that transition is reasonable. That's about what this scale is. When you consider massing from this enormous building, it's almost a fifth of a mile long. When that was brought up, they added some extra windows. This is not a reasonable allotment. Similarly, digging down two stories, like I said, a stone's throw away from my front door isn't viable. The house that I bought has now had foundation work done because of the damage done just 15 years ago in the flooding. So again, I'm seriously encouraging a strong review of that development and the vacation of Ponca Place, which we used to walk a lot. And I have some more time, so I'll just, I think I heard a comment earlier about maybe using your brain less in your heart more, and maybe we should consider using some more of our brains as well. Thank you. Quiet, quiet in the audience, please.

All right, Scott Ullman, and then Deborah Fryer is our last speaker.

Hi, my name is Scott Allman. I have lived at 1720 Bluff in downtown Boulder for 48 years. I'm here tonight urging the council to adopt a new policy about bears in downtown Boulder. The problem began last year when our trees hosted a mother and her three cubs from early August through late September. They made a lot of poop to scoop. This year, for the last two weeks, a large black male spends the night in our Douglas fir. City, private, state, and other resources are no assistance. We became so familiar with the folks at the Colorado Division of Wildlife that we sent them a Christmas card. Lately, when I called 911 for help, the response was, the City of Boulder policy is that bears are allowed to roam freely through the city. Boulder is not the only Colorado town with bears. I urge city staff to learn from Durango or Aspen. They have bear hotlines. Police investigate calls. Most importantly, they have set up and they enforce policies so that thoughtless citizens don't attract hungry bears in the first place. So tonight after this meeting, I'm going to walk a few blocks to 17th Street, turn north, cross over Pearl Street, and stop at the gate to my backyard. I'll stop because then I'll peer in the backyard to see if there are any bears. If I see a bear, I'll walk around the block and go into my house from the front door.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Our last speaker is Deborah Fryer.

Good evening, Mayor, City Manager, and members of Boulder City Council. My name is Deborah Fryer. I live in Northeast Boulder, and I'm here to talk about Spruce Pool funding. And I would like to invite my fellow swimmers to stand just so you know how much we care about aquatics in Boulder. We just learned last Friday about the proposed cuts in funding to Spruce and Scott for 2027, and that no funding is indicated in the budget for Spruce in 2028. Why we need Spruce Pool. Number one, safety, as has been mentioned before. Today I swam with someone who has long COVID, a broken leg, someone who has cancer, someone who has spinal fusions, someone with a double hip replacement, someone with MS, and the list is on and on. And I've been swimming every day at Spruce Pool with my fellow community, many of whom choose to swim at Spruce because it feels safe for us. It's important for our physical health. We don't worry about being swum over by a more competitive or faster swimmer. And honestly, the people at Scott don't want us to be slow there. The second reason that Spruce is important is because it's an overflow pool. Today, Elevations was there doing their swim practice, and they told me they would rent the pool if it were available, but they called Spruce and said it wasn't available. So there's an income stream there from people wanting to rent the pool. Yesterday, Scott had boiler and electrical issues, so Scott came over to swim. Somebody reached out to me today from Meadows saying if Spruce closes, it's going to put the squeeze on the entire aquatics community. So there is, with increasing development in Boulder, an increasing need for open, accessible public pools. And with climate change, it's all the more important. The third thing about Spruce Pool is that it is historic. It has been, there have been swimmers there for over a century. We can't let this go the way of development and dollars. It's really important that we keep this walkable, safe, and accessible for our community. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Well, thanks everyone for joining us this evening and coming out and speaking to us. I'll turn to city staff to see if there are any responses.

Thanks so much, Mayor. And first of all, let me commend Annabelle for coming and speaking so beautifully to city council. Makes me think that our city, our country is in very good hands with this next generation. Certainly, a couple things. I won't comment on an item that you are considering for call-up, so I'll leave that there. A couple of things that I heard to follow up on to Ms. Jentz. I don't know if you are still listening to us, but I have heard from our police department that they will be reaching out to follow up. We believe we have a case from 2014. but want to make sure that we understand all the issues. So we'll be following up there. To Mr. Ratledge, thank you so much for your comments. We know that we passed a nuisance ordinance in the last few years. I'll be following up with staff just to see what we know with our data, know what that looks like. And if there's anything that we can do or if there's anything to be brought forward to council, we will do so, but wanted to thank you for that. Lastly, I'll certainly be following up Mr. Allman to see what calls we have received in animal protection. So appreciate your comments as we bring that forward. And perhaps last, but certainly never least, I want to address the comments about Spruce Pool. It is so amazing that so many people love this pool. I want to share what I said just recently. It's not that we have made a decision when parks and recs bring forward, or any department for that matter, bring forward any reductions in services. They do so thoughtfully. They do so with, frankly, a heavy heart for services that are there. But I know that Parks and Recs are trying to meet with supporters of the pool. I believe that's next week or the week afterwards. We do have a challenge with ongoing funding, and we would not be remiss if we did not share that forward. So we are funding for one year. We are continuing to look and maybe work with some of you about this challenge we have with ongoing funding. But we hear it. We know that this is a facility that is used. But I will say that there are lots of facilities, as we have heard from our folks at different rec centers. We go into this thoughtfully. We want to hear more from you. And at the end of the day, we will see what 2028 brings.

But we wanted to start the conversation because if not, it would not allow us space and time to converse with you. about the future. So thank you for coming and sharing this.

Thanks, Neria. Teresa?

Nothing from me, Mayor. Thank you.

Any questions for city staff? Tara?

No. Comments.

Okay. Tina?

Yeah. Could you just describe whether there was engagement with the school district when you were thinking about planning and particularly around capacity related to our development?

Councilmember, in terms generally of, we do have meetings with BVSD, did you say? We do have meetings with BVSD periodically. They, for example, let us know that they were engaging. They were about to embark on a community engagement process. We have heard from them what similar other communities and other their engagement about the reasons for which they are moving forward. As we continue to think about ways in which either they are expanding or retracting, we think about ways in which we can partner. We meet with them quarterly, but certainly more frequently to address other issues, perhaps less focused on development, if I'm honest, but more focused on security or areas in which we overlap. But we have a very open door to them and always happy to discuss.

Tysha and then Ryan.

Thank you. And thank you for everyone who's come out. I just have a few questions. The first was a follow-up. I did speak with you, Nuri, about the 13-bedroom duplex and just wanted to, I think you said you were going to follow up on that. I was just curious to hear if you had some more additional information on that.

It is. I believe, unless staff tells me otherwise, that it is under review still. It is.

and I see our Director of Planning and Development Service coming down, so maybe I will not misspeak and allow you to speak truth.

Good evening, Council, and thanks for the question. I'm Brad Mueller. I'm the Director of Planning and Development Services. The property in question is located in a zone district that allows duplexes, so what's proposed is a duplex to replace the existing building with a new structure and a duplex. And the duplex has currently proposed one of the units five bathrooms and the other one, or bedrooms, excuse me, and eight in the other. The building code determines how large individual rooms and such can be. And our initial review shows that it's legal under the building code. But we're not complete yet.

And will that have an opportunity to go through Pan and Board and then have the potential for a call up?

It does not. It's a. By right activity. It's a it's an existing property, right because it meets the zoning and it meets the building code like Frankly the you know hundreds of permits that we get I'm sorry I guess I'm just having a problem with six bedroom and six bathrooms being a duplex.

I don't think That certainly wasn't anything that I was considering as appropriate for when we had made that decision. So I'm just concerned. Given that it is by right, is there any pathway? Again, we set rules. I think this is a new one. We were excited about this, but this is certainly not the direction, at least for the intention, you know, when I voted on that. I didn't know that this scale would have been possible.

We can certainly circle back. around with the city attorney's office. But it's a pretty straightforward building permit. As part of building codes, you can't have just unlimited types of rooms. So for bedrooms, for example, there has to be living space and kitchen space as well. So it will have to meet that. And there is a de facto limitation based on that. But that's what we're working with right now.

okay so when forum based code doesn't meet the expectations i look forward to hearing from our city attorney what the pathways can be to mitigate that before this becomes a a larger issue i think this is one of the first in underneath that that code or just at this scale it's it's not the form basically but rather the family friendly that made changes to some of the uh zone district allowances maybe we can take this exchange offline because we're coming to the end of our open comment time sure So as I said, I look forward to hearing more about the legalities and pathways forward when it becomes available. I have other questions, and although I appreciate our time limit, this is the time to be able to respond to public comment. The next question I had was on rental property oversight and reporting. Is there any kind of mechanism, this is in relation to the noise ordinances, Is there any kind of reporting that we receive or any transparency around these kinds of complaints and, you know, any threshold as far as, you know, or rather I would look forward to receiving more information around compliance reporting and any kind of corrections that go along with that. Hey, hey.

Thanks so much, Councilmember. Jen, do you want to talk about the reporting or the collection of data?

Is my mic on? Yes, it is. Hi, I'm Jen Ross with the City of Boulder, obviously, and I'm the Code Compliance Manager for Planning and Development Services. And yes, we have so many mechanisms in place for noise violations, and we do collect that data. And when we start to get close to where we would be hitting our nuisance ordinance, we do reach out to the property operators for those rental properties and start the discussion of like, We're starting to get close to this threshold and we need some compliance help with you. So we do actively, weekly, daily have those conversations.

And there is a threshold by which if they pass they lose their rental license?

Not necessarily that they lose their rental license, but there is some kind of an action and plan that we come up with, whether that be eviction of tenants that are presently there, like the succession of their lease or other sanctions for that property reduced term. Rental licenses, there are civil penalties that are escalating, summons to go to court, those types of things, criminal penalties, so yes.

And do any of these reports ever come back to us at the council, you know, when it meets a certain threshold?

No, we wouldn't elevate it to you. We would keep it in-house, and we would just monitor those properties, and it's done on a yearly basis, those thresholds are met, and it depends on the size of the structure, how many violations they get, and it has to be a a actual violation, not a warning or a call for service.

Awesome. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Last question is around the trash and bears. So we know that this is one of the warmest and driest years on record, and I've seen an increase in bears. I've noticed trash, even in my own community, and just was curious if Western Disposal or trash companies alerts the cities when they see that kind of egregious increase non-compliance that allows bears to come?

Yes, there's a bear trash ordinance in our code, and those are enforced. I don't know if the trash companies are necessarily reporting. I'm afraid I don't know how those are coming in, but what I can tell you is that we do quite a number of prosecutions of bear trash.

I would look forward to hearing if the trash companies, because they would be on the front line, if you will. And as I said, I've seen an escalation of trash throughout the community. Thank you.

Great. I got Ryan lined up. Let's try to be quick.

Question for staff on the matter of potential displacement of families with kids and Any kind of analysis or evidence that we go to collect methodically? Heard stories about Hill with stealth norms. Then there's, of course, the aggregate citywide situation that is leading to the BVSD decline in enrollment. Do we track or analyze that?

I'm happy to get back to you, Councilmember. I don't believe that we do. We know that BVSD collects their own data, but we do not ordinarily inquire what kind of family living or whether there are children in each individual household. But happy to follow up.

Thanks. Tina?

Yeah, I just had a quick follow up on why there might be a discrepancy with what a resident in the Hill area is, they're making complaints about a noise, but what we're seeing is actually officially tracked if there's a, why there would be a discrepancy there.

I think the, without speaking to the specific complaints, I think it might depend and that's where looking back at the data as opposed to just sort of on the cuff speculation might be helpful. But it could be that when a call comes in that by the time police go and ascertain the source of the call that that is no longer happening or it doesn't reach the decibels or the party has since vacated in the case of party houses. It could be that people's expectations and community's expectations of what rises to a complaint versus an actual item is kind of different. But there's a variety of reasons for which this can happen. And so I'll be looking at the data and letting you know if there is a particular situation we need to address. I know that we have in the past few years received far fewer noise complaints and party calls, but that doesn't mean that the ones that exist are not as bothersome to community and to residents that live nearby. Whether there's a lot or little, we know that they can interfere with enjoyment of your home.

Okay. And there's no relationship. I was at the CU meeting on Tuesday with some of the student life people, and there wasn't any shift from ticketing to warnings that was systemic? It wasn't?

I do believe we provide, and we try to do this with a variety of things that we enforce, is to provide a warning First, we've done that with a variety of things, whether it's parking and noise complaints and whatnot, because we want to give our community the ability to correct action. But I would have to check on that and see if that if we have seen if there was a policy implementation that happened, if that caused a different reaction. But I'd rather let you know and follow up with actual data.

That'd be great.

Thank you.

I'll just do a question and then comment because we're running out of time.

So my first question, my only question to staff is, do you remember years ago when we talked about changing the occupancy limit, even though that's neither here nor there at this point with Governor Polis' change? Did we ever increase the amount of code enforcers, or are we still low?

I do recall the conversation. We have done a variety of things. I believe since that conversation, there has likely been an increase. But we have also just recently last year shifted and co-located code enforcement into entirely new code compliance section in our planning and development services. That includes traffic, but it also includes what used to be enforced in PD. Um, we believe as, as some of that most forward and frankly, we have been in such a constrained environment. It is hard to, um, determine how much we can do, but I'll talk to you about it.

All right. Sounds good. All right. So I'm going to do my quick comment since you're running out of time. Spruce pool people. I promise you that I'm going to work on this and I'm sure I'm not the only council member that's going to work with me on this. So we're going to try to find some solutions. Next, the stealth dorm people. I will call you the Grant Avenue people. Likewise, I'm not the only council member, but I know that I'm going to try to work on some out-of-the-box solutions because you heard from Brad that it's allowed. So we have to think of out-of-the-box solutions, and I'm going to work on it, and I know that I'm not the only council member that's going to work with me.

Okay, Matt, real quick. Maria, you mentioned that individuals who had created a bonfire were given a warning. Is that what I heard? Was that you, or was that not stated by staff? That was what was maybe just reported out there?

I think that was something somebody may have said, but I wouldn't know of those particular circumstances.

Okay, could we just verify what occurred there? Because it seems like in this community, setting any fire warning is, we skip the warning and we go straight to more direct punishment and ticket or late large fines. So that's not something you kind of correct because that's an unringing of the bell when you start a fire. So I just want to make sure we know what our process is and what role we have to maybe correct that.

Absolutely. I can't imagine with something as a fire safety that we wouldn't be taking that super seriously, but I will certainly follow up.

Okay our time for open comment has come to an end so we need to wrap up here. Anyway thanks again everyone for coming out here and just to let you know we did hear loud and clear about how important Spruce Pool and Flatirons Elementary are to the community. So thanks for your testimony.

And with that we are going to roll straight into the next section of the meeting.

So if I can ask folks as you're leaving if you can just head out and then if you have any conversations to do those in the hallway. Hey, Nicole. So I'll just pause for a moment to give people a chance to leave.

Go ahead.

All right. While people are shuffling out, we got a declaration on pollinators. We're going to do some funny bee jokes. What does the bee say? When does the bee say, zub, zub, zub? When it's flying backwards. I got one. It took a second. What is a soft-spoken bee called? A mumble bee.

Oh, mumble. Thanks for those delightful jokes.

All right, so that's, we're now gonna go into, we're now gonna go into the declarations section. So Declaration 3A is a declaration honoring Mark Wallach's service to the community to be read by Councilmember Nicole Speer.

Can we applaud Mark?

Thank you. Is this working? Yes, good. All right. Thank you, Mark, for coming back and joining us here tonight. Since I'm reading the declaration, I am going to take the liberty of just taking a few minutes to reflect on your tenure, Mark, personally, and why I will continue to miss your absence from the dais every night that I'm up here for the next couple of years. One of the things that I appreciated so much about you as a colleague was that you always said and did what you believed to be right. I'm not sure that you have a political bone in your body unless they snuck one in with your new hip. You didn't promote misinformation or abide by it. You respected staff and people as experts, even when you disagreed. And you read every packet, every attachment, and every table. We could probably still give you a quiz, and you would know most of them. On a personal level, you made me braver as a council member by modeling for me how to speak my truth, even knowing it would upset people. As a colleague, you were a mentor, a friend, and someone who could talk me off a ledge when I was upset. Knowing what concerns and questions I could anticipate from you made me a better thinker and a better council member, and that will stay with me for the next couple of years. We didn't always agree on policy, but we agreed on the importance of honesty, transparency, and facts. And in 2026, that values alignment felt much more important than policy alignment. I'm grateful for the years that we shared on this dais and grateful that we can still benefit from your careful thinking and analysis in your new position as a Daily Camera opinion columnist if anyone ever doubts your commitment to this community. That should erase them all. Thank you, Mark, for your years of service as a Boulder City Council member. Thank you for being such a wonderful colleague and mentor. I really, really appreciate it. I'm going to switch in now to reading our joint declaration from everyone. Declaration honoring Mark Wallach and his service on the Boulder City Council, dated September 3rd, 2026. Mark Wallach was elected to the Boulder City Council in 2019. During his seven years on council, Mark has been a thoughtful leader and passionate advocate for citywide issues, including public safety, affordable housing, and open space. Mark spent years as a real estate developer in New York City promoting adaptive reuse projects. He worked on voter registration, opposition to the Vietnam War, and supported Charles Evers, brother of Medgar Evers, in his campaign to be the first African American man since Reconstruction to run for a statewide office in Mississippi. Mark fell in love with Boulder while searching for great rock climbing. This drew him to advocacy for open space and his entry into Boulder politics. On council, Mark championed climate resilience, housing affordability, and the city's financial health. In addition to his work on the council body, Mark was mayor pro tem, represented Boulder at the National League of Cities, and served on local nonprofit boards. We, his city council colleagues, appreciate how Mark treated process as moral duty, his mastery of the unglamorous work of thoroughly reading packets and picking up on procedural nuance, and his mentorship on principled governance. We, the city council of the city of Boulder, Colorado, recognize, honor, and appreciate the contributions to the city by former city council member Mark Wallach, signed Aaron Brockett, mayor.

I am a bit overwhelmed. I do want to note, as I came in, I was called a Nazi, which leads me to believe that even being a private citizen can be a bit overrated. Thank you. That was so gracious and so kind. I want to apologize for any distress that was caused by my resignation. It was not my intent, but I'm very comfortable and confident that whoever sits in that chair in November or December will do a fabulous job and council will go on. I said before, and I say it again, it was a great honor to serve with you. I appreciated different perspectives, I became friends with many of you. We went through some difficult moments together, and it was the experience of a lifetime. I did try to conduct myself in a certain manner, and I hope I succeeded. I think my only regret is that I came to Council very late in life. And my parents never got to see it. I think they would have been proud of me. And I appreciate that. And lastly, I just want to make mention of the fact that nothing that I have done on council, and frankly anywhere else, could have been done without the support and love of my wife, Joan. So thank you. Thank you for 40 years, and it's been wonderful. I could hope for another 40, but I try to be a realist. But again, to all of you, this was wonderful. I appreciate all of you, and carry on. Oh, and I do suggest that you all be very nice to me since I now have. a journalist position, don't get on my bad side. Anyway, thank you so much.

That was amazing, Mark. I laughed, I cried. YOU ARE DEEPLY MISSED UP HERE BUT WE'RE VERY HAPPY FOR YOU AND YOUR NEXT ACT AND LOOK FORWARD TO READING YOUR INCISIVE AND CUTTING WORDS ON THE DAILY CAMERA AND WE'LL EXPECT SOME GOOD LAUGHS FROM THOSE AS WELL. THANKS AGAIN FOR EVERYTHING YOU'VE DONE AND CONTINUE TO DO. ALL RIGHT. WE'RE GOING TO GO TO ITEM 3B WHICH IS THE POLLINATOR APPRECIATION MONTH DECLARATION Who took mine?

I'm sorry.

So, Council, thanks so much. For 10 years, you've been reaffirming our recognition, appreciation, and commitment to the presence and critical services provided by pollinators for our community. We are excited to share with you a glimpse of the next stage in our community engagement with pollinators, from appreciation to active partnership. As you will hear, pollinators are tireless collectors of both pollen and information about the environmental health of our community, both the diversity and abundance, of different plant species and what types of toxic substances and residues are present, things like pesticides and herbicides and even microplastics. Working both within our organization and across the community with a host of organizations and individuals, we will be establishing one of the first citywide bee-based biomonitoring systems in the United States. We believe this approach can provide us with information critical to protecting the health of our local environments and serve as a model for other communities interested in doing so. And with that, I turn it over.

Good evening, Council. My name is Brett Pincairn. I'm with the Climate Initiatives Department and Nature-Based Solutions.

Brett, can we get you a mic so you're being recorded?

And we have a very special set of guests tonight to introduce the 11th annual reading of our Pollinator Appreciation Month Declaration. But this year, we're going beyond simply working to appreciate the pollinators, but to instead work with them. So tonight, rather than just tell you about this program, we wanted to actually have some of our community members, some very small and very important community members, actually help demonstrate what this program looks like. So without further ado, I have actually both native bees and honey bees who have their Honeybee home and their native home and we have a very special guest tonight doctor an imminent entomologist Dr. Buzz who will help also explain some of what's taking place. So without further ado ready Oh, we have our flowers out. Okay flowers are out. Okay, good every we got ready set go

Normally, if we wanted to understand what's happening across our environment, people would have to go out into the field to collect samples. But bees are already doing incredible work, something incredible. They visit flowers. They travel about 20 blocks around their neighborhoods. They interact with plants, air, and water. And while the bees are doing what they do, they also collect information about the environment around them. Now here's where it gets really interesting. As the bees forage, they collect pollen and sip nectar. That pollen contains information about the plants they're visiting. It can tell us what the plants are blooming across our community and give us a picture of plant biodiversity. Bees can also pick up environmental contaminants as they move through the landscape. What contaminants are present and what the bees are being exposed to is something we can learn. And the really powerful part, the bees don't just collect this information, they bring it home.

So, Dr. Buzz, what's this?

They also can get the environmental contaminants.

So when all of this information comes back to the hive, we can gather the pollen, we can gather the bee bread, we can gather the honey, and we can actually put sensitivity strips in the hives themselves. And from that information, we can tell within the radius of travel of these hives what these bees are encountering, both in terms of the biodiversity of our community, but also the kinds of environmental contaminants that they might be encountering. So let's give a big round of applause to our bees and all the hard work that they're doing for us. So to close up tonight, I just want to show this to you in terms of what this actually looks like in the community. So next slide. So we have now seven different hives in the community. I want to call out to our partners at the Jewish Community Center and the Boulder Housing Partners, who are both hosting hives for us, and also Boulder Valley Honey, who actually have five hives around the community as well, as well as native bee homes. So we're gathering information from both honeybees and native bees. Now, on the left, you'll see a one-mile radius of travel from those existing hives. And actually, bees often will travel as much as two miles. So as you can see, with a relatively small number of hives, we can actually cover the entire community gathering this information about both the health of our community and some of the contaminants that we're going to encounter. So what we're really excited about is that we believe this is a low-cost, replicable manner. These actually, one hive will make 50,000 trips a day. That's 50,000 times that it's gathering information about our community. And with that information, we believe we can much more effectively deploy the resources we have to protect our community.

And Boulder is leading the way in making that information possible.

Thank you very much. All right, so with that, we'll turn it over to Councilman Souchard to read the declaration.

Okay, good evening, Boulder Pollinators, friends of pollinators, and future friends of Boulder Pollinators. Pollinators weave together the rich fabric of life that shapes the health and beauty of Boulder's natural landscapes. They are essential to our ecological and community resilience, supporting the plants, habitats, clean water, nutritious food, and healthy ecosystems upon which people and other species depend. The health of people and pollinators are deeply interconnected. Bees rely on diverse, pesticide-free flowers for the nectar and pollen that sustain their colonies. The pollen, honey, and air surrounding bee colonies can also provide a window into the diversity and health of the landscapes we share. The City of Boulder is partnering with our local pollinators through the new Boulder Bee Biomonitoring Initiative. By analyzing honey, pollen, and air from the honeybee hives and native bee hotels, the city will learn about the environmental conditions we all share. This information can help us create healthier, more biodiverse, and more beautiful places for people, both people and pollinators. As our community celebrates the abundance of the autumn harvest and the remarkable ecosystems that sustain us, the City Council of the City of Boulder, Colorado, hereby declare September 2026 Pollinator Appreciation Month. We hereby commit to continuing our stewardship of pollinators and the habitats on which they depend, strengthening the health and resilience of our larger living community for current and future generations.

OK.

Thank you pollinators.

That was super fun. Thanks to the bees and Dr. Buzz for coming out. And we look forward to celebrating our pollinators this month.

Quick question, Mayor, for Brett, if possible. I just wanted to make sure the map included gun barrel. I thought you said that all of our communities, so I didn't see anything up in the gun barrel, but was the upper northern section inclusive of gun barrel? I just wanted to double check. Sometimes I want to make sure that no one's left behind in our community.

Not yet, but we will be expanding this program.

awesome thank you all right um emily can we go to the consent agenda please absolutely next on tonight's agenda we have item number four for our consent agenda we have consent agenda items a through i great did we have any questions or comments on the consent agenda i got i i saw nicole and then taisha

Okay. Tayshia, we'll get after we hear from them, if you don't mind. Dust that pollen off your wings and move on to the next thing.

Okay, so we're on the employee evaluations item, right? Sorry, I'm just coming off the B-Hive pollination. So yeah, we're just doing the, WHAT NUMBER IS THAT?

THIS IS ITEM 4E, CONSIDERATION OF A MOTION TO APPROVE THE 2025-26 PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS AND SALARY ADJUSTMENTS FOR THE CITY MANAGER, CITY ATTORNEY AND MUNICIPAL COURT JUDGE. THANK YOU, MAYOR.

OKAY. SO I'M A MEMBER OF THE EMPLOYEE EVALUATION COMMITTEE WITH NICOLE AND JUST WANTED TO SAY A FEW WORDS. FIRST, JUST TO REMIND FOLKS HOW THIS WORKS, SO WE DO AN ANNUAL PERFORMANCE EVALUATION USING A SIMILAR FRAMEWORK AS ALL OF THE STAFF IN THE CITY AND THIS IS FOR THE CITY COUNCIL EMPLOYEES. So that's the city manager, the city attorney, and the city judge. And so we work with the HR director, David Bell, to assist us to essentially provide a standardized process that the rest of the municipality uses. It's a 360 degree review that includes peers, subordinates, council members, and external people. And each of our employees this year had between 15 and 20 reviews. And the way the process works is it's like it is really in most organizations. We collect the data from the reviewers, again, all of those reviewers. We bring it together, analyze it, and then produce a summary of that. That's the process. So this year, our three council, excuse me, our three council employees scored on the highest tier. They had overall great reviews and I just wanted to thank them all for their really hard work. Every year is challenging. This year was especially challenging with a compressed council schedule for with one year work plans that have really pushed the limits in a lot of ways. And I'm so grateful for their work and look forward to our work ahead.

I just had some kind of more personal comments for staff too. And just really want to lift up something that Ryan already noted from the evaluation results that our three employees received the highest possible rating. Evaluation respondents included council members, direct reports, peers, staff across the organization, and even partners outside the city. When you look at the averages across these groups, it's clear that people in every category, the people who are working directly with our employees, as well as people who work only tangentially with them, consistently see them as exceptional leaders who strengthen Boulder's capacity to serve the public. So basically at every level of this organization and even outside of it, the people who see our employees work understand the caliber of leadership we have. And I emphasize this point because in recent months a very vocal minority in the community has made it a habit to attack our employees' professional competence, leadership and integrity. These evaluations show that those attacks could not be further from the truth. The evaluation data reflects competence, professionalism and a firm commitment to this community. And I want to remind everybody in our community that our staff could be working in many places. It's really incumbent upon all of us on council and in the community to treat them with the respect and dignity that all workers and humans deserve. Our staff is critical infrastructure too. And just as I would caution against residents taking up a jackhammer and drilling holes in our roads, I strongly caution against personal attacks on the people who maintain the systems that keep the city functioning. We are shooting ourselves in the foot if Boulder becomes a place where public infrastructure is treated like a nuisance and public workers are treated like servants. If we lose the exceptional people who make this city run, we will not have a functioning city. So to those in the community who think the challenges we face now are difficult, I encourage you to consider what this city would look like facing those challenges without world-class professional staff. Skilled public workers have options. They will not stay in an organization where their expertise is dismissed and their dignity as human beings is routinely challenged. Every single one of us has areas to improve and good leaders like our staff are always open to receiving constructive feedback. But if a minority in this community creates an environment where we cannot retain and recruit staff of this caliber, we all lose. So I close as I began just expressing my gratitude and my respect for our employees. Your leadership is both strong and essential to addressing every challenge we're facing, and these evaluation results make it unmistakably clear that I am not the only one who sees that. Thank you.

Very well said, Nicole. Tysha?

Thank you. I concur with the level of professionalism and leadership for the staff. I did, however, want to lift up a couple of issues that unfortunately does compromise the integrity of the process. The first is the public are not engaged in this process and if it's 360, then I believe that they should be engaged in some meaningful way. I also had concerns about the company that we used given that last year both, thank God, Ryan and Nicole, thank you, had their eyes as strong as Mark Wallach's and caught a math problem that would have compromised the outcomes. And when I asked if we were going to get a new company because I didn't feel comfortable staying with a company that did not catch something that was so critical. I was informed that we would be looking, but then when the time came, we were saddled with the same company. So again, just having some integrity issues and it makes it difficult for us to stand strongly against the comments of our public and our community when the process that we're using falls short. There are a couple of areas that I've raised with our, and I raised last year, but the numbers still continue to be high. This year I needed to ask for an extension because there was additional data that I was trying to get in order to fill out the form. And I was denied that. So I did want to just lift up the request that the council has made around revisiting the budget process and having a more iterative process. And we are still using the same process that we're using. For the Boulder Police Oversight Panel, there have been numerous complaints about the process, as well as the independent monitor. And there has been limited changes to that. The investment portfolio has received comments and reports from community members about investments in fossil fuels and private prisons, which goes against our current process. And that has been sitting for four or five months. Again, I understand the staffing problems with our sorry, the staffing issues with our budget team. However, we hire an independent consultant group to manage that portfolio and I believe it is their responsibility to ensure that they are abiding by the rules and not our responsibility to create another investigation and use our staff time when we pay people to do that. And then lastly, the evaluation and research which continues to be inconsistent across departments, which makes it difficult for us to make decisions. I also just implore us to think differently about our performance evaluation as given one year, once a year just doesn't seem adequate for the level of responsibility and oversight. Even in the staff memo, there's nothing meaningful beyond the rating itself. And although I appreciate 15 to 20 people weighed in, our staff is responsible for hundreds of people. And that doesn't seem to be a very strong response rate given the capacity and the oversight management that they have. I don't anticipate that if they did do the level that there would be all these egregious components. But I do think that it does compromise the integrity of the process. Even in the reporting, again, I just feel strongly like even internally getting access to a full report with the identified strengths, with the identified growth areas, what is the process when challenges have been identified for us to be able to you know, have mitigation plans to address the issues that have been identified. This is my third time going through this and there's nothing that we have been able to do or read or process to ensure that any challenges have been met. So I will be saying no to this and I encourage us to continue to do better. And I don't believe this is a staff issue. I do believe it is our responsibility as council to make sure that we have a strong oversight and evaluation process. Thank you.

Yeah. And I'll note that a number of those issues that you spoke to are the responsibilities of city council rather than city staff. OK. I'll call on myself and just say I will be voting for this enthusiastically. So I'm very appreciative of the work that you all do. I rely on you on a nearly daily basis. I had long conversations with both of you today and both of them the strength of our partnership really shown through and the faith and trust that I have based on real world experience in the magnificent jobs and the way that you lead your departments and the city through the many challenges that we face. It's an incredibly complex city, an incredibly complex organization, and you do a phenomenal job with it. So grateful to you every day and proud to be working alongside you. And a shout out to Judge Kahn as well, who I don't work with on a day-to-day basis, but who I also know does phenomenal work over at the municipal court. So thanks for the work that you do, Judge, and looking forward to voting on your piece as well.

Any other thoughts before we go to a vote?

Seeing none, Emily, can we do a roll call, please?

Absolutely. We'll start the roll call.

What's that? Oh, yeah, we have to have a motion.

I move the consent agenda.

Second. We have a motion and a second now. Can you do a roll call, please?

Yes, of course. We'll start the roll call on tonight's consent agenda with Councilmember Kaplan.

Yes.

Marquis?

Yes.

Shewhart?

Yes.

Speer?

Yes.

Weiner?

Emphatic, yes.

Adams?

Yes, except for E. Okay.

That is noted. Thank you. Benjamin? Yes. And Mayor Brockett?

Yes.

The consent agenda is hereby approved with a vote of 8-0 with the noted nay on 4E.

Very good. Let's go to our first call-up check-in, please.

Next on tonight's agenda, we have call-up check-in, and that is 5A. It is for consideration of a site review amendment to allow for redevelopment of the Fraser and Mountain View United Methodist properties at 350 and 355 Ponca Place to establish a joint campus. The project proposes a new 55-foot-tall, four-story independent living building with 96 apartment units and a below-grade parking structure, a new private drive generally in the location of the existing Ponca Place right-of-way, and demolition of a portion of the MVUMC building. A new addition to the MVUMC building is proposed following construction of the independent living building. And this is reviewed under case number LUR 2025-00056.

Thanks very much. Any questions, comments, or desire to call this one up? I've got a couple. Tina, then Rob.

Yeah, I just have a question. I know that the Ponca Place vacation is separate into two items, and this refers to a private drive, but in the planning board discussion, it was given public access. Is the public access just pedestrian and not vehicular? Is that the differentiation?

Thank you, Council Member, for the question. I know that we have Chandler online to answer that question. Chandler, if you can introduce yourself and chime in, that'd be great.

Sure thing. Hi, this is Chandler VanScock with Planning and Development Services. so the conditions of approval require that a public access easement be dedicated over the entire portion of the private drive so that does not exclude any form of travel that's pedestrians bicycles and vehicles for the entire width including the detached sidewalks and the primary drive would be open to the public at all times with the exception of if they got a special event permit or something and wanted to close the street down for an event which they did discuss at planning board but that would have to go through a permitting process

Okay, so the word private is really more that it's maintained by Fraser Meadows, but the access, people can drive through it as they do today.

Correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

I just wanted to ask about the flood mitigation. It was impacted in 2013 and there are a couple underground levels of parking and obviously some impervious surface area. Have you done the studies and what were the outcomes for that for the development and the neighboring for the neighborhood?

Yes, so Mark Garcia is here and I'll probably defer to him shortly. All I will say is that the addition is not actually located in the floodplain, but we did do engineering review of the parking structure and I'll let Mark comment on that further.

Mark Garcia, Civil Engineering Senior Manager with Planning and Development Services. As Chandler noted, the proposed building is not within the floodplain. Therefore, we cannot require any of our regulations when it comes to buildings as part of it. It's a separate building served by separate utilities. It's not connected other than the proposed bridge crossing, which will be in itself its own separate structure, but done through a revocable lease, long-term lease. So yeah, there's nothing the city can do as far as flood-related regulations because there's nothing to review against. It is outside of the floodplain.

Thanks for that answer. Thank you. Tara.

Hi. A community member mentioned that the developer wasn't paying anything. Do you remember that? Do you guys remember that?

Well, they were saying for Punka Place.

For Punka Place, okay.

Which I think is a true statement.

Okay. I did want to, I was wondering, I also heard that Fraser Meadows was paying $8 million into the inclusionary as inclusionary housing and so i just wanted that confirmed that we were giving they were giving eight million dollars towards um affordable housing um i believe we have sloan walbert on the call she might be able to give an estimate of what the inclusionary housing fee is for the bonus units i know it's somewhere in that range but i don't know the exact number

Perhaps maybe write into the chat and I can read what you write and do a workaround. The joys of remote meetings. SHE SAYS I DON'T HAVE AN EXACT AMOUNT IN FRONT OF ME, THOSE FEES ARE CALCULATED FURTHER IN THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS. IF WE CAN JUST ASK A FOLLOW-UP, THEY WILL BE REQUIRED TO PAY THE FULL AMOUNT OF INCLUSIONARY HOUSING FEES INCLUDING FOR THE BONUS FLOOR AREA OR UNITS, IS THAT CORRECT? YEAH, THUMBS UP, THAT IS CORRECT. SO DON'T HAVE THE NUMBERS BUT THEY WILL BE PAYING.

I was curious. I noticed the only water considerations were for landscaping that was reported in their plan. I was curious for water use, which of the city's water supply scenarios were used?

We don't really analyze water use for residential uses as part of the site review process.

And was there any information on energy use?

There's information. They're required as a condition of approval to have a net energy index, I believe is the term, 10% below the requirement of the Boulder Energy Conservation Code. So that's true for all areas. Buildings that are classified as commercial buildings, which this is, that are over 30,000 square feet in area, we require an additional 10% energy efficiency and they're hoping to meet or exceed that. But they're required to be at least 10% better than the minimum requirement.

And is there any site level solar or storage?

They do have solar and they do have geothermal. I'm not 100% sure about storage or batteries. I might defer to the applicant on that.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, any other questions or comments on this? All right, so I'm not seeing any desire to call this one up.

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know that that was, you were asking for comments. I am interested in a call up.

Okay.

I'd like to make a motion. I don't know what the motion language is. My apologies.

You could just say that you move that we call up the project in question.

I do. And it's interesting.

But if you don't mind saying the words, just.

Oh, sorry, what were the words?

I move that we call up the project in question.

I move that we call up the project in question. Do I then speak on why? Please. So, again, I think something of this size, something I learned from Mark was we should always take a look when something big comes, and I think this is something big. Based on just the few comments that we received from community, particularly on the size, the setback, I continue to be concerned about water use and water demands, although again, I understand that that's not what is required in our code at this time. Given the escalating climate circumstances that we find ourselves in, even just over the last year, I think it is in our best interest to take a closer look, especially since this was not a unanimous vote from our planning board. Thank you.

Thanks. Do we have a second for that motion? All right, so seeing no second, then we won't have a vote on it. I'll just mention that this does provide much needed senior housing in the community and will provide a substantial affordable housing benefit through their cash and lieu fees. So that's why I'm not calling it up. If there are no other hands raised, we'll move on to our next call check-in.

Next we have call up item 5B for a concept plan review and comment for a proposal to expand the existing Xcel Energy Service and Operations Facility at 2655 North 63rd Street. Concept plan reviewed under case number LUR2026-00026.

Any questions, comments, or desire to call this one up? Yes, Ryan.

I have a question for staff. This Excel project is in the vicinity of the coal ash work, potential remediation project. Can staff comment on whether this project has anything to do with the coal ash work?

Yes. Hi. My name is Alex Pichaz. I'm a senior city planner. And for this project, it's just focusing on the existing projects operational use for the operations facility that's out there, the existing uses. They're looking to build new buildings and maintain the existing operations for daily maintenance, fleet vehicle service, indoor and outdoor storage of equipment and materials used for infrastructure, but nothing to do with the power plant.

Thank you much. All right. Any interest in calling this one up? Not seeing any. So we won't call this one up. I will mention Sloan has gotten back to us on the Fraser Meadows project that the total estimated cash in lieu would be $9.4 million. So that was the answer to that question. Thanks, Sloan. All right. Let's go to our public hearing, please.

Next we have our public hearing item 6 a and that is for a second reading and consideration of a motion to adopt ordinance 87 57 amending title for licenses and permits BRC 1981 allowing for a pedal cab agency and driver licenses and setting forth related details.

Thanks so much, Council. And I see we are close to ready. But this is an item that I think we have been looking at certainly in regard to perhaps future events as we look forward to perhaps a January event coming soon. But it is an item that's been on our mind for a while. We see some of these pedicabs at some of the football games and have been able to think about what does that look like for us in our community and with that. I will pass it on to the team.

Thank you, Nuria. Alyssa Darrow, I'm your regulatory licensing manager here at the City of Boulder, here to talk to you tonight about pedal cab licensing. So we are talking about two licenses. One is for the pedal cab agency, and one is for the operator, which we are referring to as the pedal cab driver. This was a partnership with licensing, transportation, code compliance, Boulder PD, and strategic partnerships. The existing activity, these pedal cabs are already coming to Boulder. They're here for CU football games and other events such as concerts. And there is no current framework describing how, when, and where they can operate or requirements for liability insurance.

Lisa, can you get a little bit more into the mic, please?

Yes, absolutely. Is that better? That is. Thank you. Okay. Do you want me to start that one over? Thank you. Okay. So this ordinance creates a framework to verify basic qualifications and insurance requirements and supports useful transportation option while protecting public safety in the transportation realm. Around community equity and economic impacts, the impacts of this license are found in protecting public safety, keeping fees low to allow equitable access for those providing the service, and maintaining economic opportunity for the licensee. So what Ordinance 8757 would establish is the two new license requirements for the pedal cab agency and the pedal cab driver's license that I mentioned. Application and licensing. fees designed to recover the city's cost of application review, license issuance, and some regulatory oversight. Minimum operating requirements addressing driver qualifications, insurance agency driver relationships, and applicable bicycle traffic regulations. Enforcement authority for the city manager to deny, suspend, or revoke licenses for violations, misrepresentations, or other noncompliance. and a prohibition on offering, selling, serving, delivering, or providing products, including food, beverages, and alcohol while conducting Petal Cat activities. So, to qualify for the license, the driver will provide a valid driver's license and their driving record to ensure that the license is valid and will be background checked through CBI. Agencies will be required to provide liability insurance. Operators will need to comply with bicycle traffic operations and agencies will report and license the drivers that work for them. So there is one licensing process overall that they go through. This will create standards for passengers, drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists so this activity becomes more predictable overall in our community. The goal of this is that this change will create one clear pathway for agencies and operators that does not currently exist. The pedal cab agency is the one that will obtain the city license and they will be the ones that submit their driver information to us that are then listed on that license. They're the ones that need to meet the application and operating requirements, maintain their insurance, report their drivers, pay their fees for the agency license and ensure that they have a city business license for sales tax. The driver is the one that will obtain the operator side of it, where they meet age and driver's license requirements. They complete background checks and a driving record review. They follow the applicable laws and regulations around this, and they operate within the ordinance's requirements. Around our strategic priorities, the goal here is this framework integrates with safety, being accessible and connected, responsibly governed, and economically vital. Fiscal administrative and sustainability considerations. The fees are meant only to cover staff time to process and administer the licenses and allow for this mode of transportation that is a fun way for people to make a short trip without a vehicle in Boulder. Implementation of this license includes adoption of this framework by council. Next steps would be that staff would work to build the process, communicate that process to existing agencies, and then monitor and adjust as necessary for efficiency. We are not anticipating that we need additional staff for this licensing program and that we can add it to what we currently do at this time. So the council action requested is that you approve this ordinance as it is drafted. And with that, I am happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thanks so much, Lisa. Any questions for staff? Tina?

Yeah, I just have a couple questions. The first is do we address just motorization or electrification of them or speed limits?

We do not. This ordinance is strictly for the licensing side of it. So if we want to further, we did talk about this a bit with the city attorney while we were drafting this. So further regulations such as when, where, those things, further regulations on the types of bicycles, that could be done in a future ordinance. It can also be done through city manager rule.

Okay. And I have interacted with a pedicab at CU campus that almost basically killed me. So I really am concerned about a very clear way of reporting speed issues or people who are driving kind of recklessly because they're heavy vehicles. And if you're a pedestrian, I think there could be some friction there. And to that, will there be a clear way to report any kind of pedicab violations for a community member? And will they have a license that's visible sort of like a taxi cab? If you don't like my driving, call X, Y, Z. That's a great question.

And yes, they do need to have their license on them while operating in the city of Boulder and citizens. This framework allows for so code enforcement actually is the side that enforces whether or not they have a license. But because we're now building in the rules of the road for them that they must follow bicycle law. Now the police have an enforcement mechanism to be able to deal with that.

Okay. And Council Member, just following up to ask a clarifying question, I believe the regulation requires them to be human peddled? That is correct, yes. Okay. And we will be following up, as Alyssa mentioned, with PD and with the PNDS team about tracking some of that. I believe that we would, if there were an accident or something to occur, PD routinely keeps track of some of that data, and I'll likely be speaking to them about this.

Okay. And then my last question is, do they follow the same guidelines as a food truck if they're an agency in terms of paying minimum wage? Because our minimum wage is different than that of some surrounding communities. So is it the same? I believe it's four hours in town they have to pay minimum wage. But if they're less, they can pay the wage of where they're registered.

I believe that the same rules would apply to any business. And so if they are providing a business here in the city, the minimum wage rules would apply to them and we would make sure that they would be enforced appropriately.

And we communicate that to all the operators that aren't licensed in Boulder or that operate in Boulder but may operate in other places. How do we do that?

Do we communicate it through licensing? I'm unsure of how we communicate it, but we'll take that back.

Okay, thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Thanks, Matt.

I see here that the estimated fee revenues are $3,300. That's sort of in the packet. Do we have a sense of how many operators currently exist in the city?

We do not. There are no pedal cab agencies that are currently located within the city of Boulder. And so they're coming from outside of Boulder. And it's really dependent on the size of the event. Without any kind of licensing framework, we don't know if it's the same people every time or if it's different every time. So I think that as we put this in place and we are able to start seeing who is getting licensed and we work to help bring those into compliance who are not, that we'll get a better idea for that.

So is the 3,300 just a wild guess?

It is an educated guess. Okay. We have no idea how many operators. We took an educated guess at 30. you know, total between agencies and drivers.

And does the city of Denver have a license like this?

They do. In fact, um, it is very much like exact, like what we are proposing. Um, we took the city of Denver and we looked at them and we looked at Colorado Springs and we took the best practices that we thought would work best for the city of Boulder. Um, And there is guidance in Denver that the traffic engineer gives as well that addresses the types of bicycles, the hours and locations. I am very lucky to have a new staff member who came to us from the city and county of Denver who was of great help during this process.

The last one here is just a question These are folks that are coming to make money. Obviously they're going to pay a sale that they're going to contribute via sales tax to the city's coffers. Do we have any forecast of what that is? And I see that in the context of if they're generating revenue for the city, And I've made this point before, why do we justify charging fees and making it harder for them to make money doing a business when we generate money on the side of the sales tax? And so do we have a revenue forecast for how much the city generates aside from fees for the service being provided in our city?

I appreciate that question. I am not a sales tax expert, but I do believe that services might be handled differently in the realm of sales tax.

Okay. I think it would be helpful for us to know maybe where Denver is so we have a sense to maybe calibrate or make some guesstimate of how much money we expect to make from this service in the community and whether the fee is an appropriate amount or stifles business in our community. Appreciate it. Thanks.

Ryan? Thanks. Just a couple questions. I'm thinking about just big picture the purpose, like where it comes from and why now. Can you say more about like is, Is this Sundance related? Is it something else? Like, why are we doing this now?

This was not brought to me as an issue that's related to Sundance. It really was, I was contacted by the transportation department and code enforcement and the police department to discuss the issues that were happening in our community without having a license. We do not know if they are insured if someone were to get hurt. So there's, You know, we don't know if they could deal with the liability issue if something were to happen. This license allows for that. And Jen Ross, our code compliance manager is here and I know that she could speak to this probably better than I can.

Hi again, Jen Ross, code compliance manager. We saw an increase in traffic-related incidents regarding pedicabs and then also an increase of them being at our larger events. We see that there operating in public right of ways in a manner that could be dangerous to pedestrians. And so we need a way to kind of track who's legally operating within the city of Boulder and a way to have a better enforcement tool to bad party actors that are operating at excessive speeds on public walkways rather than in the public right of way where they should be. and or congregating on sidewalks where they're blocking pedestrian traffic.

Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Tina, get another question.

I can't. Oh, I know. So when they're on CU campus, who regulates the pedicab? Because that's where I've seen them.

C.U. Police would be in charge of the public walkways and the access that the pedal cabs have on C.U. 's campus. Our jurisdiction ends at the line, basically.

Okay. And will they adopt a similar code that we are?

They are already enforcing their rules for bike traffic on campus. It's just it's a very large campus. And so it's hard to have an officer on every walkway. But I do know from interactions with them that they are enforcing their own speed rules and their own bicycle rules and they consider these bicycles on campus.

Okay. And I just want to say I really appreciate you doing this. I think it's great to get ahead of this and just being so responsive given my own experience. I'm not against them, but the idea that we can make sure that they don't hurt anyone is just great. So thank you so much for thinking ahead.

Matt, you got a follow-up? I just had a little follow-up on what Tina was asking. How do we do sales tax if the effective point of sale occurs on campus? Because I think of the spill out of a concert or a football game. So how do we do that?

So it's a service, and so they don't actually pay sales tax.

So how is there any remittance of any revenue?

We're not asking for sales tax revenue from a service. We are just asking for them to follow rules for the rules of road and licensing requirements.

The petty cab agency would be had a contribution to sales tax.

It did not. I'm sorry if that was unclear. It does not say that they make a contribution to sales tax, but they are still required to have a business license for sales tax in Boulder, just like any other business.

So that transaction is tax-free from the city's perspective?

There's a license fee.

Except for the license fee. Except for the license fee. So each trip we don't make a cent on what is paid for that service, correct?

I don't believe so. We don't.

I can honestly say that that is correct. We do not. Because a business license and a sales tax license in the city of Boulder is a synonymous license. And so it doesn't necessarily imply that they're paying sales tax. It's implying that as a business doing business in the city limits of Boulder, we issue a business license to a church as well.

Yeah, I had a sales tax license for almost 20 years for my small business and every year filed a return with nothing owed because we didn't collect sales tax on our services. All right, not seeing any other hands raised, then let's go to the public hearing. We have two people signed up to speak, so they'll each have three minutes. They are Lara Gonzalez and Lynn Siegel, both virtually.

Good evening again, city council. We do not have any members of the public in the queue virtually.

Okay, so I will bring the public hearing to a close and look to council for comments or perhaps a motion. Yeah, Tina.

Well, can I do the motion?

Please.

OK. But I don't have it in front of me. I don't think there's motion language.

It is in the memo. OK.

Well, I move to adopt Ordinance 8757, amending Title IV, licenses and permits, BRC 1981-1981, allowing for pedicab agency and driver licenses and setting forth related details.

Brilliant. Do we have a second?

Second.

Do you want to speak to your motion?

I already did, but I'm just really happy we're doing this. I think it's a great idea. Thank you.

Nicole?

Just thank you, Tina, for your comments. I agree. Thanks for getting us ahead of this.

Very good. Let's have a roll call, please.

All right. We'll start the roll call tonight for public hearing item 6A with Councilmember Marquis.

Yes.

Shewhart?

Yes.

Speer?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Weiner?

She's not feeling well and stepped away.

Okay. Adam?

Yes.

Council Member Benjamin?

Yes.

Mayor Brockett? Yes. And Council Member Kaplan?

Yes.

Ordinance 8757 is hereby approved with a vote of 7 to 0.

All right. Well, Elisa, thanks so much to you and your team for your work on this. It's going to be a substantial improvement for the way these things operate in town.

You're very welcome, and thank you, Mayor and Council. Have a good evening. All right.

All right, let's go to our matter from the city manager now.

Next we have item 7 a under matters from the city manager and that is an update to City Council on recent state legislation and state funding land use code changes the following will be discussed proposition one 23 housing in transit oriented communities and housing developments on qualifying properties. It gave the home act.

Thanks so much, Mayor. And sorry, thanks so much, Emily. Sorry, I've just promoted you. For the next item, we will be turning to the team to talk about some of those updates. And Carl, I know you are getting the presentation up and running. Appreciate that, but send it to you.

Thank you, Neria. Good evening, council members. I'm Carl Giler with Planning and Development Services. I'm joined by Lisa Hood, who you know is in the audience. She'll be presenting from the podium. But I also wanted to introduce Eliza Blood, who's joined our team to help with code amendments. Tonight, we're going to talk about state legislation and state funding code changes. I also want to point out that Sloan-Walbert, I believe, is online. from the housing department to help with any questions. So as a matters item, this is an informational item for council. We're really focusing on three pieces of state legislation that we've not talked to you about. I know we've brought forward a number of ordinances over the last few years in reaction to state laws that have passed. There's three more that we wanted to talk to you about. So there's no action tonight, but it is an opportunity for us to talk to you about these pieces of state legislation and an opportunity for you to ask questions about those bills and provide some feedback on the approaches that we're proposing. So really quick, I'm not going to go into all these bills. You'll recognize a lot of these from the last few years. We've passed a number of ordinances from the busy legislature, particularly related to housing items. But we've passed an ordinance on the residential growth management system, accessory dwelling units, occupancy, the Wildland Urban Interface, minimum parking requirements, natural medicine, and small cell updates over a number of ordinances over the last few years. We do have a summary provided in attachment B. What we're going to focus on tonight is the State Affordable Housing Fund, or what's also known as Proposition 123, the Housing and Transit Oriented Communities Bill that was passed, and then the more recently passed housing opportunities made easier act or the home act as we call it. So we're still learning a lot about that bill. So some of the prior bills that came before council had more technical content to them that related to zoning. So specific things like you can't have occupancy limits on related to familial status or ADUs have to be allowed in every zoning district or wherever you allow detached dwelling units. A lot of technical things were in those prior bills. I would say these current three pieces of state legislation really get more at process and procedure to expedite basically the provision or creation of housing in community. So it's a slightly different approach. So when you look through our presentation tonight, you'll see these icons about these common themes. So take a look at those. So basically, if we're allowing more residential projects through an administrative review rather than discretionary, meaning there's no call-up or public hearing requirements, you'll see that icon. There's requirements in some of the bills that talk about replacing subjective standards with more objective standards, more black and white prescriptive type standards to increase discretion, remove or reduce the level of discretion and add to predictability. You'll see that circle. And then also just quicker review timelines as a theme. So you'll see these icons jumping up from slide to slide. Um, so I'm going to pass it over firstly to Lisa hood. Who's going to talk about proposition one, two, three.

All right. Good evening council. Um, so proposition one, two, three, you might remember was passed by Colorado voters in 2022. It established the state affordable housing fund. Um, and that provides funding for not just local governments, but developers, nonprofit agencies, and community land trust. There's a variety of different housing initiatives that can be supported by this affordable housing fund. And it's been in place for three years so far. One of the requirements for getting the funding is that the project has to be located in a jurisdiction that's completed in an affordable housing commitment. What that is is a commitment to a certain number of units of affordable housing being developed in that community. And what's new for the next three-year cycle of this funding is that the communities that are getting the funding have to have a 90-day fast-track review process for affordable housing, and it has to be in place by the end of the year. So not only would the City of Boulder ourselves lose the eligibility for that funding, but any projects that are taking place within the City of Boulder would lose funding as or the eligibility for that funding if we don't have a fast-track review process in place by the end of the year. Just to give you an idea for the first three-year cycle, directly into the city we got over $10 million of funding as well as additional money that was more regional or statewide that also came into Boulder. So it's not an insignificant amount of funding. It's meant to incentivize and support affordable housing. Every three years we must demonstrate that we've met the affordable housing count that we committed to. But the change that's coming that will come before you in the next couple of months is related to the fast track review process. So I'll go into a little more detail on the fast track review. The specific projects or how the state has defined what an affordable housing project is are projects with housing where at least half of the units are affordable. They have a fairly general definition of affordable. So it means that the housing can't cost more than 30% of the monthly income for households earning for rental either under 60% of the area median income or for sale under 120%. So we looked back over the last few years at recently approved or developed projects And in the last five years, five projects would have met that threshold of affordable housing in the amount on the project. So if we stay at the same rate, we would expect to see about one or maybe two of these types of projects per year. So it's not a huge number of projects that would fall into that fast track review. But the intent of the funding is to incentivize affordable housing. So certainly those numbers might go up over time. You might be wondering, since there's a 90-day limit, what is our current review timelines? It varies pretty significantly across the different applications that it could apply to. So things from landmark alteration certificates, the typical time is nine days. Variance is 34 days. Building permits for new construction, 63 days. When you get into our land use reviews, it starts to get a little higher. So our use review typical, is around 200 days, site review, 277 days. So clearly we have some work to do on the review timelines to get them down to 90 days. So that's where the code changes come in. Carl, if you want to go to the next one. Staff has spent a lot of time in lots of different recent projects analyzing where we could streamline processes, simplify processes. But specifically for these affordable housing projects, The two main opportunities for time savings that we can see are removing planning board call-ups and removing automatic planning board hearings. The most common situation for that is when we have site review applications with a height modification, the code says that that automatically goes to planning board for a public hearing. So it's not even brought as a potential call-up. It just goes straight to public hearing. So we think that by making those two changes, That will be a significant time savings in the approval processes for these affordable housing projects, but it would not just be those changes. We'd also need to make administrative changes just in how we're tracking these projects, make sure we're keeping track of those timelines, and then how we're taking in applications and making sure that the applications are up to high enough quality that our reviewers can review them in a timely manner and things like that. Also, the state legislation provides for some extensions just for the realistic nature of development review in case we needed to extend that timeline by some additional time. So luckily we made process simplifications and changes in the last couple of years that were very similar to this. So we have the opportunity to look at an analog and see how it worked. If you'll remember in 2024 you adopted an ordinance where we established the minor use review process, really trying to get at that timeline of 200 days for use reviews. And the changes that we made there were, eliminating the planning board call up and eliminating automatic planning board hearings. So very similar to what we're proposing here. I'm not going to go through each step of this flow chart, don't worry. Carl, if you want to go to the next one. So this is what we did with those process simplification changes by skipping the call up and the automatic hearings. And what's nice about this is we can look and see how that's affected the review timelines in the last two years. So Carl, if you want to go to the next one. And we've had a lot of great success with that minor use review process that skips both the call-ups or automatic hearings. In just the first year, we saw a 64% reduction in total use review approval times. And then if you actually dig in and look at the time that the city has the application in their hands, it was reduced by 85%. So those two changes, the call-up and the automatic planning board hearing, With this ordinance had a really significant impact. So that's why we think that these are the most significant opportunities to get us to that 90 day review timeline and make sure that the city of Boulder remains eligible for that important state affordable housing funding.

Thank you, Lisa. Council will be seeing more about Prop 123 as we have an ordinance scheduled to come before you in first reading in October, and then the public hearing would be in November. So we're gonna switch gears now to the Housing and Transit-Oriented Communities bill that passed, what we call the TOC bill. This one's a bit complicated, so I'm going to try to describe it the best I can. It really links housing and transit. So, obviously, concentrating housing along transit corridors so that you have density in those areas to encourage transit use, but also provide housing for affordability purposes, increasing the housing stock really throughout the state. The scope of the bill was for municipalities that are more than 4,000 residents and have more than 75 acres of transit areas. It was adopted in 2024. As I noted, it's to increase the number of housing units along these corridors to optimize transit use. So obviously Colorado has been, you know, was developed a lot of it after World War II where it was more auto-oriented. So not always conducive to transit. So it's really trying to get at a lot of things. housing affordability, and transit use. The map that we have up there was provided by the state in 2024 to really map out the bus routes that would be eligible for these increased areas. And you can see Boulder is impacted more than a lot of neighboring communities. Really, Denver and Boulder, because we had certain frequencies, It highlighted a lot of areas of town. So for instance, it's based on the RTD optimization plan, which was adopted in like 2019. So it doesn't really reflect reality, but it shows a system of services where bus lines run every 15 minutes during peak periods on these lines. And that's the snapshot that the state used for this bill. So this is what it looks like when you get more fine grained. When we look at those bus routes, the area within the blue is what we call our transit area. I wanna make it really clear that the area within that blue, we're not looking at zoning changes in that whole area. It's really just the areas that you have to look at based on where the bus routes are. And basically it's a quarter mile from each bus route. And then you tally up the acreage of that whole area within the blue. And that acreage you times by 40 dwelling units per acre. And the result of that is the housing opportunity goal, which I'll talk about. So it's this aspirational number of housing units that should be met for that community. And then what I have is step three is you have to basically designate transit centers, which are areas of the city that meet CERTAIN QUALIFICATIONS AND IN THOSE AREAS YOU CAN COUNT THE UNITS TOWARDS THIS HOUSING OPPORTUNITY GOAL. SO I HAVE ANOTHER SLIDE THAT WILL SHOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TRANSIT AREA AND TRANSIT CENTERS. ULTIMATELY WE HAVE TO SUBMIT A REPORT TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LOCAL AFFAIRS OR DOLA WITH THE STATE OF COLORADO SHOWING WHAT OUR LEVEL OF COMPLIANCE LOOKS LIKE AND WHETHER WE NEED TO MAKE ANY CHANGES. SO THAT'S SOMETHING I'LL TALK So this has a little bit more detail on it. So again, the transit area is just that holistic area that you determine the housing opportunity goal. And then it's an average of 40 dwelling units per acre. And I talked about the quarter mile from the transit corridors. The areas that are in color are like zoning districts that we've identified that could be a transit center. So per the bill, it says you can't count any areas within the transit area that are less than 15 dwelling units per acre. So that rules out a huge part of the city. Like a lot of the low and medium density residential areas cannot be counted. And we'll likely not, we wouldn't have to make changes in those areas to meet this bill. What it does say too, is that you can add an extra quarter mile beyond that blue line to count units in that area if the area qualifies as a transit center. You can also use the average unit size in the American Housing Survey. So basically to determine density they dictate what you divide by to get the number of units so people aren't saying we're providing 200 square foot units to get a higher number. They lock it in. The other thing they say is for the transit areas The areas that you use for the dwelling units can't have discretionary review if below five acres in size. Over five acres in size, you can count those units. So it gets very complicated when we're working with our information resources folks on the data on how we qualify. So we're still doing that. When we run the numbers, the housing opportunity goal for the city of Boulder, according to our analysis, and the state has also looked at our numbers, is 123,000 units. So just to put that in perspective, Boulder only has 48,000 housing units right now. So I don't want people to, to panic. What this really means is, again, it's an aspirational number. There's nothing in the bill that says you have to construct this number of units. It basically says that you have to have areas within that transit area that don't stand in the way of theoretically meeting that number. um so it's a very fine-grained analysis that we're doing um one thing i'll say is that what we're seeing right now is we're quite close to meeting that number just based on our current zoning the changes that have been made in the last few years like the zoning for affordable housing really help to bump up the numbers to get us closer but our current estimates are we're somewhere between a 110, 120 dwelling units. So, it looks like we might have to make some additional changes to just get us over that line. But we are doing courtesy reviews with DOLA, and we've been meeting with them over the past two years to go over the numbers. It's been a lot of detailed work. So, we plan on meeting with them in coming weeks. So if it is confirmed by DOLA that we're not quite there, we have looked at some options. This is what we're putting as like kind of the lowest hanging fruit options to get us over the line. It doesn't mean we're gonna do all of these. And we might even like be able to work with the data to get over that line. We have some ideas for that too. But what we're seeing here is removing the call up for form-based code reviews is kind of our top choice at this point. BECAUSE ORIGINALLY WHEN WE BROUGHT FORM BASED CODE REVIEW 10 YEARS AGO, WE HAD PROPOSED TO NOT HAVE A CALL UP OR PUBLIC HEARING PROCESS WITH THAT BECAUSE THAT WAS LIKE A BEST PRACTICE FOR FORM BASED CODE BECAUSE IT'S OBJECTIVE STANDARDS, IT'S REALLY you know, very definitive requirements and not discretionary. So like most form-based codes don't have a call-up or public hearing process. So if our findings are that if we remove that call-up process from form-based code, it would get us over that finish line. In case that doesn't work, we are looking at other contingencies, like we could remove the site and use review requirement for residential and industrial areas. We'd have to analyze that more. There's also restrictions on ground floor residential in the business zones that the state brought up as this lowers your number. This might be something you might want to think about removing to get to the number. Overall, we could just find places that could be transit centers that are less than five acres or less and make them buy-right. The other thing is if we're getting more buildings along these transit corridors that may not be going through discussion review, it also raises the question of whether we might need to create some buy-right site and building design standards just to get a baseline of quality in terms of like windows and materiality and buildings facing the street and putting parking behind things like that. We're exploring that as well. So we do have to submit a report to DOLA by the end of this year to tell them where we are and what we think we need to do. And then we have all of next year to basically do any ordinance to bring us into compliance with this bill. So that concludes the TOC part. I'm going to turn it over to Eliza, who's going to tell you about the HOME Act. Again, this was passed in May of this year, so it's something we're still trying to get a handle on, but she'll go over the details with you.

All right. Good evening, everyone. I'm here to speak with you about the Housing Opportunities Made Easier Act, the HOME Act, which was passed in March of 2026. This bill was formerly known as the Yigbee Act that some of you may be familiar with. And the purpose of the HOME Act is to increase affordable housing on underutilized land by providing greater zoning flexibility and streamlining approvals for qualifying developments. In this case, we are defining the term underutilized land as land that has historically not been used for residential purposes. And subject jurisdictions must begin fulfilling the expectations of this bill by December 31st with the goal of reaching full compliance of the bill by June 30th, 2028. These deadlines provide time to plan and implement the code amendments needed to comply with the act. The HOME Act defines land that is subject to these standards as qualifying properties. Qualifying properties cannot be larger than five acres and are owned by one of the following entities listed on the screen here. This includes schools and school districts, state colleges and universities, boards of cooperative services, housing authorities, local or regional transportation authorities, or housing nonprofits and nonprofits with housing affiliation. In addition to the qualifying property criteria, the HOME Act identifies several exemptions that determine where these development provisions do not apply. One example of an exemption is for properties that have large-scale industrial operations present. In Boulder, this includes properties located in the industrial manufacturing and general industrial zoning districts. The rest of these exemptions can be found in attachment A of your packets. And the bill's eligibility requirements and exemptions define where housing stock can be built, limiting the bill's application to only some parts of the city. Another important aspect of this bill is that it advocates for quicker development timelines by subjecting qualifying housing projects to administrative approval or administrative review. Administrative review requires staff to make decisions based solely on objective criteria rather than undergoing a site review process, which requires planning board or city council call-up or public hearing. By subjecting projects to administrative review, these projects become less expensive and do not take as long to reach final approval. The Home Act establishes standards for building height maximums, density, and site design standards for future housing projects on qualifying properties. In terms of regulating building height, local governments cannot deny a housing project based on building height if the development does not exceed three stories, 38 feet in height or the height of similar neighboring residential developments, whichever allows the greatest building height. Additionally, density or the number of dwelling units in a development can't be restricted in these new housing projects. And lastly, the site design standards referred to as form and bulk standards in Boulder should match that of other neighboring multi-unit developments in the jurisdiction. The key takeaway from this information, is that the HOME Act requires qualifying developments to be reviewed under standards that are comparable to other multi-unit residential projects located in the subject jurisdiction. Qualifying properties are also meant to support childcare and recreational social or educational services. If zoning allows or conditionally allows onsite childcare and recreational social or educational service uses, those same uses must also be allowed as part of residential development on a qualifying property. We are interpreting the recreational social or educational service concept to include the following use types listed on the screen here. These currently exist in Title IX, and they range from community services to instructional facilities to community gardens. While the bill expands opportunities for community serving uses on qualifying properties, further analysis is needed to determine which existing use classifications and permissions align with the bill's intent. Lastly, I'll briefly walk through where the HOME Act may apply in Boulder, and I'll cover the updates we anticipate making to Title IX. So this map shown here on this slide illustrates where we expect some of the qualifying properties to exist in Boulder. As you can see, the HOME Act is only relevant for certain areas of the city. And I'll add that this map is still under development. We are undergoing further analyses to make this as complete of a story as possible for you. Additionally, we highlighted the sections of the land use code that we anticipate needing an update to implement the HOME Act at the bottom of this slide. These updates include revisions to procedures, use permissions, height and intensity standards, and key definitions. Because the bill has a longer implementation timeline, these code revisions do not need to be finalized at this time, allowing time for continued analysis and refinement. I'll now turn it back to Carl to share the planning board feedback we received on these three bills. Thank you.

Thanks Eliza. So we'll come in for the conclusion. We did go to planning board with this similar presentation on August 4th to make them aware of these pieces of state legislation. We wanted to convey that to the council. So overall, I think the planning board understood the concepts behind the bills and the voter initiative. They did express some concern about loss of discretion in some cases or having less transparency for members of the community on these particular reviews. But they largely supported the changes that were proposed, particularly with Proposition 123, they supported the recommended path of staff moving forward with an ordinance. And we actually brought those code changes to planning board on Tuesday where they recommended approval to council on that. So that's why I said you'll be seeing that in your packet in October and November. Relative to the TOC bill, I think the board supported moving forward with working on the data and showed a preference towards maybe trying to make those numbers work without code changes, but if code changes were necessary to meet the TOC, they did support removing the call-up and public hearing requirement in the form-based code. Similarly, with the HOME Act, the board accepted that they would have less discretion over based on the parameters of that bill when we bring that ordinance forward later on. So just as far as next steps, as I noted, Planning Board looked at the Prop 123 ordinance on September 1st. It will be coming before City Council on November 19th. The TOC changes will be meeting with DOLA over the next few weeks about the data. We have to prepare a report that we submit to them before the end of the year, and then we'd be working on an ordinance in 2027. We'd have to bring that, according to the bill, before the end of 2027. As Eliza noted, the HOME Act gives us a little more time. It basically says that you have to be actively working on changes at the beginning of 2027, and you have to have those changes adopted by June of 2028. So that concludes our presentation. These are the questions we thought could help lead the discussion. And we're happy to answer any questions.

Thanks, Carl. And when we get to questions, I mean, you did have some specific items that you were considering. Did you want us to give feedback on the specific items?

We could go to that slide if you wanted to go through those. But I mean, again, our preference on those was to move forward with the form-based code. But if there's ones that you think we should be looking at also, we're open to that.

OK, great.

Questions for city staff?

I'm going to start. I'm going to come down this way. Tina?

Yeah, thanks for the update. So one of my questions is just already CU doesn't really go through our permitting process in the same way and can get a lot of changes. So when we're thinking about the HOME Act and we call out the state university, is that CU or are we also looking at Naropa?

It would be CU.

Okay. And does this really change anything for them?

Do you want to take that or do you want me to take it? Yeah, we looked at this, and it would largely apply to CU. And they largely don't have to go through our review for certain projects. But in the case where CU might own a property but not develop the property with housing for its students or for academic purposes, that's where the HOME Act would come in. So there could be some scenario where they decide to develop a project that's not for students. or teachers or things like that. That's not an academic role where the HOME Act would apply. Can I colloquy on that?

I was going to ask about the limelight, because that's not for students. And they were able to exceed the height. So they didn't...

Well, I mean, that's a commercial project. It's not a housing unit project. So it wouldn't have applied to that site.

But Carl, my understanding is that we don't have regulation over CU at all as a state agency and it doesn't matter what type of building that they're building.

Yeah. We don't have any reach when it comes to something that's fulfilling the purpose and role of the university. So if it's for an academic, purpose, we don't have a role in that. It's where they might own property and do something different.

Do you want to speak to that?

I'll colloquy on that. So Brad Mueller Planning and Development Services, in that case, we still would not be able to do the permitting process. So CU is considered a subdivision of the state, subject to state regulations. The reason we sometimes qualify as aren't involved generally in the permitting is we still do get involved in things like providing utilities. So for example, on sites that are being proposed for housing, those are city utilities. So we have regulatory oversight and that was the case with limelight as well, access and connections to utilities.

And Matt's got an additional question.

Would that also be regarding the proposed five acres at CU South that is set aside for housing that is not student nor faculty? That was part of the annexation. Was that set aside to five acres? Is that the kind of thing you're talking about? I think for the home act, yeah. Yeah.

Okay. I just wanted to get that. That's a good example.

Okay.

We'll come back to you for maybe a couple more questions and then we'll head on to the next person.

So then at that CU South property though, are they limited to three stories or can they go to any height they want?

I mean, according, if they want to,

have the advantages of the home act it would be three stories i thought they were exempted in the home act i thought they actually carved out something that wouldn't limit them to three stories but i'm not sure well that's being thought about i will mention that the annexation agreement does limit the height so there's a difference Okay. All right. And then my other question is when we looked at the TOC, does it include the student housing capacity at CU?

I don't believe we, I don't believe that's included in the data that we've run.

I think we should include it. But that's just a thought. But, I mean, that's part of our city.

creates a huge amount of residential capacity and they have a huge amount of capacity especially when we think about the colorado avenue project i'd have to go back to the bill but it does have a large list of exemptions and i think the university might be exempted out of the transit area i think that's why we didn't include it um okay and then uh

Oh, and I did want to ask one question. When we thought about the 123,000 opportunity zone, how did we compare that to what our water and energy capacity is? Because when we looked at area three, we saw, and that's in a green field area, not in the TOC area, but we, you know, we realized that at about 9,000 units we were hitting our water capacity. additional to what's on today. So how did the TOC contemplate our water use issues?

I don't know that the TOC contemplates us specifically. It does have a methodology for exempting out of it for water reasons. Like if you can demonstrate that there's not enough water to serve the units, you can get a special exemption from the state. What I'll just say is that You know, we look at water provision through the BVCP process. And like I said, our current snapshot of our compliance with the TOC bill is that we're largely very close and it might just take a couple tweaks to get us there. So I don't know that there's like a water capacity issue based on the data that we have right now.

And I'll piggyback on that. It's a great question, Councilmember. What Carl just described is really a systems wide answer to that question. There's also the micro aspect of it and something we don't necessarily go into a lot of detail with individual site plans and use review but which is a requirement of the code is that there have to be adequate services before that can be approved. And a lot of times that means a very a specific technical kind of thing, is the sewer pipe big enough? And if it's not big enough, you've got to enlarge it. If it's not located next to the property, you're going to have to extend it to the next sewer main, for example. That's actually true for all the services. The other thing that we don't spend a lot of time emphasizing but is really, really critical is all development is required to offset the new demand that it's created with new supply to the system. And so you all talked a little, I guess it was you who inquired about the housing fee in relationship to a project. Well, in addition to that are seven other development impact fees that have to get paid for every development that's bringing new demand into the system that offsets per modeling, per person, per capital modeled new demand from that service. So for example, if 200 units are brought in, they have to pay development impact fees that provide for 200 people worth of new water sewer treatment plant capacity, new distribution capacity, new road and trail capacity, new police station capacity. So that's how capacity and services are kept in lockstep with individual development projects that come forward. And then those impact fees over time get aggregated to increase the capital structure of say a wastewater plant.

Okay. And so overall we're not sending a false message in that if we say that we can have a capacity that goes up to 123 units, which is, you know, 80,000 more units than we have today, are we saying that we think we have the water available to make that happen? because we got a little bit of a different perspective on the area three water analysis.

And that's the distinction between looking at it as the system and a bulk thing versus the reality that it comes in incrementally. the planning of individual systems, so the wastewater blueprint, the transportation blueprint, these are the plans that anticipate future demand, build into that demand over time. And of course there are policy decisions if we push up against a threshold where that's not possible anymore because roads can only get so big. We may find a time in the long-distance future about sewer capacity, for example.

Thanks.

Rob and then Tara. I think you answered my question, Brad. I was just looking at the TOC bill and I didn't see anything for road capacity or wildfire risk or evacuation capacity. I did see the carve-out for water, but it sounds like that comes to us to create that and make sure that we have all that capacity?

Yeah, if we found that we needed to make zoning changes to meet the TOC, we would obviously confer with our, you know, folks in utilities. This is what we're up against. Is this something that can work, you know, to make the zoning work? And if it didn't, we would have to rely on that, you know, that carve out.

And then specifically in places like, I was just looking at the map in North Boulder near Wonderland Lake as you go out towards Lyons and then Shanahan Ridge, that looks like it could be in that quarter mile density area.

I mean, it's unlikely that that area would be included in the transit centers per the bill, just based on it wouldn't meet that 15 dwelling units per acre minimum to even count the units. Okay, yeah.

Thank you.

Tara, then Taisha, then Matt.

Okay, I have a few questions. My first is I remember when we had our council retreat that I talked about us getting rid of ground floor retail since it was such a burden and empty. A lot of it was empty. So this seems to be our lucky day. Why wasn't it at the top of your list of things to do since it seems like we needed to do that anyway?

I would say it wasn't at the top of the list just since, as I noted with the form-based code, the removing of call-up was something that we were talking about 10 years ago. So that kind of floated to the top, but relative to the retail piece, it was kind of a critical issue when we worked on that, you know, back in 2018 to try to preserve areas for retail. And we didn't want residential to, you know, take out a lot of neighborhoods serving uses for neighborhoods.

So we, we didn't, we put it on the list as, as, as something that we actually put it, I'm going to ask that we put it at the top because We'll get to comments in a minute here. Okay. Well, that's the first thing. I'll say that later. The second question is when it comes to all the new legislation, and we heard about the Hill people talking about the problems with density and the amount of cars as well that are like on a single block now because of the buying up the properties and increasing the bedrooms. Are any of these going to have a negative effect on those areas on the hill?

I mean, based on our analysis, we're not looking at any of those areas as areas that we need to change in order to meet the TOC, so I would say no.

And, Hella, did you want to add something? Well, and just to confirm, this wouldn't apply to those lower density neighborhoods at all? No, it wouldn't.

But isn't one of the hill neighborhoods not low density? Or they all are?

Well, I mean, there are some parts of the hill that are over 15 dwelling units per acre. What I'm trying to say is that in the option, the menu of options that we're looking at of how we could comply with the TOC, it's not affecting those areas.

Okay. And the last, okay.

Hold on a second. Hella, did you want to chime in? We can't hear you.

That's the second staffer.

Okay. It looks like we've got audio problems. So, maybe if you have something that you want to put in the chat, we can read it into the record. And we'll come back to you. Terry, you had a?

Yeah, last thing. So on page six of the present, I don't know if it was the presentation, but it was our packet. What did planning board mean when they said lightening up some form-based code design standards? Do you know?

There were a number of design standards that were of concern to the planning board. I think it might have been last year relative to a project that they reviewed that they had requested staff to consider changing. And I think that was also I believe in their letter to council for something that could be on the work program. So we're aware of that. And we in the memo just brought up that we could do those in tandem with any changes to update the form-based code to meet the TOC.

Where can I find, does anyone know where I can find that letter just so I can remind myself what they said?

Yeah, we can certainly send that to you. Again, I will say that we recognize that that was not fully vetted by Planning Board, so I can't represent that that was a consensus of that. We also had staff opinion about that that we've not had a conversation about that's not been prioritized. But to Carl's point, We want to be transparent about the different pieces that come together and the form-based code piece and making it fully administrative was one of those. Okay.

Taisha?

my questions were covered um they were on the water and then the woolly map although i was speaking specifically for the woolly map in the house the home act in particular that map looked like there were some options that were right on that line but it sounds like that's something that we can address so thank you okay matt

Yes, I want a good conversation so far. I wanted to, so I'll just sort of go in order of the bills. So with Prop 123, the fast track was estimating maybe one to two projects per year kind of based on, We had seen five projects since 2021. Is that one to two project forecast perhaps anticipating more wanting to embark on this process because this might be a faster, more streamlined? Or how are we forecasting new? And do we have a sense of where that growth may come from? Or is this just a historical average we're pushing forward?

Yeah, it's just the average of what we've seen over the last five years. We can't really anticipate. And there's so many different aspects to funding, especially for affordable housing projects. So we do hope that it would incentivize that number to go up. But if we stayed at the same rate as we have the last five years, it'd be about one to two projects per year.

Okay. So that's really then just a pure baseline with an anticipation for it to be higher. Yeah, exactly. Okay, great.

Can I follow up on that quickly?

Is there a staffing cost associated with that increase? Like if we get more projects? Yeah, if we had more projects and we had to move them more quickly.

Not necessarily. I mean, these process changes just make the process go quicker with the same staff. Certainly if we went from like one to two to 100 projects, maybe that's a different question. But I think this is all something we can, or we are anticipating to do with current staff. Brad?

Yeah, I do want to clarify, though, You know, the fast tracking of it doesn't come out of nowhere, so it does mean that there's tradeoffs to the other projects that aren't this. And with any project, if we get a whole bunch of something, of course, that influences our overall workload. I think the point you're making, Lisa, is that if we get instead of two, we get four, that's not incrementally different the overall number of cases we get. Really anything, whether it's commercial or industrial, those all take roughly about the same amount of staff time.

Okay. Thanks for that. Hella, do you want to take another try? I see you have some headphones on.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Oh, I can hear me myself. I just turned my camera on to be available for questions, but I didn't have anything to add in particular to what was already said.

Thank you. I did have a question. Oh, you should go for it, yeah.

Yeah, so there's one more regarding the HOME Act. In there, it's talking about sort of, you know, a string of Title IX updates that are recommended, but we have a little bit of runway for those. You know, we've been talking a lot about, and I see your speech monitor know where I'm going with this, a Title IX rewrite or reconfiguration. so i'm wondering like if we think of these sort of edits and we maybe embark on a bigger process is has there has there been a conversation if there's an ultimate deadline of june 2028 to going to the approving group was dola or not for this one but to say hey we're doing the whole enchilada you know can we get an extension or something like that because we're embedding them versus doing your patchwork to delay the bigger thing that we're going to be trying to do so i'm just wondering if there's have been a conversation about if that's an opportunity for us.

We couldn't possibly meet that deadline if we were doing a Title IX restructure or rewrite.

So that's why I was asking, would they give us one if they saw us doing or committing to the bigger Title IX rewrite? I'm wondering if it's worth asking them, hey, If the goal of the HOME Act is what the goal is, seeing us redo the whole thing would be like, oh, yeah, like, go for it. So I'm just wondering if that's a question we would ask if they would be interested.

I mean, we could talk to them. But I mean, honestly, like, there's no mechanism in the bill that talks about extending. So I don't know that they would do that. Didn't know the answer to that. Appreciate it. Thank you. Great. I've got one question for you.

So on the Proposition 123 compliance, we're talking about an expedited review process. for projects with 50% affordable housing, correct? Correct. And you mentioned in the memo the possibility of maybe extending that. Like, could we say, actually, let's do that for projects that have at least 25% affordable housing?

Yes, we could do that. We can't make it more restrictive, but we can make it more open to, you know, projects, like you said, that only have 25.

All right well that's our question. So let's go item by item. Carl can we go back to the slides. So if we can go to the one start with the 1 2 3 slide. Okay well I think. Okay so the proposal is to remove the planning board call up. and remove the automatic planning board hearing for site reviews with height modifications for projects with 50 percent or more affordable housing. Correct. OK. Great. So I would like to get out on the table the possibility of doing this for 25 percent affordable as well. So or taking it down to 25 percent affordable rather than 50 percent. But I'd be interested in some quick opinions from folks on you're comfortable with this going a little lower.

Can I ask, like, how many projects? Because we thought that 50 would be one to two per year if we knocked it down to 25. Because there was a question about scaling up. Does that mean that's 10 projects a year? I'm just wondering, where's our threshold? Do you have a sense?

Yeah, Sloan-Walbert did the calculations for this, so she might correct me. But I know that, I forget what number it was at, but if we just included, I think, projects that had any amount of affordable housing, it would have been two per year.

Yeah, so pretty minor. I can just struple this if folks are interested. So I'll, sorry, a non-binding not a five. Yeah, Tina.

Is there a way that if we lower it we can also add a condition that the affordable units be largely similar to the affordable, to the non-affordable?

I think that's already the case, isn't it?

It is but one thing about the state legislation is that we can't require permanent affordability. So like I said that it can't be more restrictive than their definition. It has to be the affordable housing definition that the state had. So we can't require like a deed restriction or the way that we do our typical permanent affordability.

But if we were less restrictive then we could have our additional requirements on that couldn't we.

Yes. I think, well, I'd have to talk to Hella in more detail about that. But I think maybe.

So right now, the projects that are the non-affordable and the affordable units have to be the same?

For our inclusionary housing program, yes.

No, for this program.

Well, this has a different definition because it's a state definition of affordable housing. So they don't have a requirement that they would have to be the same. I don't know if Sloan, if you're on, she explained this well at planning board, but the projects that will include affordable housing will also be meeting our inclusionary housing requirements through that.

Sure. Can you guys hear me? Okay.

Yes.

Okay. That's the headset. So I'm Sloan Walber. I'm the inclusionary housing program manager. So because these going through the development review process would almost always be new build. They would be affordable housing units to meet inclusionary housing, in which case they would need to meet all of our other inclusionary housing standards, which, you know, they'd have to be the same type and size as the as the market rate units. In order for them to provide what they're calling affordable units that don't meet inclusionary housing, they'd have to somehow demonstrate that they meet the state's requirements of income or rent, and I think that'd be really hard for someone to do.

And then my other question is, do they have to be attached in the same, or could you separate the affordable and the non-affordable on the same lot in two buildings?

There's no restrictions about that.

And I might be interested in that.

And this would be a proposal that you all would come back to us on, right? Like there would be opportunities to shape the final details.

Yeah, we'd probably have to come back with a separate ordinance after we pass the first one just to meet the timeline. Okay. Nicole?

Yeah, and I apologize if I missed this in the packet, but did planning board talk about this idea as well?

Yes, they reviewed it actually on Tuesday. They unanimously recommended the change. They did talk about reducing the amount from 50% to a lower, but I think we discussed just with the number of procedural changes we wanted, our staff was explaining that Internally, we were more comfortable with testing it out on a few projects first and make sure we iron out the details. So planning board seemed to agree with that and then just thought staying at what the state definition was would be good just in the short term. And then we talked about like constantly iterating and evaluating how it's going.

Yeah. I think my preference would be just to move forward with this here, right? We're not talking about that many units. At the same time, I feel like this is in the minds of our community. It is sometimes a bigger thing. And I think because we usually do come back to things, or at least we're getting in a habit of doing that, right? Coming back to... the things that I think there would be time to look for that later. But given that, you know, planning board has looked at this and really we're talking about adjusting how they're dealing with it, that it's not really that many more, I think I would be more comfortable with leaving it as is, just moving it forward with some expediency and then, you know, coming back as needed in the future.

So I'd be comfortable just sort of going with where we're at. The main reason is we're going to likely be coming back to inclusionary housing here in the near future and having a really big discussion about it. And so I think that's probably the best opportunity if we want to make tweaks to it in that bigger context is probably when we would do that. So I think maybe reserving that and not sort of parsing it out and dripping it into that larger conversation, which I'm excited for. And I think there's going to be a lot to discuss when that comes.

Okay. So you feel like 50% is right. All right. Well, that seems to be the will of council. So I'll withdraw my 25% proposal. So I'll just say to council, with a non-binding, not a five, are we comfortable with moving forward with what's proposed by city staff? I'll raise your hand. All right. So that's a yes. So let's go to the next one for the TOC. Okay. So the... PRIMARY PROPOSAL FROM STAFF IS TO REMOVE CALL-UP FOR FORM-BASED CODE REVIEWS BECAUSE THAT WOULD GET US TO THE HOUSING OPPORTUNITY GOAL BY ITSELF. WHAT I'LL START IS SEEING IF WE'RE COMFORTABLE WITH THAT AND THEN I THINK TERRA TALKED ABOUT MAYBE AN ADDITIONAL OPTION AS WELL BUT WOULD WE LIKE TO FOLLOW STAFF'S RECOMMENDATION OF REMOVING CALL-UP FOR FORM-BASED CODE REVIEWS IS THE QUESTION AND I CAN JUST DO A STRAW PULL IF THAT'S RIGHT.

And can we, so they, we also talked about tightening up the form-based code regulations. Can we do that simultaneously, or would that come significantly after?

It would be done simultaneously.

Okay, great, thanks.

Did you have something else?

So by, just to be clear, by tightening up form-based code, we're looking at that and making sure that we're happy with, how would you define tightening up?

Well, again, some planning board members had brought up some areas that they viewed as weak points that needed clarification and needed tightening up. We would start exploring those and working through it to see if it would make it better. And if we agreed, we'd bring it forward.

Yeah, because I agree with them on that, the weak points.

So I'll ask for the non-binding 905 for who's comfortable with that staff recommendation of removing call for form-based code reviews. All right, that's unanimous. And then, Tara, did you want to speak to your other idea?

Yeah, I wouldn't mind simultaneously working on the ground floor residential retail.

It's retail, not residential. Thank you. Yeah, ground floor.

Ground floor, what's it? Remove ground floor. Okay, you know what I'm saying. I can't even talk anymore because of my head. But I wouldn't mind doing that simultaneously because I feel like it's a real need, to be honest, really necessary. big need for us to remove that strangulating situation, strangling situation.

And just for clarification, focused on like the business regional zones or more pervasively?

I mean, maybe take a comprehensive look at it and look for a staff recommendation.

Yeah, I feel like we don't, we have so many vacancies in ground floor retail right now. So why not do it?

We could.

No? A lot of vacancies.

Yeah.

It's costing developers a lot of money.

Tina.

Yeah, I would go with reduce rather than remove and try to establish some criteria when we look at the surrounding area. Are there enough business uses to support the community that's there? And if there are, then we can remove that requirement for new construction.

Nicole.

Sorry, I think I'm a little bit confused. So you're talking about adding on something else that's not listed here?

No, it's the third item on the list.

Oh, got it. Okay. But for ground floor, okay, the residential and business zones. Okay, got it.

Thank you.

Yes, it would be removing or reducing restrictions on ground floor residential and business zones. So I'll ask for the non-binding notify for how many people would be interested in pursuing this option. And that's unanimous. Great. Did anybody else want to propose something else here? Are we good? Seems like we're good. Let's go to our last one. Oh, so maybe you can explain what you're proposing to do here.

Well, I mean, it's not written up there. Yeah, basically, it's this slide kind of shows the what the biggest changes would be. So, it'd be like changing the building height to three stories or 38 feet, putting site design standards like setbacks and things of that nature that are used in other multi-unit developments on these particular projects. And then within that box that they get to build, not restricting the number of units, that would comply with the HOME Act.

So making those changes to our code to be compliant with the HOME Act and those very particular parcels that meet the criteria. Does anybody want to speak to this? Or I could just do a nod of five. Tina?

Yeah, I'm a little concerned about kind of what we are seeing on the Hill with some of the conversions. And I know that this probably wouldn't be a conversion piece because that would be unlikely that a nonprofit owns a single-family home. So I don't know what the concern is, but just as we kind of flesh this out in terms of our communications to the community, to understand where the impacts are and where they're not so that it's crystal clear that we're not sort of accelerating the, you know, stealth storms on the hill and stuff like that.

Something to think about as you move forward. All right. All in favor of taking the staff recommendation on this one? Non-binding, not a five? We got six, it looks like. All not interested?

Well, we got to see what.

All right. So we have a majority of council interested in moving forward with this, and then we'll need to see the details. Does that give you what you need?

It does. Thank you.

Thanks so much, Carl. Thanks, Eliza. Thanks very much. Everybody else who participated, appreciate all your work. All right. Well, that brings us to matters from the mayor and members of council. We've got two items on this. Emily, can we go to the next one, please? First one.

Yes, next we are on item number 9A, and that is for a discussion on whether council would like to form a restaurant or small business task force.

Okay, I'll turn to the council members who are working on this, might want to speak to it.

Yeah, so Matt and I put something together. This came out of our conversations after some of the minimum wage conversations. Basically, is it possible to bring some folks from various groups within this debate together for thinking about problem solving in this space to help out? restaurants as well as workers. So that's kind of what we're proposing here. It's not sort of an official task force or working group. We really just want to start a conversation. Matt and I spent about three weeks creating just that kind of outline, I think going back and forth and talking through what we both hope to see from those conversations. So we've done a lot of that initial work. And really it would just be for relationship building. I'm happy to kind of report back on what it is, but It's less, you know, we'll counsel form one and more just can we please have your blessing in starting to have some of these conversations because we're not looking for it to be anything that takes staff time, not a priority or anything like this. It's really just starting to build some relationships so that we can have some problem-solving conversations between workers and some of our small business owners, specifically in the context of restaurants.

I'll just add, you know, to give ourselves a little bit of a backstop, I think one thing that we're looking at is we know that if this can work in a timely manner, it would provide us maybe an opportunity to hopefully bring some frameworks of some mutually beneficial or agreed upon recommendations in time for the next council retreat. So at least that that's something that this council or the next council, sorry, could consider if there's some bona fide proposals in there that may work. But yes, it's to try to build those relationships because if it's successful in this small sense of restaurants and workers, there's no reason why this type of effort couldn't scale up for a larger conversation across business communities as a whole around Boulder to sort of solve some of those other bigger issues that maybe aren't restaurant related specifically. So it's a test bed for some of the bigger stuff, but hopefully it leads to actually some maybe policies or recommendations that we can provide some relief for both restaurants and workers.

Fantastic. Well, I really appreciate you all doing the work to bring this forward to us. So thanks so much for doing the thoughtful work there. Um, does anybody want to weigh in on this? It sounds like, I'll just say it sounds like a great idea to me, but just a quick question.

I thought that I read, and you might've said this, I'm half listening as you know. Um, did you say that this would be for the 2027 retreat? Um, I saw the words 2027 retreat.

Was I the only one that was right? So we, um, we aren't going to make any guarantees because, um, you know, we, we don't know what's going to come out of it. Um, but we can definitely, uh, report back. Um, maybe in a couple months and let folks know if we've had one or two conversations, how that's gone. And if there is something that comes forward, some idea that's generated, that's wonderful, but obviously we can't commit the next council, so we wouldn't be asking for that. But if there are any ideas that come forward, then... You know, Matt and I can certainly bring them out. We'll both still be here next year, barring anything unexpected. So we can bring those up. And if the next council would like to take something on, if there's an idea that resonates, then we could certainly look at that. But we didn't want to set the expectation that that's what we were trying to do. Not, yeah, just not knowing where this is going to go.

Go ahead, Rob. I think it's a fantastic idea. Have you and I saw that you're starting out really small, which I think is great. Have you gotten to the point where you have any metrics on how you're going to choose individual businesses or labor representatives?

I mean, I think we have some starting places based on those that have been pretty active in the space already. Certainly those that are, you know, probably already affiliated with the Boulder Restaurant Alliance, that's probably a start. Who is in that space would be sort of maybe, you know, up for them to decide who they want to sort of be in that. Who knows not just one restaurant, but knows sort of that larger ecosystem from small independent restaurant positions. And I think we also have folks in the labor space who, again, aren't just a single worker, per se, but represent broad voices. And then we get to see if they're, like, agreeing, hey, we like what we're talking about, we build and expand, we diversify the voices a little bit as we sort of build the concentric circles around that.

And I'm guessing that would include, like, the chamber and some of the other organizations or don't even know yet?

Part of it is that we really want this to be led by the group that comes together just to keep building that trust and those relationships. Once we pull in somebody from the beginning, then it would really be a group conversation to talk through. Who else do we need at this table? And it may be, we've talked about too, there are folks who just come in for a conversation or two because they have some relevant information but don't necessarily need to be part of the group. So it really is, we're hoping that it will just grow with some intention once the group starts having these conversations.

It feels like it's got a lot of potential. Ryan?

Just wanted to offer my endorsement. I really appreciate your leadership on this. This is a very important issue. It's also pretty ambitious. There are groups, different groups that feel a lot of pressure. And I'm really grateful for both of you to work on this. And if anybody can do it, it's the two of you. Thank you.

Very good. So I'll look, Tina, go ahead.

Thanks so much for taking this on. I really appreciate it. And I love that you're creating space for new people to come in in a temporary way, which we don't always do in our different boards, commissions, and task forces. That's really cool.

Ditto. All right. I'll ask for a nod of five for this to proceed. Who would be interested in seeing this move forward? Maybe could you just ask for a blessing? Let's call it direction of council rather than an audit of five. Is it the direction of council to pursue this fantastic idea? Let's raise our hands.

Okay.

That's unanimous interest from council. So thanks. We look forward to the results of what comes from this. All right. Go to our last item, please. all right our last item on tonight's agenda is item 9b and that is a discussion to consider supporting the boulder county ballot measure to change from three to five commissioners okay very good this this was my uh request i think as we're all aware there is an item on the ballot for the county this fall to um move from three county commissioners to five county commissioners uh this was something that i was interested in seeing if council might take a support position of. This is something I'm personally supportive of and was interested in having us take a position as a body on this one. I know there's been some concern about potentially talking to the county about their own structure. I will say that the county government very much affects us here in the city of Boulder, both as a city organization and for our residents. So it seems to me reasonable for us to have an opinion as a body on this question. So I'm interested in supporting it, but interested also in hearing other people's thoughts.

I have questions.

Questions. Yeah, go ahead. I have a question or two I think for Heather.

First question is, does our policy statement give us any guidance on this question?

Thank you, Council Member Shewhart. Heather Stauffer, Intergovernmental Affairs Officer for the city. Our policy statement does not have language that would inform a position on this ballot item.

Okay, thanks. And one other question. Have we sought or gotten any feedback from the county on this?

I have not had conversations with the county commissioners or staff on this. Yeah.

Thank you. All right. Anybody want to offer an opinion on this? And we can go to a straw poll before too long. Matt?

I'll tee it off. So I'm hesitant to have counsel take an official position only because I started thinking about putting the shoe on the other foot. I don't recall the commissioners weighing in when we did the arm error choice ballot measure. Individual members made their own personal decisions to endorse or not endorse that. So they stayed out of our governance affairs. And I think the same was true when we decided to move to even years. So there is a place of reciprocity. I will just say that the county commissioners are at peak dysfunction. I'm going to call it out. And so I wholly support this measure. But I don't know if it's appropriate for us as a governing body to weigh in on another sovereign governing body and how that's structured. I will be supporting this measure and hopefully getting it across the finish line, but I don't know if it's appropriate for us since they had the respect not to weigh into our government space.

Nicole?

Yeah, I also feel like this really is an inappropriate place for the city to step in. I think that if the county commissioners, you know, were unanimous, had put this on the ballot, and they were asking us to support, I might feel a little bit differently. There's probably something in our policy statement that says, you know, we'll support each other as we can or something like that. But to me, this is kind of a governance structure issue. And we can all certainly take positions on this as individuals, but I don't feel like it would be the right policy choice to weigh in on it as an organization, just because, I mean, as Matt said, that's spot on, right? They didn't weigh in on some of our changes to how we vote or how we elect our mayor, things like that. It just doesn't feel completely appropriate in this context, especially with the majority of the commissioners not in favor of doing this.

Thanks. Ryan? And then Taisha.