City Council - workshop

evening and welcome to tonight's study session of the boulder city council i am council member good evening and welcome to tonight's study session of the boulder city council i am council member adams and thank you for joining us we have one item on tonight's agenda and it is the 2027 recommended budget before we go into our work item i would like to outline how the meeting will be conducted we will review this staff's presentation and then we will have time for questions at the end of the presentation we will conduct our council discussion with staff if you have questions please wait for staff to complete their presentation and now we will turn to our City Manager, Nuria Rivera-Vandermeer, to introduce our first item. Nuria?

Thank you so much, Councilmember Adams, and good evening, Councilmembers. We're here tonight to discuss the City Manager's recommended budget for 2027, as was mentioned, a budget that's been worked on for the greater part of the year and includes input and recommendations from each and every department director and their teams. I again wish we were in a better budget position than we find ourselves in, but we play the hand we're dealt. And as they say, and in 2027 continues to be one of those years where hard choices and trade-offs were necessary. I won't go into the details of our number as our incredible budget team led by Charlotte Husky is ready to do so shortly, but I did want to share a few thoughts. First, great care and thought has been put into this process as always. We've been evolving our budget over the last five years. We decided to put a budget online in ways that we had not done before. We've continued with your input to make improvements to that system every year. And with this year, we added budget at a glance page, which is intended to provide even clear, easier to read bottom line explanations to what is understandably a complex budget. We've also continued to move towards better measurements as we've moved towards outcome-based budgeting. So we have opportunities to truly see if the work we're doing and the money we're spending is having a positive impact in community. This has been a journey of both training and shifting how we think about our work that will continue to improve, but it was an important shift in how we approach programmatic budgeting. Late this summer, we added yet another tool to that toolbox by performing a service inventory and categorizing our services into tiers. And while we're almost done with that work, you'll see more of this as we tie this to the upcoming work plan efforts, which should then lean into all our budgetary cycle work as well. Those five tiers, as we're thinking about them, are critically vital services, mandated services, which is in two parts. One is federal and one is state or federal and state and one is city. Strategic priority services and then community enrichment services. And we'll be sharing more of this with you in the future. We use this along with the feedback from community through community surveys, the fund our future surveys, our community connectors, your council priorities, and importantly, all the policy decisions you make every other Thursday to inform our budget choices. And the choices this year were harder as we have been making reductions over the years and are now seeing impacts on valuable staff members and beloved services that are truly difficult to make. But we cannot be all things to all people and continue to provide the level of service that our community is asking for when our revenues aren't growing at the same pace as our appetite for services. I believe this budget reflects the priorities you and community have lifted up, priorities that speak to safety in every sense of the word, wildfire, climate risks, drought, policing, advancing our vision zero goals, speaks to ensuring wellness at all ages and housing support, and leans into how we can continue to support those most vulnerable in our community when other areas of our government systems are failing. It also reflects the very real and critical need to maintain our city assets in ways that best support community services and importantly, continue to retain the very excellent staff that provide the services that best serve our city. So I thank all the departments and staff who have helped create this proposal, and most especially the budget team who will lead me through tonight's presentation. I'll send this over to Krista Morrison, our CFO, who provided real leadership throughout, and will kick us off tonight. Krista?

Thank you, Nuria. Good evening, Mayor Brockett and members of City Council. Krista Morrison, Chief Financial Officer. Happy to be here this evening as we present the 2027 Recommended Budget. First, I want to acknowledge the tremendous work of budget officer Charlotte Husky and the entire budget team. Charlotte, during her tenure in the role of budget officer, has continued to refine and bring forward Boulder's budget process for a more data-driven approach through outcomes-based budgeting, building upon Boulder's sustainability, equity, and resilience framework, as well as transparency in the budget document and community engagement on the budget. Under Charlotte's leadership, this work will only continue to progress each year. Thanks to the many departments online tonight to support the budget discussion. The budget before you this evening started in March with departments starting budget development. It is important to recognize that the 2027 budget represents three consecutive years of reductions requiring departments to face reductions due to economic conditions and changes outside of our control, like legislation impacting property growth in recent years. I would like to thank the thoughtful and collective approach of city leaders have taken to ensure choices brought forward in the submitted budget support advancing council and community priorities within the constraints of available resources and a highly restricted funding. The 2027 recommended budget is 552.6 million across all funds. The capital budget is 135.4 million. The capital budget supports city facilities and infrastructure improvements and maintenance. City infrastructure is broad by type, ranging from city facilities like recreation facilities, administrative buildings, to parks, bridges, our utility network like stormwater and flood management, sewer and water pipelines, traffic signals, streetlights, and pavement, to name a few on that list. Capital budgets will vary by year based on project readiness among other factors. Roughly 77% of the 2027 capital improvement program is supporting projects for utilities and transportation and mobility projects with the balance supporting projects for citywide facilities and fleet, innovation and technology, parks and recreation, open space and mountain parks. A complete list of the capital projects and their sources of funding for those projects is available in the capital improvement section of the budget document. The operating budget is $412.2 million, representing a 2.3% increase over the 2026 approved budget, the second slowest growth rate since the pandemic. While the operating budget is increasing, it is important to note that this actually represents a decrease required by departments to balance the recommended budget. The cost of providing services is outpacing slowing revenue growth. We have presented extensively in recent years along with our partners at CU Boulder on the slowing revenue and reasons for that. I'd like to provide a little high level background on the pressures we're facing with expenditures. The US inflation rate is forecasted for 2027 at 2.5% and the Denver region at 2.7%, meaning the cost of providing services is increasing with inflation among other factors. Boulder is in the business of providing services. This means people or our employees provide those services. Personnel costs represent 41% of the operating budget and 61% of the general fund budget. Paying employees fairly and competitively is important to ensure retention and ability to recruit quality talent. The 2027 budget assumes increases in wages between 4% to 5%, depending on employee classification and collective bargaining agreements. Benefit costs such as retirement, health care, and dental all increase above inflation. These budget assumptions, along with all others, are detailed in the budget and brief section of the budget document. While future forecasts show modest revenue recovery providing some relief starting in 2028, The underlying structural issues of Boulder's high dependence on sales and use tax, volatile economic conditions, high rate of restricted uses of revenue, and underfunded and unfunded costs such as deferred maintenance remain, highlighting the need to continue the work on the long-term financial strategy to ensure financial sustainability. There simply aren't enough resources to maintain current service levels and properly maintain city facilities and infrastructure without change. These issues were highlighted forecasting Boulder's financial position dating back to the Blue Ribbon Commission reports of 2008 and 2010. A long-term comprehensive financial plan is forthcoming in the winter of 2026. It will contain forecasts of major funds for Boulder and both expenditure and revenue strategies as we continue to address longstanding structural issues. This will include continued community conversation, educating on Boulder's financial position, and listening to understand which services are most important to the community and at what level of service. So with that, I'll turn this over to Budget Officer Charlotte Husky to present the 2027 Recommended Budget.

Thank you, Krista. Good evening, Councilmember Charlotte Husky, Budget Officer for the City. I'll share my screen. All right. Good evening, council members. Charlotte Husky, budget officer for the city. I'm joined tonight with Scott Carpenter, principal budget analyst, and we will be walking through tonight's presentation on the 2027 recommended budget. Our agenda for this evening will focus on an overview of our major budget assumptions and key considerations associated with our budget assumptions, our revenue forecast and major revenue changes incorporated into the 2027 budget, an overview of the 2027 recommended budget, speaking to our key decision-making pillars, our fund our future community conversation summary that helped to inform the 2027 budget brought forward to you this evening, and an overview of the significant changes in the operating budget by our sustainability, equity, and resilience goal areas, which help to inform our decision-making. We'll speak to then an overview of our six-year planning, capital planning horizon for 2027 to 2032, sharing an overview of some of our major projects that are incorporated into the six-year CIP. And round out with our long term financial strategy, the work that has been guiding the city's long term fiscal health forward for the past couple of years and work that continues to come as Krista shared forward and finally round out with City Council questions. So sharing forward an overview of our major budget assumptions. Our key considerations and budget assumptions for the 2027 recommended budget included balancing against our budgetary constraints due to a flattening of our city's major revenue sources in recent years, inflationary impacts on operating costs, impacts of recent state legislation, and heightened economic uncertainty. With our revised forecast, city staff shared forward at the May financial forecast to city council a projected budget shortfall if left unaddressed, with specific focus on balancing a $6.3 million projected gap in the general fund, the general fund which comprises 34% of the city's budget. The budget balanced operating expenses against flattening revenues with ongoing reductions, realignments across city funds, and prioritizations of investments using our data-driven framework including looking at operational performance measures, our historical trends and revenue forecasts, community budget engagement input that helped to inform our decisions, as well as the citywide strategic plan priority actions and city council top priorities. The 2027 recommended budget is $552.6 million across all funds, which includes an operating budget of $417.2 million representing the second slowest operating budget growth at 2.35% since the pandemic period. And our capital budget of 135.4 million, which prioritizes ongoing maintenance of city facilities and taking care of the city's existing assets. The 2027 recommended budget brought forward to city council is balanced and uplifts recent input received from fund our future community priorities advances the citywide strategic plan, our top city council top priorities, and continues to invest and prioritize criticality of services for community members. Shifting to focus on our revenue forecast for 2027, our forecasted revenues for 2027 reflect a continued trend of slow growth that the city has seen since the end of 2023. particularly for sales and use tax and property tax, which accounts for 60% of city revenues when excluding utility revenues. Our total projected revenues for 2027 are 527.1 million. For sales and use tax, which comprises 35% of the city revenues, our year-over-year change is an increase of 3.3% compared to our revised forecast for 2026. And as mentioned in the May financial forecast, the city revised its original 2026 forecast to lower the anticipated revenues for 2026 based on economic uncertainty. And this lowering of our base impacted our 2027 budget development. The forecast for property tax, which comprises 11% of city revenues, is a 0.6% increase year over year compared to revised revenues for 2026. Property taxes have been impacted by flattening actual value growth, as well as recent state legislation, which has lowered assessed property values and therefore less revenue collection for city services, supporting city services. Other notable changes that are reflected in the 2027 budget and our 2027 revenues, some are listed here, including the transportation maintenance fee with implementation of this fee anticipated in 2027, with Council approving this fee in the 2026 adopted budget. We are conservatively estimating $3 million in anticipated revenues associated with this fee, beginning with the implementation in 2027. Our additional recreational marijuana retail sales tax. So there's increases incorporated into the budget, into our budgeting assumptions. changing our tax rate from 3.5% to 5.5%, helping to offset the state's recent legislation that reduced entirely our city's share of state-collected marijuana revenues. And this also brings Boulder more in line with neighboring municipalities. This leads to a forecasted 41.2% increase in this revenue, That amounts to about $512,000 incorporated into our revenue forecast for 2027. Affordable housing cash and lieu fees are estimated at an 11% increase compared to 2026. This is driven by anticipated revenues to be received from projects such as the redevelopment of Williams Village, the Boulder Dinner Theater, and at 30th and Bluff Street. And then finally, our utility revenues forecasted at an increase of 6.8%. driven by proposed fee changes included in the 2027 budget that increase fees by 5% for water utilities, 7% for wastewater utilities, and 7% for stormwater flood management utilities to support the utilities enterprise. So shifting now to speak to our 2027 recommended budget overview, providing an overview of our budgeting assumptions, the summary of the funder future community conversations that we performed earlier this spring, and an overview of our operating budget by goal area. Key to the development of the 2027 recommended budget was bringing forward a balanced budget that supported core city services, community priorities, programs and goals consistent with community values, leveraging our flexibility of resources across all of our funds, and looking to position the city for improved long-term financial sustainability. The 2027 budget utilized the primary pillars for decision-making as listed here. Alignment with the sustainability equity and resilience framework, data-driven decisions using our programmatic budgeting for resilience and equity outcomes and performance measures, historical trends looking at revenue as well as our spending forecasts over time, utilizing community budget engagement, including the extensive feedback that we performed with fund our future community engagement efforts this spring, alignment with guiding principles of our long-term financial strategy, including uplifting revenue diversity, flexibility, and stability of city revenues, The citywide strategic plan and advancing our objectives and priority actions that are included in this three-year plan and uplifting of the top council priorities that are set each year during council work planning. To help inform the 2027 recommended budget and to further build upon the long-term financial strategy, The city performed fund our future community conversations this spring, engaging with over 500 community members on trade-offs of city services and service levels. These conversations, which were held both in person and online, helped to educate community members on the city's budget and perform a trade-off exercise and discussion across 25 community-facing services, falling within 12 broader categories as listed on this table. These discussions emphasize the need to perform trade-off of city services and service levels. If interested in increasing services in one area, community members had to draw from another service area. This exercise helped community members to recognize the demand on city services and the difficulty in balancing against city service demands and the continued constraints on the city's budget and the pressures of our financial landscape. Community member priorities of city services are highlighted here in blue across the table on this slide. And that these demonstrate community interest for bolstering programs for ongoing maintenance of city facilities, as well as our public safety services and wildfire resilience and response, as well as the affordable housing service area, which was prioritized in our community conversation population, which comprised more renters, lower income, and more racially and ethnically diverse respondents. This engagement, which built upon budget engagement over the past two budget cycles, served as a key pillar to decision making in the 2027 recommended budget. And as we speak to our tradeoffs of balancing the budget and investments in program areas over the next several slides, you'll see fund our future priorities incorporated and reflected in the 2027 budget. So speaking to our recommended budget comparison from 2019 to 2027, this graph shows our comparison of the city's adopted budgets from 2019 to 2026 and the recommended budget for 2027. Capturing the citywide budget, including our operating as well as our capital budget on this top line. The city's operating budget represented here in the middle line. And finally, our general fund budget represented here on the bottom line in yellow. In the post-pandemic period in 2021 and through 2023, the city saw strong revenue growth and sales and use tax as well as in property taxes and in turn utilize these revenues to invest in new and new ongoing programs and services that contributed to homelessness efforts, behavioral health response, wildfire resilience, public safety and affordable housing efforts to name a few services and programs provided across the city. Sales and use tax began to flatten in late 2023. And the city turned focus on strategic use of one-time fund balance for one-time investments in both the 2024 and the 2025 budgets. The city's sales and use tax and property tax revenues were further impacted by economic uncertainty in state legislation in 2025. which resulted in an identified shortfall mid-year in 2025. And the city, as a result, performed a hiring freeze mid-year and a need to identify departmental one-time savings. We also performed reductions to balance the budget in 2026 against the $7.5 million forecasted gap in the general fund. This resulted in the slowest operating budget growth for the city since the pandemic period for an operating budget growth of 2.09% year-over-year. The 2027 recommended budget brought forward to City Council is balanced and represents, as mentioned previously, for the citywide operating budget, the second slowest operating growth since the 2021 period at 2.35%. and the general fund sitting just above 3% year-over-year increase. The 2027 recommended operating budget totals $417.24 million, representing a 2.35% over the 2026 adopted budget, marking our second slowest operating growth since the pandemic period. The 2027 operating budget annual growth sits below the U.S. and the Denver Aurora Lakewood forecasted inflation rates for 2027 at 2.5% and 2.6% respectively. Primary cost drivers for the operating budget include wages and benefits for personnel, internal service costs such as fleet replacements, fleet service charges, and technology costs. and existing contractual increases relating to existing city operations programs and services. With our lowered revenue forecast and increase in base expenses, we identified a $6.3 million gap in the general fund and asked departments to identify 4% departmental savings to help support reduction strategies to help support balancing the budget. The budget performed ongoing reductions realignments across city funds, and limited enhancements toward priority investments using lens of criticality and our key pillars for data-driven decision-making. Over the next few slides, I'll pass this over to our principal budget analyst, Scott Carpenter, who will cover highlights of our significant changes within the operating budget as outlined by our sustainability, equity, and resilience goal area.

Thank you, Charlotte. Good evening, Council. Scott Carpenter, Principal Budget Analyst. And as mentioned by Charlotte, over the next few slides, I'm going to highlight changes within the 2027 budget by sustainability, equity and resilience goal, starting with responsibly governed. There is a $4.3 million increase for city facilities maintenance, supporting building maintenance needs such as roof repairs, boiler replacements and electrical system repairs. The implementation of a one ranger and shared resources approach between open space and mountain parks and parks and recreation for parks and open space maintenance and training and development for limited Commission Rangers across teams. parks and open space will continue to work on possible consolidation and efficiency efforts throughout the year to bring forward opportunities in the budget. Under the safe goal investments in wildfire resilience include a one time increase of 300,000 in the climate tax fund for wildfire ready priorities and a conversion of an existing fixed term position to a fuels management program manager. To manage the wildland urban interface field crew to accomplish priority wildland fire and climate projects funded through the open space fund. This is on top of an estimated $11 million in spending that goes towards wildfire efforts across the city. Additionally, an ongoing enhancement of $36,000 funded to the transportation fund for snow and ice response technology for the road weather information systems cameras and sensors for routing and navigation. Additional investments under the SAFE goal include $2.4 million one time for the replacement of the firefighter self-contained breathing apparatus equipment and $190,000 one time for the continuation of firefighter health screening for occupational risks like heart disease, cancer, and behavioral health. There is $552,000 ongoing in funding for three new police lieutenant positions to act in a supervisory role over each watch, providing additional oversight management, helping to further implement the reimagining policing plan. Under the livable goal, furthering the homelessness strategy, there is $300,000 in one-time funding for the Building Home Program and $72,000 for the Flexible Resolution Program to help newly housed individuals transition into stable living situations and avoid homelessness through peer support, housing retention, and reunification services. There are significant affordable housing investments, including 5.3Million for the Alpine Balsam site, supporting the city's largest affordable housing project with 144 affordable units. The 5.3Million dollars represents 1 year of funding that will total. 14.5 million over several years, in addition to 14.4 million to support project infrastructure via transfer from the affordable housing fund to the government or capital fund. There is $4.1 million for affordable for an affordable housing development of 44 permanently affordable townhomes on 34th street. That is 2.2 million and 1.9 million to prepare the Valmont site in East Boulder to develop approximately 18 to 20 permanently affordable homes, which will be built using the city's modular factory. Aligned with the healthy and socially thriving goal, Within the Arts, Culture, and Heritage Fund, there is $40,000 for Community Arts Stabilization Trust Colorado Partnership to analyze how to address the displacement of artists and cultural nonprofits from Boulder's creative ecosystem. There is a $250,000 realignment from the Sugar Sweetened Beverage Distribution Tax Fund to support health equity outcomes through parks and recreation's existing programs, such as the EXPAND program for people with disabilities or the Youth Services Initiative. Also under the healthy and socially thriving goal, there is the ongoing funding reduction at spruce pool. One time dollars will fund spruce pool operations to the end of 2027. The cost of operating pools has increased significantly. The city has felt particular inflationary pressures post pandemic with costs increases to wages, chemicals and utilities. For ongoing costs of chemicals and gas and electric, recent years have seen an increase above 12% and 40% respectively. This proposed reduction minimizes community impact based upon usage data across the entire city pool system. Spruce Pools serves fewer swimmers in the community than other city pools. There is also the elimination of child wash services at East boulder Community Center, this is based on under utilization of the child watch program at ABC see Community members will have child watch services available at North boulder recreation. Center. For the environmentally sustainable goal, the budget proposes a $150,000 realignment of climate tax funds for Parks and Recreation's urban forestry tree planting and tree trust programs. This realignment allows other city funding sources to be used for underfunded recreation operations. There is a $165,000 reduction at Scott Carpenter Pool from the shoulder season that includes operations before Memorial Day or after Labor Day and leisure pool changes throughout the season during lower demand periods at the pool. In alignment with the economically vital goal, The budget proposes a $38,000 ongoing reduction to the microloan and flexible rebate programs to be considered holistically as part of the city's economic development strategy. There is $500,000 in one-time funding for the continuation of the downtown ambassador program, providing hospitality, safety, and cleaning services within the business improvement districts, the civic area, and University Hill. And last but not least aligned to the accessible and connected goal is the establishment of a new office of customer experience to be incubated under the city manager's office, with the opening of the Western city campus building in late 2027. which will provide centralized and convenient customer service through in-person direct support and enhanced digital processes. This new office will consolidate and realign as many as 17 existing positions that perform similar or related work citywide. The 2027 budget reflects two FTE to be realigned from the Communications and Engagement Department to this new office, with the remaining staff to be realigned late in 2027. There is $150,000 in one-time funding for a statistically valid community survey to provide detail on emerging community priorities and measure the impact of city services, which will include a qualitative process for expanded sample sizes and inclusivity of sampling conducted by an inclusive engagement contractor. The city last performed the community survey in 2023 This updated and expanded survey will build upon prior year's data and help to provide a longitudinal comparison of community input city services. And with that, I will now turn it back to Charlotte to provide an overview of the proposed 2027 through 2032 capital improvement program.

Thank you, Scott, for the overview of the operating budget. So shifting now to talk through our six-year capital planning horizon with the 2027 to 2032 capital improvement program, as well as outline some of the major capital projects incorporated into the six-year horizon. The 2027 capital budget as listed here on this slide is 135.4 million and 827.7 million in funding planned across the six-year capital planning horizon, supporting capital improvement programs across seven departments funded by 19 funds. The primary revenues of which come from utility user charges, sales and use tax, as well as property tax. In 2027, major capital investments include maintenance and infrastructure of the city's utilities, such as the water pipeline repair and dam stability, transportation projects and programs, such as the pavement management program and bridge replacement projects, and city facilities, such as funding community and recreation centers, parking garages, as well as fire stations. On an annual basis, over 75% of the capital budget supports utilities and transportation, infrastructure and maintenance on core projects such as water pipeline repair, floodplain mitigation, sanitary sewer rehabilitation, pavement management and bridge repair. Additionally, over 50% of our capital budget invests in ongoing capital maintenance of city infrastructure and assets. and total spending fluctuates annually based on phasing of planned capital projects with project scope, timing and funding availability in our financing plans. Over the next few slides, I'll highlight some key capital projects that the city plans to perform in 2027, as well as across the six year horizon. The utilities Barker Gravity Pipeline Repair will invest 13.5 million for repairs to an over 100-year-old pipeline that delivers water from the Barker Reservoir in Nederland to the Kassa Reservoir up Flagstaff Road. And this is critical for maintaining water supply for City of Boulder residents. The Colorado 119 bus priority traffic signal improvements is included in the 2027 to 2032 CIP And this will implement traffic signal and intersection infrastructure modifications for buses along the Colorado 119 corridor at 28th Street and Canyon Boulevard, as well as at Iris Avenue and Diagonal Highway to support regional transportation collaboration and help to reduce single occupancy vehicle trips. Incorporated into our six-year capital improvement program are a list of capital projects supporting wildfire prevention efforts across the CIP. Those listed here are specific wildfire prevention efforts on open space land. And I'll highlight these and walk through these on the slide. We have a total of 170K supporting the Flagstaff corridor safety and wildfire prevention improvements. to increase visitor safety, reduce wildfire potential, and ensure long-term ecological viability of the area. There is the wildfire fuels mitigation along ditch corridors, 350,000 to mitigate fuels along irrigation ditches on open space land to support wildfire resilience. Stock water planning for drought resilience, and supporting of diversified agriculture. There's a total of 680,000 in funds across the horizon, supporting improvements to stock water infrastructure to support sustainable grazing, protect sensitive habitats, and reduce wildfire risk. There's a project supporting fuels mitigation, virtual fencing, so 250,000 in funds for a pilot for virtual fencing pilot to manage grazing for invasive species control, enhancing native ecosystems, supporting fuel mitigation and reducing fire risk on open space land. The implementation of the tall grass control strategy at 300,000 supporting this containment and eradication, protecting native ecosystems, biodiversity and fire safety for broader wildfire risk reduction. And finally, the implementation of the OSMP climate and wildfire plan, a total of 1.7 million to support actions that reduce emissions, improve landscape resilience, manage wildfire risk, and integrate climate adaptation into ongoing land management. Two other key projects incorporated into the six-year capital planning horizon include the replacements of fire stations two and four, There's a total of 31.7 million incorporated into the CIP to replace Fire Station 2 at Broadway and Baseline, as well as Fire Station 4 in South Boulder. These fire stations combined respond to an over 3,000 calls a year, and both of these fire stations are past their operational lifespan, and these replacements will help to modernize emergency services for community response. The Fire Station 2 completion of the replacement is anticipated for 2027 and 2028, while Fire Station 4 completion is anticipated in 2031 and will be funded by the sale of city office buildings with the consolidation of city offices to the Western City Campus. With these revenues from building sales, the city will be able to advance the replacement of Fire Station 4 a year earlier than anticipated which will save costs by advancing the replacement early, as well as supporting our investments in critical emergency operations for the community. Investments at East Boulder Community Center will include renovations to meet modern recreation needs and improve program elements like swimming, fitness, and older adult services. There are additional improvements at Tom Watson Park, as well as North Boulder Park. And then these improvements planned for the ball fields at Tom Watson Park will help to replace aging irrigation systems, as well as play areas and fitness area improvements in North Boulder Park to support community gatherings. An overview of our community culture resilience and safety tax program. The total amount of investments across the six-year horizon total 126.1 million in 2027 to 2032, supporting 16 capital projects, including 96.2 million in planned debt proceeds to advance Fire Station 2 replacement, the renovations occurring at East Boulder Community Center as well as at the Civic Area or Boulder Creek Park. Included in, importantly included in the CIP for this year and reflected in our community culture and resilience and safety tax investments beginning in 2027 and highlighted throughout the six year horizon include an additional amount of investments in ongoing maintenance of city facilities And this was informed in part by the input heard from Fund Our Future community conversations earlier this spring. There's a total of 27.9 million in new facilities maintenance projects to help address a critical backlog of deferred maintenance. And you'll see this reflected in the CIP supported by our CCRS revenues and receiving voter approval from this last fall. And finally, turning to our efforts with a long-term financial strategy, speaking to our financial planning as well as our city fiscal health. Named a top city council priority in 2024, the long-term financial strategy builds upon the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission reports from 2028. excuse me, 2008 and 2010, and focuses on taking care of what we have, addressing our backlog of needs, prioritizing the flexibility of funding to meet community needs, recognizing the challenges of restricted funding, coordinating on our tax ballot measures within our broader city financial planning, so looking at alternative funding mechanisms, as well as our outcomes-based budgeting approach, which we have brought forward in recent years, as well as distributing the tax burden more equitably. And these are listed key components and advancements of the long-term financial strategy, including the work on the long-term financial comprehensive plan, which will come forward to city council this December, focuses on updates to city financial policies, as well as outlining future strategic action steps for the city to take to guide toward fiscal health. Another key component of the long-term financial strategy includes our alternative funding mechanisms to increase revenue diversity, sufficiency, and stability. Incorporated into the 2027 recommended budget, as mentioned previously, includes an increase to our recreational marijuana retail sales tax from 3.5% to 5.5%, and an increase in certain fees, including our utility fees, our long-term parking permits, And recreational marijuana, medical marijuana licenses and a comprehensive list of these fees are incorporated into our comprehensive fee inventory published in our budget book on our budget site. We performed an inventory of city services, as Nuria spoke to earlier, and this helped to inform our fund our future community conversations. And this input of our community, this input received from fund our future community conversations was critical in informing our decision-making for the 2027 budget. And then finally, our ballot measure strategy for 2025 and 2026 led to the successful 2025 ballot measure and voter approval of the 0.3% permanent extension of the community culture resilience and safety tax, as well as an increase in our debt capacity. And on the 2026 November ballot is a focus on city facilities infrastructure with the recreation and safety bond. So looking forward to next steps for the 2027 recommended budget this evening with this council study session, we'll answer questions from council members and then shift to budget readings and adoption with our first reading on October 1st and second reading and adoption of the 2027 budget on October 15th. Similar to prior years, we are asking of council members to share forward any potential and proposed council budget amendments to hotline by September 28th. This enables city staff to review and compile city council budget amendments across the board and bring these forward for the October 1st reading with city council that evening on October 1st. And to ensure a balanced budget, amendments should include an identified offset. City staff is here and available to help should council members have questions as we shift and move toward our October 1st first reading and any questions on budget amendments or questions on offsets as well. And finally, with our council questions for this evening, do council members have any questions on the 2027 recommended budget, including on the operating budget as well as our capital budget? And does council recommend any substantive changes in advance of its first reading of the 2027 budget on October 1st or questions on next steps?

Thank you so much, Charlotte and team for that very thorough review and list of recommendations. I will start with the first question about questions on the 2027 recommended budget, including operating budget and capital budget. in order to facilitate this. We have about two and a half or hour and a half or two and a half hours, two hours and 10 minutes-ish. So I'm going to ask our health members to ask your first two questions and we'll do a round and then we'll come back for another two question rounds. I see Ryan and then Tara.

Thanks. And thanks Charlotte and team for such a, such a, breadth of work. I have just a procedural question. So you have a question for us, which is, would we like to propose any major changes? My question to you is, what does that take? So does that take five council members to say, yes, we'd like to see a change? Can you just Can you comment on how you want to think about that as we get into you hearing feedback from council members on ideas?

Yeah, I think that that's a helpful question, Ryan, on the process and might turn to our deputy city attorney here to confirm and chime in if I misstep. It would be helpful to understand across the board from council members if there is majority support for substantive changes or This evening, there can be conversations between now and October 1st. If there are council members that are interested in proposing amendments across the board, the main item that we share forward is that there should be an identified offset to ensure that we bring forward a balanced budget and council approves a balanced budget. And so we are available to support if there are questions, but for this evening, it would be helpful to understand if there are there is a majority of Council that's interested. And then we will take that forward and bring that to our October 1st reading as well, in addition to any additional amendments that come forward between now and then.

Okay, thanks.

Wanted to make sure that Teresa didn't have any question or comments about that.

Hi, everyone. I am not Teresa. I am Roberto Ramirez, your deputy. City Attorney. And Charlotte was completely right. If they're during this process in a study session, it really is to ask the questions. And if there is a majority of or a not a five of city council members that wish for us to do some investigating as to certain areas, that would be very helpful. Thanks.

And just point of reference, but is not required at this stage. It would just be a nice to have for the nine to five, because that's outside of the scope of the questions that we have today. So I want to be mindful of what we're going to be able to get accomplished. And I can imagine, you know, even if there were just three, that that could be a very lengthy process that will take us past nine o'clock. So just want to caution us on the pathway moving forward. So was that your only question, Ryan, or did you want to?

Yeah, that was just a clarifying question. That's all I have for my clarifying questions.

All right. Thank you. Moving on, I see Rob. I thought I saw Matt's. Oh, no, Matt's maybe later. My apologies. Rob.

Rob, it is. I have to ask this question, but the community has been asking this so much, and trust me, it's not an attack. I just want to clarify this. But there's a boxing expression that describes exactly where we are on Alpine Balsam. when you're constantly backing up and you can't generate power and you can't throw a combination, you're always responding to somebody else's rhythm. And I feel like that's where we've been on the largest infrastructure project in the history of the city. And it's cost us credibility that frankly, we can't afford to lose right now. The questions that have driven this council and staff onto their heels, they weren't unpredictable. Like what does the project actually cost in total, how does it compare to the original figure, what do the COPs actually obligate us to over time, the bond. And I think the standard is simple, no one should learn something critical about any major infrastructure project from anyone other than us first. not from somebody's white paper that a community member wrote, not from a hotline response, not from Quora record requests, but from us. And it means trusting the public with the full picture before they have to perceivably pry it out of us. So my question is, What does it actually change for us to change that posture? And I'm not talking about for this project specifically, but structurally, so that our next major capital commitment the city makes doesn't put us in the same position.

So let me start and take the question. I appreciate the question, Rob. I perhaps would not agree with the characterization of us not being direct and open and been thinking about it. I think I know council has because we have had this conversation in many council meetings. We have had a project page recently. Certainly people have asked for a level of detail that we don't generally provide. for every project that we have. And this one has spanned many, many years. So it is an incredibly complex project. We have spoken to community members. We have said we are looking to get all of that categorized and we have i hope that many of you have been able to see um not just the additional project detail but we've also put a story map that really covers the 11-year history of uh of this project but along the way you will see that we have tied those touch points council has seen this community has had an opportunity to see a lot of this along the way so i just want to be um Direct about, I do not believe that this is necessarily a case where we have not been providing updates. We can quibble about certainly level of detail and what amount we should provide for every single project. There are details in our CIP projects. Once they stop being a CIP project and we're into implementation, that level of detail is not there. And frankly, I would not expect to find that in the budget document per se. Budget serves a particular purpose. There are additional areas in which we can provide more as we continue to think about how do we continue to provide transparency. Having said all of that, and I don't know if there are others who want to follow me, but I will say that we will always learn from this. We will continue to think through whether how our financial systems can best tag certain projects as we move forward. particularly if they are cross-departmental. We hear this as well for things like homelessness or wildfire, right? Those are not necessarily as we budget. We budget in departments. So thinking how do we continue to make that visible? We will do that with other projects. We certainly have a whole number of affordable housing developments, of flood mitigation projects, of transportation projects. We are thoughtful and careful about what we do in those. If we ever have to, if we ever have gone over, I will say too, or have gone under, that is reflected in budget. All of this comes before you, either for additional appropriation or for extension of CIP or it changes because every project starts with estimate as we think forward. So there are a variety of mechanisms as we move on that showcase it. There is nothing that we are trying to not reveal or share with you or with community.

And I just want to be clear, I don't believe that you're hiding anything or there's nothing. I'm just trying to look forward. So as we learn from this, like, you know, we've had so many core requests and things that I just want to get in front of the next project. It's not, I'm not making any implications there.

Appreciate that. And sorry, I don't know if another staff person was going to chime in. But we certainly are happy to think about what are those major projects that require additional level of detail. As you have seen, as we have matured as an organization, we are constantly putting out things like story maps that are helping. We're trying to do that with projects like sort of the civic area. And we will likely be thinking about those projects for some of our facilities as we move forward. So we know that our tools have gotten better over time in ways that they perhaps did not allow us to do 10 years ago.

Can I colloquial that when you're finished, Rob?

Yeah, I mean, I'm going to... Or I should be asking Taisha.

I'm supposed to ask the leader if I can colloquial.

Yes, you can colloquial on that, on the question about Alpine Blossom.

Yeah. So I guess my question is similar to Rob's. When does council hear if there's cost overruns? Or in other words, there's just regular cost overruns, and then there are really, really big cost overruns. So when do we hear about it? And what is our responsibility? Or let's say we also want to make sure this doesn't happen again. So What do we have to do? What is our responsibility in it? Exactly when, I can't remember, and I've been on council a long time. When did you tell us that there were cost overruns? And I guess when I first got on council, I remember saying, well, this project is expensive. That was in 2021 when you came. And it was like people were saying, well, it's too late. It's too late. So I'm not quite sure how to make sure that this whole thing doesn't happen again. Not just from a staff perspective, but from council perspective.

Yeah, thank you for the question, council member. I'm happy to start out and the other staff are here to support with responses as well. We, as Nuria shared forward, bring forward our six-year capital planning horizon and our annual budget on an annual basis to city council. We also bring forward at least planned on two years throughout the, excuse me, two times throughout the year supplemental appropriations for City Council consideration. It is at this time that we bring forward any changes to budget or appropriation levels to City Council. And so it is during our budget process where City Council has the opportunity to review and approve any changes to our annual planned upcoming fiscal year, as well as during the adjustments to base that are brought forward at least two times a year.

And maybe, Charlotte, if I can jump in, this is Chris Maschak, deputy city manager, just specific to the Alpine Balsam project. I think there is a narrative out in the community that the project is over budget, and that's just not true. The project has been within every budget that's been allocated by city council. Is it a big number? It's a really big number overall when you add up that 11-year history from the site acquisition, which was a big piece of redevelopment in the community, to then the decisions on the deconstruction that council made. to now the construction of the Western City Campus. It's a big building and the budget is big, but the project is within its budget that was approved by Council. And so that's, as Nuria was referencing, what we've tried to put together and compile going back those 11 years is to show what each of those components were, what the expenses were, what the approved allocated budget was that was approved by council to try and help tell that story. Because I think that's part of the narrative that's out in the community is just that the project is out of control and that the budget is greatly exceeded. And no, we're trying to be as cost efficient as possible. And we are managing that project within the budget that was allocated.

Thank you. Rob, yes, question two.

Awesome, thank you. I didn't see it, at least I didn't see it in detail and I might've missed it, it's a long document, but reserve funding for facilities. I know we've got line items for it and I know for various reasons, we haven't been contributing to what is necessary to replace a building in 30 years. Did I miss that? Is that coming in the long-term financial plan?

So thanks for the question, Councilmember Kaplan. We have been investing in our 2% CRV. I think that, just to clarify that, is that the specific question associated with setting aside for building reserves as well as potentially our facilities maintenance investments in the CIP? So the 2% CRV is something that we have been setting aside since the approval, council's approval of the facility strategic plan. And we have been setting these aside for specific criteria of buildings that meet that 2% CRV set aside. We have been adding to that over the past few budget cycles, and that is reflected in the 2027 budget. What is additionally reflected in the 2027 budget is a total of $4.3 million in additional funding to support critical maintenance of city facilities. That was shared forward on the slide earlier in our presentation. That was supported with the ability and flexibility of the funding that the city now has with the permanent approval of the 0.3% CCRS tax. So we were able to increase the amount of critical maintenance items such as roof replacements, boiler replacement system upgrades, in our 2027 budget with permanent extension approval. And that is reflected in our capital budget, as well as our 2% CRV going to buildings like Fire Station 8, for example.

So moving forward from this point on, if we built a building right now, 30 years from now, we wouldn't have to ask for money. We would have the replacement value.

So the, and I know we have our deputy director of facilities and fleet, but our investments associated with the 2% CRV are set aside once a project is complete. And Michelle, I might toss to you to add some additional detail.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the question. I'm Michelle Crane, Deputy Director with Facilities and Fleet. And I know it's sort of a complex idea about what this replacement funding is for. So the industry standard of setting aside 2% of a building's current replacement value really anticipates that in 10, 15 years, another boiler is going to have to be replaced or another rooftop unit. So buildings may last 50 years, but all the parts and pieces inside, they need to be replaced on an ongoing cycle. That's something that we haven't historically been setting aside money for even those minor replacements or those pieces of equipment, carpeting that needs to be replaced. The 2% does not wholesale replace a building. That's an entirely different thing. However, If we take very good care of our buildings, our buildings should last much longer and we won't have the need to necessarily do wholesale replacements. And so that's really what this is for, is to really extend the life of the equipment in the building and to extend the overall life of the building. But that 2% is to plan for equipment replacement on cycle. Does that help answer that question?

Yeah, it does.

Awesome. Thank you. Tina?

Hi. Thank you. So my first question is with the positions that are using a one-time funding or a fixed-term contract, and there are a few throughout the budget, are we still looking to find a funding source for the following year, or are we anticipating that it will be a second fixed-term contract that we already have identified for 2028?

Thank you for the question, Councilmember. It is an item that we look at and review on an annual basis associated with fixed-term or term-limited positions. Some of the positions identified in the 2027 budget, we have identified multi-year funding for. And those that are not incorporated, that we did not incorporate multi-year funding for, that are supporting on a one-year basis, throughout funding for the upcoming fiscal year. That is something that we would need to review with a lens of criticality as to whether or not we will be incorporating those and looking at those as extending those fixed term positions or potentially maintaining those at just one year.

Okay. That helps. Thank you. And then the other piece is I remember that the legislation around the percentage of property tax that it assesses is that it stops being decreased in 2027, that we'll experience one more round, and then will it stay at that number moving forward?

I might invite our principal budget analyst, Scott Carpenter, to respond and confirm to that question whether or not there are any additional assessment changes to our property tax revenue in the out years.

Thank you for the question. Scott Kerpner, principal budget analyst. In our outer years assumptions, we are assuming a 5% increase for each reassessment cycle. There are no more legislative changes anticipated. beyond this year for 2027. There are no more lowering of assessment rates beyond what is being experienced for this year. There will be a slight increase in actual value reductions for residential properties that is on a continuous basis adjusted for inflation. But that should... not be a major impact in the future.

So we won't see that decline when we're looking into the 2028 budget. We'll see a flattening from that particular impact.

Correct. We could see different impacts from property value assessments, but not legislative impact.

All right. That's my two for now. Thank you. Matt.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Let's lower that hand so we're not confusing anymore. All right. First question is, this question is for Nuri, because I think you briefly touched on it, and I'm wondering if you could expand upon it a bit. But can you talk about this new framework where we kind of separate core services from the discretionary work? I think maybe we've talked about it as Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3 levels and programs. I know it's not fully fleshed out with specific programs or dollars assigned to each one. But I think it's critical that community knows kind of how our budget is evolving past cuts and reprioritization in a time of austerity to true outcome based budgeting. So I was wondering if you could speak more about that and maybe timeline of when we expect that framework and lens to be affecting our budget and be utilized.

Sure. And I'll start, but I certainly I'll certainly invite our budget team has been integral to this conversation as we've been moving that forward. But, you know, as we talk in community, so many people talk about core services and what is core. And if you ask anybody what's core off the street, they're going to say it's all core, right? Like it's all super vital. It's all important. We know that that is important. Not the best way to look at it. And frankly, this city, as many others, have experienced when a catastrophe like the pandemic comes up, you really need to get critical about what you need to spend money on and what is not. It is why, for example, Citi went through an exercise similar to this when the pandemic hit, as most cities do. When we looked at what that looked like, we wanted to talk through a variety of tiers is how we're calling it, because we also want to make sure that we're not ascribing judgment to the tiers. There are some things that we would consider tier one critically vital services. Those are interruption would create an immediate risk to public health and safety. Those are few and far between. If you think about a bell curve, that is what that looks like. Clean air, clean water. some public safety services, traffic control, things that are really tied to, that could really help or hurt public health or safety. We have tier two, tier three are what we're calling mandated services. There are mandated services that are really, we lack the discretion to stop, no authority. We are obligated to do that. We look at that from federal law, state law, what must be provided because we have no ability to change that. We have a set of mandated services that we are really focused on city and those are, they could change but they could change, they would might need to change with voter mandate, or they have to change through code and you have the ability to do that. For example, I think about police oversight or some of our smart regs. Those are code created. Those are not required by state or federal law. And they are mandated services that we appreciate and we move forward. But those are the kinds of things when we're looking at mandated, we're looking at what's in code. We have strategic priority services. These are the last two categories are more discretional, but we have categorized one that's more discretionary that is directly related to strategic plan priorities or measures. There's certain criteria about what that looks like because anything can be tied to a strategy if you think about it. So we're being very thoughtful and frankly with the strategic plan coming out that you all will provide us information on. We will also see that continue to weigh in there. And then there's community enrichment services, which are also discretionary, but they really provide and enhance the quality of life and services across our city. Some of those are revenue generating services. So we're thoughtful about that. None of that means that we can't do them, but when it comes down to budget time and we have to prioritize, it may be one of the things that we look at. It could be that there is a service in our rec center that's a community enrichment service, but actually brings in revenue and that would not be one that we cut. So regardless of where the tier is, we want to be thoughtful of how that works. So we just, amidst all the craziness that has been happening this year with work and budget, Staff really went through that and categorized the entire services into that. That happened as we were finalizing budget. So it's a data point in this year's budget. It will be more predominant as we continue to move forward. We will be tying work planning to that, and you will start to see that more ingrained in some of the things without a judgment on whether that moves forward, but rather that is some of the things that we will be thinking about when it comes to prioritization. To the budget team, what did I screw up for you?

Nothing, Nuria. No, you covered everything. I think to that point, we are really looking to lean into this in future and build upon the work that we've been doing with budgeting for resilience and equity and digging further into service levels and services in lieu of simply focusing on our program areas.

And for kids watching along, apologize for my language. What did I mess up for you? I will be more thoughtful.

All right, appreciate that. My next question kind of dovetails a little bit on a line of inquiry that I think Rob was at. So in one of the slides, it was the fund our future priority slide. It clearly laid out that in those conversations that there were prioritization from community. And let's just start with the top five, for instance. And I wanted to kind of get a sense of, you know, there's no secret. The community telegraphed exactly what are the projects and priorities that they were going to be heavily scrutinizing. And we, as their elected officials, in many ways on their behalf, would also seek to get greater clarity on. So I i'm wondering why we didn't use the information that was really delivered to us on a silver platter to focus. Because, as you mentioned area we can't do all the projects in great detail and services but Community told us exactly which ones they wanted. And so i'm wondering why in this budget we didn't do that because things like wildfire. and municipal infrastructure, snow and ice removal, public safety, homelessness were the top five. And yet all of them were either somewhat incomplete or non-existent as a complete budget item. And they were mixed and matched. And it became really opaque as to how to extract what each of those was. And since the community said, hey, these are our priorities, I'm just wondering why we didn't be clear on at least the ones we knew community was going to focus on.

Thank you for the question, Council Member Benjamin. So we incorporated and utilized community feedback received from over 500 community members that we heard from in person, online. through the online tool that we had and utilize this input as a key pillar to the budget decision-making. And you see that reflected in our 2027 recommended budget included in the slides that we walked through were some examples, but for wildfire, we shared forward our list of examples and investments in wildfire prevention and wildfire resilience that will take place on open space land. Incorporated into the 2027 budget, we have a total estimated amount of $11 million in investments in wildfire resilience and response, and this goes toward uplifting the framework that city council heard at the August 22nd study session on wildfire resilience. So focusing on our fire adapted communities, resilient landscapes, our safe and effective wildfire response, totaling 11 million that's reflected in that budget. That is a breakdown of operating and capital costs. We do have, as reflected on our budget highlights page, an overview of our investments, highlights associated with wildfire resilience, including our wildland unit within our fire rescue department. And so included in this budget is a total represented an estimated amount of $11 million going to support wildfire resilience and response that was the top community priority that we heard. We also increased our total amount that is coming from climate tax funding by $300,000 to help support wildfire investments. Our municipal infrastructure was our second service category that was the top priority that we heard from from community members and we have a total of 28 million and additional funding that spread across the six year CIP to invest in ongoing maintenance of city facilities. Our snow and ice response investments are incorporated into our 2026 or excuse me 2027 budget. We have an enhancement in our technology associated with snow and ice response that will help to support the weather information systems and technology response associated with snow and ice response. And for public safety, we have performed trade-offs associated with public safety. We have identified reductions of our police photo fan program and other reductions associated and looking at trade-offs across our uh, public safety department, but in the, uh, investments that we are making for the limited enhancements that are reflected in the 2027 budget, we have three new, uh, FTEs, uh, police lieutenants that will help to support the reimagined plan that city council passed, uh, a few years back and for affordable housing investments, uh, we have, uh, as listed and shared forward a total of 5.3 million to support the city's largest affordable housing hub at the Alpine Balsam 8.8 acre site. And so these are investments that are spread across our 2027 recommended budget and really uplifting our community input that we heard in fund our future community conversations earlier this year.

I appreciate that, Charlotte, and I appreciate you recapping those pieces. But you said it's spread across. It's not clear, and it's really hard for even council members or community to find that information clearly. So I think that there's some work to be done here, and I think that there's some great collaborative opportunities for us too. So I look forward to that. So I appreciate that. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you. And Tara?

Can I let Aaron go in front of me so that I make sure I don't ask the same question he does? Yes.

Aaron, do you feel okay about going? Sure. All right.

Thanks, Taisha. And Tara will be surprised if these are your questions, but we'll see. One is, we actually, we received an email just a few minutes before the meeting started from some folks in Dunbarrel, and they had a number of questions and suggestions, but there was one I thought I'd ask because it raised a question in my mind as well, which was, talking about the Tom Watson Park work, including the pickleball build-outs, their question was why we aren't seeing those reflect in the 2027-2032 CIP. I'm guessing it's because we've appropriated the funds already, but I thought I'd carry that question forward.

Yeah, thank you for the question, Mayor Brockett, and I know that we have our parks team available to support with with responses as well. And I see Allie Rhodes, Director of Parks and Recreation, might toss to you, Allie.

Yeah, sure. I'll have to adjust my lighting. Hi, folks. Allie Rhodes, Director of Parks and Recreation. Funding for the courts at Tom Watson was all appropriated with the 26 budget, maybe even parts in 25. So it would not be reallocated in 2027. Great.

Thanks, Allie. My buddy in bad lighting here behind us. Great. My other question is, one of the things I talk about this pretty much every year that I appreciate that the city has been doing in recent years is using fund balance as it accrues for one-time expenditures that help support the community with services and such. So I appreciated in the back of the budget having every single fund show the projected fund balances out through the next six years through 2032. Also saw that in general, that the funds, you know, the fund balances go up and then they go down depending on where the expenditures are needed, but are generally kept at relatively low levels. The one that stuck out to me, and don't anybody feel singled out here, but just that did seem to stay at higher levels over the course of the entire time period, was the Planning and Development Services Fund, which looks like it stays, it gets down to $6 and $5 million in 2021 and 2032, but generally is at higher levels, starts at $14 million and then gradually goes down, but it's still at $5 million in 2032. This is a very specific question, so feel free to get back to me later, but just wondering why that one has some larger numbers than some of the other fund balances that we're seeing.

Yeah, thank you for the question, Mayor Brockett. I see Director of Planning and Development Services, Brad Mueller, coming to support the question. Brad, if you're happy to take this one.

Hi, Council and others. Brad Mueller, Director of Planning and Development Services. I might let you lead with that, but I will just frame it by saying part of that really reflects the fact of a organizational shift of moving compliance functions to planning and development services that previously were in the police department as well as in the community vitality department.

I apologize, Mayor. I wonder, too, if there's... If there is additional information, there are some limitations in use in some of that fund and how we do that, even though we are leaning into leveraging that more. But there are some specific uses to be had with that particular fund.

Great. Well, maybe we can follow up offline and I'll just learn a little bit more. But thanks. That answers my question for tonight. And that's all I got.

Okay. All right. You're right, Erin. Those were not my questions. So my first question is about the questions. Is this the time when I should be asking you about Spruce Pool and Fodar Raider and all the details that people have questions about? Or is that a different time? Because I notice a lot of the questions are more high level than my very focused questions.

We're happy to answer questions that you have, Councilmember Weiner, tonight at the October 1st reading as well. But happy to answer questions that you might have on the 2027 budget.

Okay, because I have too many community questions for just tonight. I know we're only allowed four. So my first one is about the spruce pool and about actually all our pools. Is it possible to change our, like, you know, silver sneakers just doesn't give us enough revenue to run a pool. We certainly need revenue to run pools. Is it possible to change silver sneakers to income-based or is it possible to get money to help these pools run by either the health equity fund or the sugar sweetened beverage fund? tax. And might I say that my new favorite word is realignment. Nuria, I appreciate that word so much. Can you realign so that we can have the spruce pool? And also, I just want to make sure that the Scott Carpenter pool doesn't fall into the same problem. That's my first question.

Thank you for the question, Mayor Pro Tem. So you're right in that as part of the 2027 budget and in recent budgets, we have been looking at flexibility of funding across the board, recognizing that we have about 68% of our funding that is dedicated and so makes it difficult when we're looking at priorities and funding sources across the city budget. Specific to your question on the silver sneakers or the other revenues that you identified, those have to be directly aligned with voter approved intent associated with the sugar, sweetened beverage distribution tax. So that the revenues that are approved for the sugar, sweetened beverage tax must be utilized to help support and advance healthy health equity outcomes. So that is associated with part of the realignment that was performed and incorporated into the 2027 budget, supporting the equity programming for parks and recreation. And Ali, I see you've come off as well, if helpful to support in response to the question as well.

Thanks, Charlotte. I think you answered the council member's question around sugar, sweetened beverage tax revenues and the voter-directed allocations that those need to align with. As it relates to silver sneakers, I just want to share with folks, silver sneakers, Renew Active, there are a variety of what we call third-party programs. Members of our older adult community pay for these as part of a Medicare B supplement, and it is proactive wellness for older adults, which is one of our key community values. Every time we ask the community, who is it most important we serve, they always answer by saying people with disabilities, people with low income, seniors, and youth. And so we do offer discounts for seniors. The challenge is across the facilities, and I appreciate Council Member Weiner, you not being specific to Spruce Pool. We have flagged this in the last two of our department plans that the costs of for operating facilities simply are not keeping up with the revenues we're able to at a time when the public sector is increasingly divesting from these facilities and the reliance on us to provide them. And so this is a real challenge for us. On our 27 work plan is looking at what is the best way to serve older adults in our community. We're hoping to dovetail with the work of our colleagues in housing and human services on that. We know they have great expertise in the aging community. But your question is a good one. Where do we want to discount for seniors and where should it be more means-based rather than age-based? So that's not something we can answer with this budget, but it is on our work plan for 2027. Fantastic. Okay.

Second question. Gee, I don't know which of these to pick. Okay, I guess I'll go with the auditor. So a lot of people have been asking for an external performance auditor, as we all know. And so I'm wondering, what is the way to get this into our 2027 budget? Should we go that way? Like, how can we do this?

Um, let me start and, um, Roberto tag me if I, uh, am going too far, but a, I believe you've received a confidential memo regarding, um, this particular position, but I will also say that we do have an internal auditor position and I know Charlotte, you have written part of a hotline response in terms of what they do. Um, if there is a desire to augment, um, the current auditing functions that the city has. Certainly that is something you can share with us as we move that forward. They will need to find an associated funding source for that in the city. But I just want to be clear that we currently do have a financial auditor that council chooses, and we have an internal auditor that is able to perform not just financial-based audit, but also performance-based audit.

Okay, so just throwing this out, and like everybody said, take no offense, I'm just trying to help the community understand, is if we looked at, just take an example of Alpine balsam, although I realize that you don't think that you thought, you know, there was, we were always clear about it along the way. If there was such a case where there was a project or like a CIP, you know, capital improvement project, is there, the auditor's place to go in and say, this is too much, you're spending too much here, like that type of a thing, like looking at a project from an independent standpoint and saying, we're going too much over costs, et cetera, et cetera. You know what I mean? Like per project.

Okay.

Roberto Ramirez, Deputy City Attorney. Councilmember, if you go back to the confidential attorney-client privileged memo that was sent to you guys, you will find exactly step-by-step how that process works. And I certainly do not want to get into the legal advice that was communicated to you in this form.

Okay. Krista, just a quick question is I wonder if you have additional thoughts on, because I think I understand your question as well, Council Member Weiner, about how does the process work with an auditor, whatever that looks like, right? And maybe, Krista, that's a quick question about what does that look like? In my experience, an auditor does not follow the immediacy of the project on the ground. It is a It is a different kind of work in terms of have the controls been followed? Are there findings that showcase that there was something? And it's usually after the fact. But sort of maybe Krista sharing a little bit more about just high level process and then sort of the ability, if somebody wanted to request an audit, what does that look like? Because most auditors have a particular and a very specific audit work plan for the year and not just stepping into something in particular, though something could come up.

Yeah, I appreciate that, Nuri, and appreciate the question, Tara. So we do have an interview.

Before you start, let me just say, I did read the confidential memo, just in case everybody's wondering. I'm just trying to explain to community that I'm trying to help us explain to community anything that we can explain right now. How's that?

Okay. Well, just high level, our internal auditor works in accordance with standards for internal auditing. Their work focuses really on internal controls, where our risks are, highlighting areas for improvement. They can look at financial, they can look at operational and performance. We do have an internal audit web page that the community can submit items for audit. So if anyone goes to Boulder's website, if you select internal auditor, there is an email address that anyone can submit internal audit ideas. There is then screening of those audit ideas of what is the highest risk for the city. And any particular city service could be audited, but there is a screening process. We have one auditor. They can only get to so many audits in a year. So we look at greatest risk.

Can I call a quick question? Yes. Thank you, Tayshia.

Do we get requests from the community and have we done one?

Is that a common request we receive?

We have. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, so we have performed audits. We have recently published the page to open up the audit request publicly. So we right now have gone, there's an internal audit committee comprised of many different departments. So we have various perspectives at the table. And the auditor submits their recommended plan every year. So right now, we don't have any external driven items coming in because that page was recently launched for feedback.

Perfect. Thank you. Do you mind? Could I do a quick colloquy as well? Sure. Sure. Thanks. And Tara, thanks for asking the question about the auditor. We have been getting a lot of community questions about this. And so really appreciate that we do not want to make anything confidential public, but it would be good to maybe follow up going forward about what information we can share with the public about that question, because I know there's a lot of community interest. So just getting that out there and we can follow up after the meeting.

Thanks. Understood. Thank you, Mayor. And certainly we can schedule a conversation at some future date about auditing in general.

Appreciate it.

Okay. Going to go ahead and move us on to Nicole.

Thank you very much. And thank you, staff. This is truly an amazing body of work that you've put together here. Could you remind me what the approximate annual cost is of the current repair work on our most critical buildings, basically the ones that we've incorporated into the bond measure, and then What happens in future budget cycles if the bond doesn't pass?

Yeah, I'm happy to take the last question first, and I know we've got support from our facilities and fleet team that might help support the first part of that question. The bond that is up for voter consideration this November um, considers our 15, uh, priority buildings, um, such as, uh, South Boulder Recreation Center replacement, North Boulder Recreation Center, our public safety building, um, and, uh, as shared forward with city council throughout the year, the city does not have the additional funding available to support the investment required across these 15 priority buildings at the level that they are proposed to in the bond. If the bond does not pass, the city will have to perform some serious trade-off discussions and conversations around the prioritization of future funding availability. And currently reflected in our six-year CIP, we do have our CCRS programmed out throughout the six years. And so that funding is going to support 16 capital projects across the six-year horizon, the majority of which will be leveraging our CCRS funds to support three primary projects within that fund, including the East Boulder Community Center, Fire Station 2, as well as our Civic Area or Boulder Creek Phase 2. And Michelle, I happy to have you chime in with any additional information or context.

Yeah, thank you for the question, Councilmember. And just so I'm clear too, I think you're asking if the bond does not pass, you know, what happens with the city buildings and what's currently in our budget? So what we have presented and what's currently represented in this six-year CIP is really reflects our most urgent needs to keep many of those priority buildings just operating. It doesn't really reflect a total cost that's needed to be able to bring buildings up to current code. So they're deficient in many ways, whether it's meeting accessibility standards, modern service delivery standards in our public safety building. We can't provide the kind of fitness and training spaces.

Our difficulty in performing budgeting on an annual basis. And so and looking at performing any adjustments to the recommended budget. All of those considerations we would hope to be taken into account, but legally restricted revenues is absolutely something that will need to be looked at when performing an offset.

Can I colloquy on that?

Yes.

Thank you. So then thinking about that, I'm wondering, so for, we already have some identified gaps in the 2028 budget and I'll, I'll do spruce pool as an example, but we also have some fixed term contracts that might be a priority. And then we also know that we're going to be coming out in late October with some thoughts about what the scope of new wildfire mitigation efforts might look like is now the time. really to be saying for the 2028 budget that we're really looking at a focus. So we're going to maybe come up with, with an approach in October for wildfire and it might be a significant change is now the time to say, this is what we're going to need to work on because we'll have 10 months if we're going to do something significant or, you know, or like, I'm trying to understand when is that moment to insert if it, if it's so disruptive now?

Thank you for the question, council member. As it pertains specifically to wildfire, the city staff wildfire team, cross-departmental team will be coming forward back in October. And certainly during any of the council study sessions, on council meetings where there are topics for input received by city council at that point in time is where the direction is helpful to understand priorities that then get included and incorporated into our city budget on an annual basis. And I might toss an area if I misspeak here, the additional area that is helpful for direction on our annual budget processes, our city council work planning that occurs each year in Q1 of each year. And so that is another time to help to provide input on priorities that then get incorporated into our key pillars for decision making within our annual budgeting process.

I think, Charlotte, you hit it spot on in an ordinary cycle. There are ways in which to do that. I want to acknowledge, right, as we all know, we've been a part of, there are times when something emerges. And when there's something that emerges, when is the time to do that? As we hear some of the direction you may give us on any particular thing. For example, I recall a few years ago, we were talking about whether or not the city should have a sanctioned encampment site. And we brought forward what it costs, what does it look like? And if that were something that the city wanted to move forward, then we would find the source of funding. We would tell you what the trade-off are. And if that is still a yes, then we would figure that out. And we would have adjustments. Ideally, this happens as we hear it throughout the entire year, because it is hard when you already have a budget in 2026. to change what that looks like. So we're hearing it. And also there is, we're continuing the work on an ongoing basis. So we will hear some we heard in the last August wildfire conversation. We will likely hear more in October. and getting to know where council sits on some of those. There are opportunities to transition, but good governance would have that be throughout the budget cycle, knowing that there's still levers to pull if something were to happen and we were to want to add or change. That add or change would come with a different add or change. We would have to figure out where does that come from so that we knew what lever to pull and then whether or not that is something that you wanted to move forward. knowing the impact of those decisions.

Yeah. Cause I'm just trying to see how we, we catch up because we, we know that if our, if our sales tax continues to go up at 2% and inflation's 2%, but salaries are, you know, four and a half across the board, even with the new 3 million transportation maintenance fee and a sizable uptick in our water revenue, we're still barely, you know, making it happen and, or balancing the budget. So it I'm just wondering, you know, these obviously these conversations are incredibly difficult and they shouldn't be done on the fly by any stretch. But how I'm just trying to really think ahead if we're going to try to tackle some of these problems, even if they're short term problems, if we're able to scope it and come to agreement that that's what we want to do.

No, I appreciate that and would only add, and I won't go on too much, Councilmember Adams, is that, frankly, that's one of the reasons we really support. If we were to change to a two-year, for example, budget process, that would allow for a lot more conversation like this to happen versus just the forced time compression that just an annual budget does. And I will say this is not unique to Boulder. This happens everywhere. So that is one of the reasons that we're thinking about. There are ability to look, to have more conversations, to have check-ins on how we're doing. If we had more of an opportunity to have others come into the budgeting conversations and the prioritization, because that's what it is. It's about prioritization of work. It has a price tag attached to it, and that's where budget comes in.

Okay. That was a long call. I'm sorry.

Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Ryan, this is a follow-up to your question after.

This is my first question. So when I earlier I asked about how the discussion would work. So this is my first question. Right.

So that's your second question. I'm sorry. You asking that question was a question. So then this will be your second. So I just want to be mindful about that. Thank you. Because others have asked process questions as a part of their two questions.

Thanks. My question is, building on Nicole's question of what happens if the $400 million bond measure doesn't pass. My question is, if it does pass, I think I've heard that as of 2021, we now have a standard procedure of collecting the 2% per year CRV fund that would... take care of future maintenance issues in advance. And that's just built into the system at this point. So anybody who's thinking about that bond measure should understand that as of five years ago, it's a normal operating procedure that we're taking care of our future maintenance needs. And that started in 2021, didn't exist before, does now, has for the last five years. Do I have that right?

Thanks for the question, Councilmember and Michelle. I saw you come off mute. I can toss to you.

Yeah, sure thing. Happy to answer that. Yes, you do, Councilmember. have that just right. As the policy states, any new or heavily invested in building, really bringing a bad building up to a good state, which a brand new building would do, or a heavily renovated building that has new infrastructure would essentially then at that point forward, we would wanna put away that 2% CRV to continue to keep that building in a good state. And so that's what that's for. So any of these new buildings that would be developed through the bond measure, the plan moving on forward from that would be to continue to put that 2% CRV away to invest in their future and to keep them operating well.

Thanks.

I just have some quick questions. The first is we talked about the survey. I wasn't able to find any demographic information about the 536. So although I appreciate the use and the analysis, it was not clear to me if there was a representative sample in order for us to even be sure that this is a valid survey.

Thank you for the question, Councilmember. The survey that was conducted is not a statistically valid survey. We did incorporate on our city website a breakdown of the of the summary and the engagement input received. I believe we did incorporate the demographic breakdown within the responses in our public-facing report. questionnaire that we posted on our website as part of Thunder Future and the community conversations that we had was not a statistically valid survey. We heard from over 500 community members in Boulder.

Right. So again, although I appreciate that, I just wanted to clarify that that is not a statistically or, and by that I mean representative sample of all the community members that are affected by these kinds of conversations. The second is on the, for the climate initiatives team, there's been some questions about climate resilience, sorry, wildfire mitigation. And I just would love to hear a little bit more about the circular economy work as well as the nature-based solutions and just some, you know, some of the relationship between that work and its impact on wildfire mitigation.

Oops. Thank you for the question, Councilmember, and I see our climate initiatives team popping up.

Yes, hi there. Thank you, Councilmember Adams. Yeah, I'll get Sean. I am a principal project manager in the climate initiatives department. And just to clarify, you're looking specifically for the nature-based solutions work related to wildfire?

That and the circular economy. That's slightly different, but just wanted to get some clarity. I've had some questions about the circular economy efforts and also the nature-based solutions work.

I'll start with the nature-based solutions. I might also call in Carolyn Elam here if she has more on the circular economy or we might have to get back to you on that. I was more prepared on the energy systems and wildfire specifically funded through the climate tax. And the work in the nature based solutions focus area really manages some of our wildfire and resilient landscapes policy and programs, so they are leading some efforts to pilot and profile wildfire resist resilient landscape installations. in the wildland-urban interface in some of the high-fire risk zones. And that work also includes coordinating with the Juniper Removal and City Lands, coordinating replacement vegetation design and replacement strategies, both for wildfire risk reduction and preservation of critical water supply. And the team is also working to help the Community transition from some of the thirsty more thirsty irrigated landscapes to drought resistant landscapes that help protect our Community as the urban warming continues. And so that's primarily what's happening in the nature based solutions area and I see carolyn popped on, so I will. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, and good evening, Council. Carolyn Elam, Senior Manager with our Climate Initiatives Department. I think on the circular economy side of the equation, I would highlight a couple of things that I think are related. First, to wildfire risk reduction, but also more broadly to our resilience strategy. So the team has been really instrumental in trying to help community remove climate potentially flammable materials and clear properties. So certainly working within our manufactured housing communities with pickup days, that's actually removing potentially combustible materials and cleaning up and bringing them back into recycling and avoiding them going into landfill. But I think it's really also hardening our system. But as we think about climate disruption, so wildfire, flood or global impacts, really critical for our circular economy is keeping things closer to home. So supporting our local agriculture, keeping materials in circulation more for longer use, I think is really critical as we think about global supply chain disruption. We certainly saw the impacts of the COVID pandemic on supply chain disruption. And so I think that's a focus of our circular economy work that those were just a couple of things I would highlight.

OK, thank you. All right, team, I think breath. We've got another hour ish for part two, which is the council Does Council recommend any substantive changes in advance of its first reading of the 2027 budget on October 1 or questions on next steps? And just point of clarification, it was my understanding we have until September 28 to make any additional recommendations or requests per the process that has already been identified. That's correct. Thank you. First up, I see Aaron.

Thanks, Stacia. So I don't have any specific requests for changes, but just one thing, I guess it falls in the questions about next steps, is that there are a couple of items that are funded by one-time funding this year that I think are important to the community. I just wanted to talk about how we might address those going into 2028. One, of course, is the spruce pool that we've been talking about and Tara brought up earlier. And the other is the Day Services Center that has been a really important addition to our homeless services over the last couple of years. And I know it's funded with one-time dollars. So can we just talk about how we might go through this budget season and into next year, thinking about how we can potentially find ways to carry those important programs forward in future years?

Sure. Maybe I'll start. And I know we've got staff with us. So as we think about this process, there are certain things that we wanted to daylight. We knew that it would be concerning. Spruce pool is one of those, for example. We will have ongoing conversations about what that looks like. in terms of the ability for us to provide, whether we can find different sources of funding, whether that remains. One time, I know that Allie is meeting with some of the folks in community about that next week. And as we continue to look at what our outlook, financial outlook looks like in the future, we know that this is a priority that council and community have. So we will be looking to that in the same vein to see what options we have in the future. And we will bring that forward to council as that moves on. Without getting too into it, we have projects, for example, listed in either for the bond measure or in CCRS if there are projects that are able to move forward in a different way. If something comes under budget, those are considerations we would have and we would be looking at year round. We have some Broncos funding that we are thinking about in certain levels that has been thought of for two particular areas in the parks and recreation system, but we will be looking at prioritization as we continue to think about programming those dollars in the future. Day Services Center is similar. We will continue to look at the variety of funds that we could use in that place. And certainly, team, if I'm getting it wrong, let me know. But when that first came forward as a council priority, we did not have funding for that. We needed to find funding. That is another one of those that came during a conversation with council. We will continue to think about how do we sustain that moving forward. We were also talking with our partners about are there opportunities there. But all of those conversations, we are present about what that looks like and we will bring to council. I can't tell you right now what the strategy for ongoing funding is right now because we just don't have that. But we know that those are two main priorities that would likely come up forward as how do we continue the service going on? And we would continue to have that conversation with you.

That's really helpful. I'm glad to hear that we're continuing to think about that, and I look forward to future discussions about those important community priorities. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Aaron. Matt?

Thanks, Tayshia. So I have one substantive budget recommendation, and really this centers on wildfire. First, I want to say, just to start off, I appreciate that we've bumped our wildfire mitigation work up to about $11 million. I will say that community placing this as the top priority means that we still need to do much more to meet that need for community to feel safe. and to have the confidence that we can feel safe in our community with the threat of wildfire. So my ask really centers around a funding framework. I'd like staff to examine approximately maybe $2 million of additional eligible climate initiatives funding. That would bring the climate initiatives wildfire allocation from roughly $2.465 million to $4.4 million, or close to half the current department budget. And I know that's a hard trade-off. And I think we have to make some hard trade-offs. And I think maybe two of the most core priorities of facing climate right now are going to be the resiliency of our climate grid and related firework and maintaining resiliency, but then also the wildfire risk. And that doesn't have to be indefinite, but it can be enough time until we get our community hardened. Secondly, I'd like us to identify about $4 to $5 million of additional eligible OSMP investment. Will be fuels management, crews, equipment, prescribed fire, grazing mowing thinning related landscape work, and then I think the outstanding main amount to effectively double the wildfire budget. would be looking at other places to maybe find another two to $3 million, especially from some grants that we have yet to really go after. I think those are opportunities as well to further leverage that great work that we're doing and expand upon it for some of our community safety. So I've identified some reasonable trade-offs in those areas. We can have that debate, but I look forward to talking with staff on how we can craft that more specifically and seeing if council is indeed interested in looking at meeting the moment where we have the investments to match the risk to our community.

Can I call it quick?

Yes, sure.

Yes. Okay, sure. Yeah. And could... Matt, are you going to be sending an email about that as well?

Yeah, absolutely. I was going to lay it out in more detail. Just here was a chance to debut it. So I'm debuting that. So it's not a surprise. And I will be following it up with a hotline with some greater detail, hopefully after some conversations with staff.

Because I would just, because one of the things about wildfires, I haven't, we haven't completed the process with staff that looks at the different things we can prioritize and fund and what the actual costs would be. So I'm curious to have that discussion as well. And if you could just. describe how this money would be used in the framework of what's happening. And I guess you're previewing the discussion on October.

Yeah, and I won't spend a lot, but I think the way I would look at it is we're out of step, right? We're looking at creating a budget for next year, but only after we do that are we talking about potentially a major enhancement to the very wildfire budget. So we're out of sync. And so I'm trying to get ahead of that by saying, hey, is there an appetite to have a greater investment which would lead into that enhancement conversation should we wish to have that and look at that rather than have it and then react to have to then fix the budget in a subsequent atb there's no reason to do that unnecessarily if we don't have to so uh appreciate that council member benjamin and certainly uh we've had conversations about it i think you um

Triggered something in my mind in terms of certainly staff can look at a variety of things as we've shared here. This one would be certainly a substantial conversation with our teams. You mentioned something about this council have an appetite. Is there an appetite to do this kind of investment and curious before we sort of endeavor to find that to go down that path. If this is the moment that you want staff, certainly, and we can. if that is the will of council to start looking at what that looks like. So perhaps I pose that to council.

So basically, I'm sorry, Nuria, is the question not a five? I think one of the, and I just wanted to clarify that without having that additional information that... Tina requested and I'm just having that more specificity in. I don't know if we, I'm curious if that's enough to provide a five and not a five at that time. It was my understanding that providing per the process information that we discussed, the information by September 28, that would give staff enough time to gather the necessary information to then come back at the October 1st conversation.

Certainly, and correct me if I'm wrong, Council member Mark was to the next conversation with the wildfire team is not happening until later in October. And so perhaps for me is, is just the question on whether or not this is an area that the majority of council or a significant amount of council wants us to pursue. Cause I don't know if that trade-off is well explained and certainly reasonable by council member. Benjamin is one that you want to move in that direction, but, given the impacts that that would have on climate or OSMP. So I guess I'm just curious to where council member sentiment is.

Do you mind if I address that, Taisha?

Thank you, Mayor. Yes.

Great. Well, so I will say, you know, Matt, I appreciate you looking for additional resources for wildfire prevention, which is, of course, a critical need. I'll say that I personally find that to be too large of a reduction in climate funding, a larger amount than I would support. But I also, since this is kind of off the cuff or on the fly right now, Nury, I wouldn't want to try to make a decision on whether council supports that right this moment. So I'll just say, Matt, I imagine there are some people who are interested. I'll just say not everyone is because I would rather not make that deep of a cut. So maybe we can come back when we've had more of a chance to think about it and talk with community members and colleagues and then address whether we'd like to pursue that as we get into the budget season or into the budget consideration itself process.

Thank you, Mayor. By no way was I trying to say yay or nay as much as gather where sentiment was living in a particular proposal.

Can I just colloquy on the colloquy, Taisha? Yes, you can. This will be very short. I I think for me, I don't wanna just spend money for the sake of that it is the highest priority, but I just don't wanna spend money for the sake of that reason. I mean, I would need to know exactly what it is.

So I think we've gotten away from ourselves a little bit here. This was just a question of whether or not there was anybody who had any recommendations. Here's a recommendation. This wasn't a, are we debating every recommendation and then giving a yay or nay? So I think we've gotten way ahead of ourselves, unfortunately. And you're right, there's more detail. I'm happy to provide that detail, but it wasn't appropriate in this setting to lay out a whole treatise and an argument for why or why not we shouldn't do this. So I just want to make sure people aren't having an emotional or knee-jerk reaction that there's time to vet this appropriately with the process that we've established. So I just hope that every proposal, regardless of the amount of zeros, is just given the same due diligence of the process that we've laid in front of us.

Thank you, Matt. I appreciate that. And that's actually what I was getting at for the clarification question I had with Roberto earlier. I think it's just a very, I would strongly recommend that we take this time to hear from council members about any substantive changes that they are considering and then have it in full in writing at the hotline by the September 28th date, where we'll have more time. I also appreciate, Matt, your comments around wanting to do some more follow up with staff given that some of that information will not be available. And per our council procedures, staff knows that if the request that we're making exceeds the three hour time period or whatever that would require a night of three or a night of five, then I am hopeful that they would communicate with Nuria so that we are making sure that staff time is being used equitably. Thank you. I will go on. Tara, you are also up for, is this your recommendation?

Yep.

All right, bring it in.

Well, I mean, I didn't have enough other questions. I mean, community gave me too many questions, more than two. So my one question is, I want to go back to snow and ice removal that Matt was talking about earlier and that I've been thinking about. Because I remember in our last conversation, this was before Mark left, We were talking with the transportation about adding, I'm very concerned about some of the streets in the West with a lot of seniors who get stuck there and, you know, get stuck in their homes. And so I'm wondering, is this the time? I know we're getting that new equipment. I think that's great. I don't know if that'll help them. I don't know enough about it. So I'm wondering if we have changed, like how we're going to do next year's snow and ice. Remember we gave all those streets to the staff or to transportation? And so I hate to be like, what do you call it when you're just honed in on smaller things? Not the big picture, but specifically snow and ice. I just need to make sure that our community is being taken care of.

Transportation and mobility. Council Member Weiner, I appreciate your question. The extra money does provide additional weather diagnostic, I think, four or five units. We do not have the funds to add streets, and largely because last year was such a mild winter, we felt like we needed another season in our new program to fully evaluate So right now, we're not expecting to add streets, although we are working on an information packet that, like last year, we will plan to share with the council probably sometime here in the next month or so.

Just a quick, I think you're completely, as always, right, Blythe, in your assessment, there were some recommendations on can we look at a particular street? a subset of streets that are known to be troublesome and a nod to the discretion that you have as director that if we need to address some of those streets, that we will do so, but still remaining within the revised framework that you all had brought forward to council a while ago. Am I correct in that?

Certainly, we're always evaluating the program. And as we approach the next snow season, we haven't added those streets yet. We have added a significant amount of infrastructure, which will be reflected in the information packet that we'll share with council soon.

You mean infrastructure for transportation or some other kind of infrastructure?

Infrastructure. A lot of our projects, council member, that have added, say, floating bus stops that require additional shoveling, And some of those other things have been added into the program. And again, that'll be shared with our information packet.

So if I am not convinced that we're going to have enough money for snow and ice removal for the seniors and the people living in their houses in the West, what do I do? What's my next step? You need me to find money from somewhere else. Is that it?

I would say that seems to be an idea that you were putting forward that you would like to augment snow and ice. And I would say we hear it and let's have a conversation about what that looks like.

Okay.

And we will see how your colleagues land.

Okay. All right. And my second question is, and thank you for letting me think this through and not rushing me. I appreciate that, Taisha, because like you said, we don't have these conversations that much. This is a question from two different members of the community, and this should be a really easy one. It is, um, why the, uh, the photo, why the photo, um, wait, hold on. I can't see my notes because of the screen when it comes to the, um, photo, help me with the words, photo radar, um, which was a revenue generator and also helped stop speeding, I would assume, or it wasn't. Two community members wanted to know why you were doing away with that.

Thank you for the question, Council Member, excuse me, Mayor Pro Tem Weiner. The budget decision really came with looking at a lens of criticality in looking across the revenue and expenses across time. We recognized the expenses outpaced the revenue generation specific to photo van enforcement. We also recognize that we have traffic patrol available within the police department. And so looking at cost efficiencies and containment measures, looking at our ongoing reduction strategies across the board, that came forward as an option and looking at reducing this and eliminating this program and really utilizing our existing resources elsewhere within the department to respond to traffic patrol needs as necessary. What?

Let me try, as we're thinking about it, and certainly invite Steve to join us. But it's a trade-off conversation on what is the highest, best use of our dollars that we do with everything that we do. And as we were looking at it, one of the things brought forward from the department is where we see major crashes and concerns that there are other ways to do traffic calming in neighborhoods that perhaps don't require an individual to be located inside a van for the entirety of time and also doing process service it's one of the reasons the companion effort is also to contract out some of the process service that in colorado needs to be done in person steve have i gotten some of that wrong or incomplete

No, ma'am. Good evening, everyone. Steve Red from Police Chief. The only thing I'll add on that is the commitment that we will continue to make to the community is when there are issues in a neighborhood, especially when we get complaints like we do, those are not going to be ignored. We will actually now, because of the reduction in the vans, you'll see a police officer on motorcycle or car. As calls for service allow, we're going to prioritize those neighborhoods so people don't think we're just picking up and leaving them unenforced. And so, Obviously, we're going to continue to monitor data as well. And if we see the removal of the vans leads to some large uptick in issues, then obviously we may have to pivot next year.

Thank you, Rob.

Thank you. I guess I'm doing a late call. Matt and Tara around wildfire. I would like to see more money towards that and whether the amount is what has been proposed or is smaller from climate. Also, I think there could be some opportunities within OSMP as well. And Nuria, you were going to answer this question, but we were running late in our last study session. And it was specifically about trying to capture other revenue sources, which is a grant writer, because we did miss a couple grants that went to Laramie and Jefferson County. And I just want to make sure that we have all the capacity to capture that revenue.

I would say though, and to be fair, I don't know that I would say that we missed it because it went to other places. It's competitive and sometimes we get them and sometimes we don't, right? We continue to, we have a great grants person. Annie Scott is amazing. She identifies and looks at grant opportunities. We continue to lean into that. She is not alone because in particular on this team, they're looking for additional opportunities. So please know, and I appreciate the question, council member, please know that we are continuing to lean in and submit as we see them. And so that is not something that we will stop. We just always won't be the recipient of them all the time. But we will certainly lean into that.

Yeah, I do understand that. And I appreciate that. And I just, you know, with our revenue streams drying up, I didn't know how overtaxed they were. And I just know that we didn't even apply for these two. So I didn't know if it was

I think that is a conversation to have. And certainly we can talk with our teams about it. There are a myriad of opportunities that when you look at and they, look to see, is this where we want to spend our time? We get a lot of requests to apply for a variety of grants or opportunities. We don't do them all because it may not be worth the squeeze. It may not be the right thing for us in that moment. So it depends. And so we don't want to miss opportunities. And I don't think it's a capacity issue for missing opportunities. I think sometimes it's where the work is at, but we will continue to lean in.

And I'll just add on this. We have increased our grants that we've received specifically for wildfire in recent years. The total amount that we have across five grants associated with wildfire is 2.1 million. And so that is an increase in additional revenues coming into the city based on the work that the grants team is performing.

No, I mean, that's fantastic news. And I totally appreciate that. These grants were $9.6 and $9.8 million. So I just want to make sure that we're not missing bigger opportunities.

Thank you. So Rob, I just wanted to confirm that your substantive change is really to identifying additional funds to increase wildfire mitigation.

Yeah, I guess I was going to.

I just want to make sure you're co-signing on, Matt, and I look forward to that hotline with more details. Anything else from you on substantive changes or questions about next steps? No, thank you. All right. Moving to Nicole.

Thank you very much. So this is my fifth budget cycle now. And while I was reviewing my notes this morning, a scene from the movie Office Space popped into my head. And I finally understood it was an epiphany moment. Why some of these last minute budget changes have just become increasingly challenging for me over the years. If you haven't seen the movie, you should, first of all. But one of the characters, Joanna, works at a restaurant called Tchotchkes, where the policy requires servers to wear 15 pieces of flare on their aprons, like little buttons, pins, things like that. And she wears 15 pieces. But her boss, Stan, keeps implying that she should wear more. Eventually, one day, she snaps and says, if you want people to wear 37 pieces of flair, then make the minimum 37. And then she flips them off and she walks out the door because this deviation from policy was just so frustrating and unfair. And I think this thing came to mind for me this morning because of how our policies direct our budget. Our budget is the implementation of policies that we and prior councils have adopted over decades. There are policies that are created through extensive research, engagement and staff work. Staff did their job and translated those policies into a balanced budget using data, performance measures with their framework, adopted departmental plans, legal constraints, and so much more. And these last minute reallocations like moving voter approved climate tax dollars or adding new programs can unintentionally bypass that prior policy work. They also reduce transparency for community members who are really looking for some predictability in how and why we make decisions, especially in chaotic times. So if we want different wildfire strategies or climate strategies or new audit authorities or things like that, the way that we get there, I feel, is through policy changes. As Joanna from Office Space teaches us, if we want 37 pieces of policy, we need to set the policy to be 37 pieces of policy. And after this year, really hard year, the third year of consistent cuts, balancing community input, our plans, our code, our charter obligations, In such a constrained year, I just find it impossible to step outside our established policymaking process at the very end. This budget is balanced both financially and in its alignment with our policies and community priorities. None of the things that are being cut feel good to me personally. I share our community's grief about places like Spruce Pool. But what reassures me in the midst of all this is knowing that these hard decisions are grounded in our adopted frameworks. While they may not all be choices that I would make as an individual, they are accountable to decades of adopted policy within our community. Last minute reallocations can't provide that same stability. I know times are really tight, both for us as a city, as well as for staff, for community. Staff has done really strong work here, and I want to continue supporting policymaking that fosters trust in our governments, especially right now when we are losing some trust in large part due to what's going on at the federal government. But anyway, the short version is that I'm on Team Joanna this year. And I'm definitely open to policy discussions in the next couple of years that might lead us in different or two different outcomes in future budgets. But for this year, I'm not really interested in that because I think this budget really represents our existing policies and frameworks and is exactly where we need to be. So thank you, staff. It's truly, truly amazing and remarkable work.

Thank you. Tina.

Yeah, I'll follow that up, go back a different direction. So I am, and maybe I can root this in policy. I've been hearing from the Hill neighborhood a lot about nuisance complaints. And we have made some changes to our ordinances around nuisance. And I am just wondering if this budget is able to carry out those policies that we did around the nuisance ordinance.

Maybe I'll start because I take that as a question and not perhaps an additional, unless behind that was, I'd like to think about additional resources for enforcement. I'll say that we've been clear at some times when policy, when there were some policy choices that could impact, for example, more residents on the Hill, we were very clear that we did not have enforcement resources then, particularly for traffic and code enforcement and whatnot. As we look to see, we would look at data to see what calls we're getting, what does that look like? And if that is your request for us to consider to see if there are additional resources to have in code compliance, then I hear you and certainly something to talk with staff about.

Yeah, and it's an open question because I don't have the data and it's not specifically addressed, but we had made somewhat of a commitment to work on code compliance in that area. So I'm just wondering.

We will certainly take a look. I know we have added resources in the past, recently in the past few years. And I think the cohesion and the consolidation of this team, I think is going to be supportive of that. But certainly we take that as a question and we'll go back and talk to the team about it.

Okay. And then my second question, and this would be really outside of our scope, but I'm assuming we don't have an allocation this year or next year to do anything in support of the San Lazaro community because that hasn't been anything that we have expressed from a policy perspective.

It has not been something expressed as a policy perspective. We have shared with you and community that we are in conversations with them. We are in conversations with the county as well to think through what does that look like currently. San Lazaro lives outside of our jurisdiction, but there have been conversations about if they were desiring of annexation, what would be the cost? What would be our potential support? So those conversations are ongoing. They are ongoing, not just with the San Lazaro community, who I had the pleasure to speak with on Friday, but also with the county. And so if that were something that we wanted to move forward on, as this process unfolds and they are in the midst of negotiating separately, then we would certainly come to council for that.

Okay, but we would try to wrap that funding into this budget cycle. We're not going to be able to find money outside of this. It doesn't look like there's any wiggle room for us to do anything to support that community. I'm trying to figure out where we would have that conversation from a budgetary perspective.

So a couple of things is that there's a timing consideration here. There is a clock that's running and without getting into details on a response to an offer received, we will continue to have that conversation. I don't know if potential annexation and financial support from the city would actually be in 2027. So that's where we have the potential to come to you later. to come to UNATB and to think through what does that look like. So just because those are one of the examples that may sit outside of the budget, the regular budget timeline, because it happens, we would still have the opportunity to talk about what a potential, if needed, appropriation would look like. So it's not something I think needs to be solved here because we cannot solve it in for this budget because we don't know where this is going and what the community there wants.

Okay. And then, so similarly, is there a chance to look at, after we have the, I think it's the October 22 session on wildfire, can that be an ATB discussion? I put it in the hotline and I understand that it usually responds to an emergency or to an unexpected grant or something like that. So I guess I'm trying to figure out whether the wildfire conversation could look like the San Isidro conversation. You say it much better.

I don't know that I say it right, but I can't get the Spanish out of it. So I say. So certainly and and Charlotte, for purposes of like what is best practice, right? correct me if I'm wrong, but the ATB that comes at the end of the year really is about what's coming in, what grants we are receiving, what does reconciliation look like? Mostly, we have another ATB opportunity at the beginning of the year, and we do try to align those requests that are unexpected in that. Can we have an appropriation conversation outside of that? We sure could. We don't want to have every conversation because then we'd do nothing but be talking about appropriations throughout the year. And that's just not good practice. But I think it'll depend on where we sit and what how council wants to move forward in a particular direction, knowing that there is an adjustment that has to happen. Having said that, there is an obligation to submit a final budget by a certain date, Charlotte, and we will have to have a final budget of what it looks like for 2027. So decisions that come afterwards will require a different process.

okay words there charlotte may i call a quick on that taisha just because that didn't seem really clear yes matt like just to really level set if october 22nd comes and a decision is made is to go with enhancement which is beyond the current budget that we are that is in front of us how would that occur we'll have just passed this budget And we may or may not do it in an ATB. So I'm just, I think community, everybody's like, what is that mechanism? Because that's a policy question that we're being posed quite quickly as to whether or not we will, it's not a what if, it's not a maybe, it's a choice point that we have, whether we want to do that or not. So when would we make that ultimate decision budgetarily to fund that enhanced if that were chosen? Yeah.

I'll ask Charlotte or Krista to clarify, because whether it's this one or whether it was something that happens in February, we would have to think through what a different appropriation looks like. So Charlotte or Krista, if you can talk a little bit more about what that process is.

Yeah, happy to talk about the process. For ATB, as Nuria mentioned, ATB2 is typically associated with our conciliation items. So any of the grants that we've received mid-year donations that we've received. We bring those forward for council consideration for appropriation toward the end of the year. We also have items that are emergency items that come forward. ATB2 is really intended to be more of a reconciliation of appropriation. In terms of items that come forward that would need and council provides additional recommendations for funding, that would be an area that we would look to because we would be past the 27 fiscal year adoption for ATB1 of 2027. And that would come forward in May and June of next year.

So to be clear, if we were to choose an enhanced in October 2022, we wouldn't be making a funding decision on how to fund said policy for another seven or eight months following. Is that correct?

Council would not be performing an additional approval at that council meeting to increase appropriation to support enhanced funding. without an offset in the 2027 budget.

Okay. All right. I understand that. Okay. That's problematic, but we'll talk about that later.

And I'll just add here, and this probably goes without stating, but I think it's important to say, right, we have a balanced budget right now. So when we're talking about $2 million ads, this is going to be looking at the trade-offs where the money's going to come from in that conversation.

All right. Ryan.

Okay, I just have one comment for tonight, I think. And I'm going to try to integrate... what Matt and Rob and Nicole said. And you all can reject this attempt to integrate if you want, but I just had a thread I thought of. So I really agree with Matt and Rob that we need to be embarking on a transformative plan for wildfire hardening that's got to cover thousands of parcels. And not just to assess them, but to actually do hardening on a very large scale. And I agree with Nicole that the budget should follow our policy making. And we do have in this wildfire work plan priority literally a scope to help address the question of how do we understand the cost benefit of different types of investments. We're really close. We're really close to the conclusion of it. And one of the things that I saw from the preview before in the last meeting we had on it was there are some things that are really inexpensive. There are some things that are expensive. There are some things that homeowners, private sector will be willing to pay for. Some things, probably less so. There's a lot in there. There's a lot of... There's a lot of meat that we're starting to see and to talk about, and I'm really interested in us getting to a rigorous understanding of how we think investments in wildfire hardening to create a large scale and to move quickly, how will we do that? How will that really play out? I don't feel like I'm ready to say, here's the amount of money we need I'm really looking forward to getting to this change model for how do we get it done. We do do this in other realms, right? We have energy efficiency projects in homes, we have solar panels that go on homes, and there's marketplaces that make this happen really quickly. We don't have the marketplace for home hardening. And I'm just hopeful that as we go forward, we'll get to a point of understanding as we talk about the public budget for this, the kinds of public monies we'll spend in it. What also can we expect to get from the private sector? Like literally homeowners, but it could be others from private capital. And what's the city's role in actuating that and bringing that together? Because I just hesitate to get too far down the road into how much money does the city need to spend before we really understand how this marketplace will work and the role that the city can play to try to multiply what kind of public funds we can drive. So as we get into the next stage of the wildfire hardening plan, I'm going to be really looking for this, and then we'll just go from there. So those are my thoughts.

Okay, thank you. I don't see any additional hands raised, so I will just Add things that have not already been discussed. Although I've appreciated the conversation and agree we need to be very aggressive with the wildfire mitigation, I've also been explicit around the lack of funding to be able to accelerate at the pace and the need to identify additional revenue streams for that. I also have concerns on not having sufficient funding for evacuation recovery and possibly relocation I didn't see anything related to evacuation. and evacuation costs and preparation for evacuation as well as recovery. We know Marshall Fire is at its five-year mark and there were significant costs associated with evacuation, recovery, and relocation, and I'm not seeing that in our budget. So we can pull out every juniper bush Every house could be hardened and we are still at 1.5 Celsius and all kinds of climate disasters heading our way. So to me, I would love to see a more comprehensive investment strategy along with wildfire mitigation and home hardening. The other piece is around just energy and energy rates. We know that the PUC estimates that energy costs could go up by 50% in three years. And so, although Xcel Energy indicates that that's not the case, and I look forward to them providing evidence to the contrary. But in the interim, I have to go with what the PUC staff has estimated. And I was just curious about not to mention the escalating war in Iran and impacts on oil and diesel, knowing the transportation costs and how that shows up in construction and development. So just curious. So one is just a recommendation on how we are addressing oil the entire climate disaster response and emergency disasters in particular to evacuation, recovery and response and potentially relocation as well as, and then the question is around energy rates and how they were considered in the estimates. The latter part to question. How energy was considered in and if the escalating costs were included in the projections that have been provided.

Across are incorporated into our capital project projects for the city budget. So our capital. Project managers across our departments in the city. do perform and incorporate projections, particularly in thinking about our utilities. Capital projects considers energy costs associated with their capital planning and truly across all of the capital project managers that support capital project planning across the across the capital improvement program for the city.

It would be helpful to see what that formula is and how that formula has changed from last year to this year, considering the extenuating circumstances of what's been going on globally and locally. And then the I noticed the community connector outreach program wasn't funded. I know that's a lower price point. But given the lack of racial ethnic diversity on staff, and that's really where that outreach was happening. Just kind of curious how staff beyond using a racial equity tool would be able to get that additional level of feedback and rebuild the trust that we've invested in over the last few years.

So to the first part of the question, Councilmember, the 2027 budget does include a realignment of funds to help to support and bolster up the Community Connectors Program. We have over the past couple of years invested in the Community Connectors Program. It is a priority action within our citywide strategic plan. And so the funding associated with community connectors has increased over time. To the second part of the question in terms of community input, in part of the sessions that we had with community conversations with Fund Our Future, we had specific conversations, two conversations with community connectors and residents. And we're very intentional about having very specific conversations conversations with community connectors and then some other more targeted conversations with specific populations that were both in person and online. And so that feedback and input was incorporated into our Fund Our Future work that we did earlier this year.

No, I'm talking about the outreach, not the residents. It was my understanding that outreach component got what was going to be not funded this year. Not the residents part. There's like different tiers within the Community Connected Program. We can go offline with this, but I'll be asking questions about that.

I think you're correct, Council Member Adams. That piece of it was not funded. We did fund a conversion from a fixed term that had been fixed term into a permanent, and I don't know if Sarah can be promoted if you want that specific response on the outreach component. I believe that was originally funded with one-time dollars with maybe, I don't know if it's ARPA funds, but certainly we can get back to you on what that looks like.

And I can follow up on that with my hotline, but just wanted to tee up some of the substantive changes that I anticipate. And of course, just water in general is something that I continue to have concerns about, given the water supply scenarios that Joe and his team provided in 2025 and the estimates per staff responses previously was only on one of the four probabilities current trends and didn't look at severe or stressed and so again if we have another water year or snowpack year like we had this year that would put us I would imagine into stressed territory which would then make all of our projections not aligned with the scenarios that he outlined so just and I'll be lifting that up in the hotline as well um we have 10 minutes left so i want to circle back ryan you had other questions so i wanted to hold space if there was another question that you would like to ask thank you no i'm good thanks for that taisha i'm all good no worries all right um any other uh questions about uh next steps or just questions in general I will say, although I appreciate, Nicole, your comments about the late stage of providing feedback, this is the process, and if anything. We had talked about trying to mitigate the process so that it happens earlier where staff, where council feedback comes earlier. Also the idea, I was hopeful that the fiscal note would provide more opportunities with projections versus actuals, as well as having financial data in our plan development so that we have something to work against. There's just not a lot of opportunities where we're talking about budget in real time. And so again, just, I appreciate having the binder. I appreciate all of the changes that were made to the budget paperwork and protocols. Again, I think the timeline continues to be a challenge to turn around substantive feedback in, you know, a week and a half. So I will do my best and yeah, I see some hands raised. So Tara. Just real quick.

I just want to do, I just, If it's possible, I really did enjoy reading. I know it's wild for me to be saying this, but I did enjoy reading the packet. And I was really impressed with the way you staff reduced the budget. It was quite incredible. And so I wasn't kidding when I was impressed, especially with the realignment. That's really hard to do. And I just want you to know how much I appreciate it. I'm sure that I'm not the only one. So thank you, staff, for doing all that.

Absolutely. Thank you. Nicole?

Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that my comments are really more about where the budget fits in, in terms of policy, right? Like the budget is where our policy gets implemented. It's where the rubber hits the road. And so my point was really just that if we want to change how future budgets are directed in terms of where we're doing realignments and how we're allocating funds and things like that, that really comes from changes to those policy documents and the guiding principles and things that are overseeing that, because the budget is just sort of where all of that implements, right? And I think we can have questions about whether that is being implemented in alignment with our policy frameworks and things like that. But I think ultimately it does come from the policies that we set. And so that is where we as council and community and everybody can really weigh in when we're wanting more funding, more programs, more services in specific areas. It's really coming at setting, changing that policy, right? Changing the BVCP, changing the departmental strategic plans, those kinds of things. Thanks for giving me a moment.

I guess what I was saying was it's hard to deal when we do that policy piece that we're not getting the financial information at that time. So it's very difficult. And this is the only time when that happens. I guess, you know, I hear you and I'm just saying this is the time. And if we want to make that changes, then we would need to be more explicit about making sure we have. budget projections when we're doing creating plans that have policy implications. So I could not agree more. And again, I want to thank the staff for the work that they've done, the committee for and community organizations for the thorough review of the recommended plan, and putting additional recommendations and style guides and questions we have read through. We really do appreciate. I also want to appreciate the quick turnaround on the staff response to the community questions and the council questions that have been submitted. That was also a very quick turnaround and really appreciative of that. And without seeing any additional hands, I will go ahead and close this meeting at 8.56 p.m. for the record. And again, thank you team for the substantive conversation. I look forward to the next steps of having, using the hotline by September 28th for any substantive changes in advance of the first reading on October 1st. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful evening, everybody. Thank you.

Thank you.