Planning Board - Regular Meeting

thomas are we recording yeah we're recording so we can go ahead and begin when you all are ready wonderful and has claudia joined us i haven't seen claudia pop up oh there she is right now so i'll go ahead and promote her fantastic so welcome everybody to this city of boulder planning board meeting for july 21st 2026. I'm the chair, Laura Kaplan, and I believe we have a full house tonight. We have five of us in the room and two online, all board members present. So I'm calling this meeting to order. We have one call-up item on our agenda and one public hearing related to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. But before we get there, let's go ahead and do our public participation. Who's running the public participation for us tonight from staff?

i will be pulling up these advisory board protocol slides and then we also have amanda joining online tonight for to help out with the online portion if we have anybody that would like to speak online fantastic thank you thomas take it away all right so i'm just going to cover some rules that cover basic public participation at city meetings And first of all, we want you to know that the city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive, meaningful, and inclusive civic conversations. This vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members, staff, and board and commission members, as well as democracy for people of all ages, identities, lived experiences, and political perspectives. You can find more information about this vision and the community engagement process at our website at the link below. And the following are examples of rules of decorum found in the Boulder revised code and other guidelines that support this vision. These will all be upheld during this meeting. All remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person. Obscenity, racial epithets, and other speech and behavior that disrupt or otherwise impede the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited. And participants are required to identify themselves using the name they are commonly known by. And individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online. When we give the call for the open comment or public hearing opportunity, if you would like to speak, please go ahead and click the raise hand icon at the bottom of your screen. If you're calling in, you could press star nine on your phone to signal that you'd like to raise your hand. And if you don't see that raise hand icon, you might see this reactions icon, which you can click and expand, and then you should see the raise hand button there. And with that, we'll move into the open comment portion of our meeting. So if you would like to speak on anything that is not on the agenda for tonight, this is your opportunity to do so. And you'll have three minutes to speak. We do not have anybody in the room signed up. So we'll go ahead and move to our online folks. So if you guys are online and you would like to speak for open comment, please go ahead and raise your hand.

and i'll just clarify that our public hearing item tonight is the boulder valley comprehensive plan which covers quite a bit of planning topics in the boulder valley but you can speak at open comment about anything except if you have specific comments on the draft boulder valley comprehensive plan language that we will be addressing tonight great um i'll

assist with our online participants. So we've got one hand raised so far, and that's Lynn Siegel. And Lynn, you should be able to unmute and you'll have three minutes.

Yeah, I can't display my name because I don't have a video window.

We see your name, Lynn.

I don't see it. And I don't see my video window. Just saying, you know, you know, I think, I think that your people at your end want to see me just as much as I want to see them. Cause oftentimes at these meetings, I see my name up on the screen and I'm not talking to myself. I'm talking to you, you know, to the board and then they fix it. But, um, It's imperative that when you're talking to someone, you see them and they see you. And I don't think this is right because you don't see me. You can't see expressions on my face. You can't see my anything, you know, like I can come down there physically. But I got to tell you, and this is something you have to know, and it's about city business. The city gave me a retrofit. It's a complete disaster that will cost me, if I have to fix it, $100,000. They were helping me out with a $55,000 energy retrofit that's a complete disaster. Every single aspect of it is unusable to me, you know, and might be useful to someone else. But I'm not paying Xcel Energy for electricity. And I haven't even paid a utility bill in over a year. And I'm still going to go for geothermal anyway. And I'm at 98 degrees in my bedroom in the addition of my house. It's not because it's not well insulated. It is, but can't take this kind of heat. 98 degrees up there, 88 degrees on the main floor. That's what I'm speaking to you from right now. I ask any of you on this board, or Chris or the other people that are here, if anyone lives that way. I've lived that way for 26 years, and I'm sick of it, and I'm 73 years old, and it really lowers my productivity. In the summer, it's way too hot for me to think straight. In the winter, I'm so freezing cold I just hibernate. So why should this be? You know, I guess that's just fate. But I want to fix this thing. And I've been disabled from fixing it because I don't know where I stand financially now that they've stuck this stuff on my house. The reason they stuck the stuff on my house without my input was that the county... Energy Smart, I did a retrofit 10 years ago, and that one wasn't free. This one was $55,000 free, and that one wasn't free. I talked to one of the vendors, and they sounded really good because they did all four retrofits. you know, insulation, solar, ceiling, everything. And I went back to the county and said, they sound good. And they said, sorry, we dropped them. And they wouldn't tell me why. So I called the company and they said, because they were doing a solar install under adverse conditions and the county was forcing them and dumped them as a result. So I can't trust the county. I can't trust the city either. So just saying, this is how your citizens are living in this kind of distance.

Thank you for your time, Lynn. Okay, I don't see any other hands raised at this time. Is there anybody else joining us online that would like to speak? Okay, I think that's it.

Okay, thank you, Amanda, and thank you, Lynn, for your testimony tonight. So we're going to close the public participation. The next item on our agenda is approval of minutes. We have no minutes to approve tonight, so we move on to our call-up items. We have one call-up item. This is a final plat for the SGMA New Fraternity Project. including the elimination of an existing parcel line and dedication of easements on the .59 acre property at 1021 and 1043 Pleasant Street. This approval is subject to call up on or before tonight, July 21st, 2026. So first I will ask staff, is there anything you want to tell us about this before I ask board members if there's any interest in calling it up?

Hi, so I'm Alex Pichaz. I'm a senior city planner. I was the case manager for this project and I guess normally this project would be a staff level decision. However, the applicant is requesting a waiver to the lot standards in order to modify setbacks because As the lot line elimination is proposed, it changes the front yard designation. So on paper, the front yard becomes the east side lot line along the street, and therefore it kind of extends the setback encroachment that currently exists on the new rear yard setback on the west side of the property. There's a diagram in the packet. And it doesn't actually change any of the building characteristics on the sides that are encroaching into the setbacks already. But happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Alex. Do any board members have questions for Alex? Any discussion or desire to call this up? Okay, thank you for being with us tonight Alex it was a very good staff memo and congratulations on the project, thank you. Okay, that concludes our call up items for tonight we move on to our public hearing items we have just one, and that is consideration of one or more motions related to the major update of the boulder valley comprehensive plan the shauna do I need to read the a B and C that are on the agenda. describing the different kinds of motions we might make? you can choose to do so if you think that clarifies the record and would be helpful for anyone listening along okay um i think we are considering one or more motions related to the major update of the bvcp and these relate to the conditions that have been attached previously by planning board and by the boulder county commissioners and by the accounting the county planning commission and city council and board of commissioners on different dates so It's a comprehensive review of all of the board's conditions that have gone before us. So that's our agenda item for tonight. Before we go into the staff presentation, I'm gonna ask if any board members have any disclosures that they would like to make, or discussion of conflict of interest. I would like to make a disclosure. So on June 24th, I was informed of a code of conduct complaint filed against me, and I notified the board on that day. Per city procedure, the complaint is under investigation and I will be fully responsive to the investigators. The person who filed the complaint against me has asked for me to recuse myself from any planning board decisions involving the Boulder Municipal Airport, which is relevant to some of the content for tonight's hearing. Well, the code is silent as to what a public official who is subject to a code of conduct investigation should do while the investigation is underway. There is no rule or requirement about recusal in this situation. So the decision of what to do rests on me, whether I want it to or not. I had hoped that the investigation would conclude before tonight, but unfortunately it has not. So I have considered the code carefully and I have decided not to recuse myself. And I do believe I need to explain that decision tonight. I believe that I have no conflict of interest. The code defines conflict of interest in financial terms. There is no accusation of financial misdoing in the complaint that was filed, but I do want to be clear about this. So I affirm that neither I nor a family member nor any contract partner will receive any benefit from my participation in the discussion and board action on the BVCP airport language or anything else related to the airport. The complaint itself relates to the expectation outlined in Section 2-7-8E2 that a public official shall perform duties with honesty, care, diligence, professionalism, impartiality, and integrity. The allegation centers on just one of those words, which is impartiality, and whether my past and current involvement in activism as an individual, particularly my role in the campaign to close and repurpose the airport, means I cannot be impartial on matters related to the airport in my role tonight with Planning Board. So the word impartial is defined as lacking in bias, prejudice, or favoritism. To be impartial is to make decisions based on the facts of the matter and planning judgment of what is in the best interest of the city rather than basing decisions upon who the involved parties are or my personal interests. And I believe that I have met that standard. My judgment is not based in bias, prejudice, or favoritism toward any party nor my personal interests, but rather on the facts of the matter and what I truly believe is best for our beautiful city of Boulder. I will continue to meet that standard tonight and into the future. And I would like to note that I both agree and disagree with people on both sides of the airport issue. And that includes the people that I have worked with and the people who filed the complaint against me. It's not about the people, it's about the facts of the matter in front of me. So to be official about it, I affirm that I will use sound judgment to make the best possible decision for the city, taking into consideration all available information, circumstances, and resources. And I will continue to perform my duties as a planning board member and chair with honesty, care, diligence, professionalism, impartiality toward all parties and integrity. I want to close by saying that I considered recusing myself tonight out of an abundance of caution, but I feel strongly that that would not be the right precedent to set for our city. Recusal should not be the expected action while a complaint is under investigation and no findings have yet been rendered. that could encourage strategic weaponization of the complaint process against public officials who are about to make certain decisions. Okay, so that's my disclosure. And I do want to make a little bit of space if anybody on the board wants to talk about this because it does affect all of us. Comments, questions? I see Mark has a hand up and then Kurt.

I'll just simply say that I support your decision to continue as chair while under investigation. I think your explanation was beyond sufficient. Anyway, I concur with your decision and I support you continuing as our chair tonight and in the future.

Thank you, Mark. Kurt?

Yeah, and I was just going to say basically the same thing, and I really appreciate your very clear and cogent statement. So thank you for making that explicit. I think that that's really helpful for all of us and for everyone listening.

Thank you. I don't want anyone to feel steamrolled. Any questions, comments, concerns? Anyone not comfortable with me continuing to chair tonight? ML has a comment.

I'm just going to agree that I support your decision. I think, as always, you're very thorough and completely relevant. So I'm glad you came to that conclusion. And it's going to be great to have you in the conversation.

Thank you, ML. I see Mason reaching for the mic.

Might as well not be the odd one left out. Totally agree with everything that folks have said. I would just add one more thing, which is I think to do the opposite would actually be dangerous and not good for the way boards, city council, et cetera, operate.

Thank you, Mason. I did consider it quite seriously. Okay, all right with that done sorry that took so long. let's move on to our public hearing item i'd like to turn it over to staff for the presentation about the major update of the boulder valley comprehensive plan, where are we at.

Good evening gonna get my slides ready. All right, where are we at? I guess first, good evening. My name is Kathleen King, Principal Planner on the Comprehensive Planning Team here tonight with my colleague Christopher Johnson. We are in the second round of consideration for the major update to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. As you know, initial deliberations in June resulted in several conditions of approval and recommended amendments to the major update proposed by each of the four approving bodies. There is now a second round of public hearings at each body in the city and the county to consider any remaining conditions and recommendations. Staff all attended the Board of County Commissioners A few hours ago, and so we've got some updates from that board to share tonight and we're going to walk through all of the amendments. So as a process reminder county planning Commission met on July 15. And you received an email from KJ last Friday with a summary of their discussion. Board of County Commissioners met earlier today. We're going to talk through their latest actions. And then staff is going to meet again with council this coming Thursday evening. Because all four approval bodies need to come to a final agreement on all conditions of approval and recommended amendments to approve the plan update. So tonight, we're going to present the remaining conditions and amendments. Planning board will be asked to reconsider their conditions of approval since they were not accepted by all of the other three bodies. We've got some time for clarifying questions on the amendments. And then we've prepared some motion language for you to consider on all of the proposals. So we're going to start with conditions of approval, which were proposed by Board of County Commissioners. Due to scheduling, the BOCC reconsidered a number of their conditions earlier today before planning board reviewed kind of the first round. So the presentation includes the latest iteration of their conditions. So I just wanted to remind folks of that and keep that in mind. Their proposals have gone through now two rounds. I'm going to go a little bit out of order from the material in your packet, but I'm trying to start with amendments that received general support across the other approving bodies. So this first condition relates to Policy 102, Consultation with Federally Recognized American Indian Tribal Nations. The BOCC moved to amend this policy to include the county, as they're also working on relationships with federally recognized tribal nations. They also prefer to strike American Indian from the title, and this condition has been accepted by all other approving bodies, and you will weigh in on this tonight. The second BOCC condition for planning board to consider related to policy 103. The BOCC revised this to remove the county from this policy. They explained that this is about how the city undertakes its engagement activities. And since the county is not a partner in all of those activities, the county should not be included. This condition was accepted by city council. Members deferred to the county related to their own engagement efforts. Planning Commission voted to remain neutral regarding this change and support the plan with or without the edit. The next BOCC condition adds the word federally to a section describing recognized tribes. The condition was accepted by all other approving bodies. So now I'm going to move into some of the amendments that I've had some kind of push and pull over the last month. This condition of approval from the BOCC relates to the 50 years of planning looking back and moving forward section of the plan. Two of the three BOCC members felt that this section offered a selective description of the Boulder Valley history and was missing some important historical events and contains unsubstantiated claims regarding past planning decisions and their impacts. BOCC reconsidered the condition this afternoon and did not revise the motion. The vote was two to one to retain this condition. And I think Brad's going to speak a little bit to this.

Yeah. Good evening, planning board members. Brad Mueller, Director of Planning and Development Services. I'm going to interject with a couple of things throughout the presentation as well. Just as a matter of kind of format, we're going to recommend at the end of our presentation that you consider any motions that you make in the order of the slideshow, and we can just reshow all the slides and have you talk about them maybe in that order. Of course, it's completely your prerogative, but we are offering that as a way to organize a lot of different things. And on a couple of these, we wanted to weigh in as staff to give you some maybe practical considerations on the items. In this particular one, you'll note, as the slide represents, that the county commissioners have now considered this very item twice and decided that they still feel it needs to be a condition of their approval of the plan. As you know, again, all four bodies have to agree ultimately on the plan. From our staff perspective, we don't believe that this addition of the history, although we feel passionately about it and think it has value from a staff level, we don't think it's instrumental to the document. So we would encourage you to think about the efficacy of finding resolution on this by maybe acknowledging the commission's position twice confirmed at this point. Just food for thought as we continue through.

Thank you, Brad. Back to you, Kathleen.

OK, so the next condition of approval from the Board of County Commissioners relates to the future land use map. They proposed that all land in the Area 2 urban edge planning area with the neighborhood one designation be changed to the rural lands future land use designation. Council did not support this condition. They expressed concern that applying the rural lands future land use designation to all area two lands was too broad of a change, particularly for enclaves and properties near the city. And then while planning commission does not have jurisdiction over this map change since it was proposed in area two, members expressed similar concerns that were raised by city council. At their meeting this afternoon, the BOCC reconsidered this condition and acknowledged feedback from the other bodies, but did not make a change to the condition. This was supported by two of three commissioners, and I think Brad wanted to speak to this as well.

Yeah. Thanks Kathleen. So, um, on this one too, just wanted to provide a little perspective from, from staff. Um, and, and we anticipate that the planning board members, uh, that you may have more discussion, especially on the substance of this. We do want to make the observation as we've thought about this, um, desire of the County commissioners that it may not have a significant impact on the city's decision-making process in other words if somebody who is adjacent to the city limits and is eligible for the basic um criteria for annexation contiguating those types of things means that all of these substantive aspects of that land use that would be brought in and the assigning of zoning would be at the discretion of planning board and the count and the city council um we don't want to represent, or at least I don't want to represent all of what the County commissioners were thinking. Uh, although it was clear from their testimony that they are trying to balance the interest of feedback that they've gotten from unincorporated, uh, residents. Uh, but we did just want to make the point that, um, the actual operational impacts of it going to rural would be manageable in the future and would still give, um, a high level of discretion to planning board and the city council. We don't know, of course, how city council is going to vote on this same item. You can see from the chart that they did not agree on this condition as it was first introduced to them by the county commissioners. Again, we don't know where their discussion will go on that, but I do anticipate making a similar observation when we meet with them on Thursday. And back to Kathleen.

Brad, can I ask you a question real quick before you exit? Does that apply to all of the unincorporated county land, including enclaves that are fully surrounded by the city geographically?

It does. Yeah, it does. And the next slide also is tied as

of a conditional one so we'd encourage you to kind of think of those two in in concert as well and we can also talk through it and staff's assessment also applies to those enclaves correct okay thank you thank you back to you kathleen okay um so as brad mentioned related to this topic staff drafted necessary edits to the rural lands future land use definition to accommodate the designation potentially being applied in Area 2, which was not originally anticipated. Planning Commission was the first body to see these potential edits. While, as I mentioned earlier, they don't have review authority over the proposed land use map change, they do have authority over the definition of rural lands. The Commission voted to reject the changes in large part because they do not agree with the land use map change condition that would precede it. If the land use map change is ultimately approved, they want to revisit the amendment to this definition to more clearly distinguish how rural lands would be applied in area two versus area three. Again, this afternoon, BOCC considered the land use map changes and then subsequently this amendment, and they supported this amendment two to one with one member opposing, expressing that they oppose the land use change in general. Okay, next we're going to look at a planning board proposed condition for policy 82, which is the housing diversity and supply policy. You all may remember your discussion on this item, but in general, the conversation surrounded wanting to focus the city's energy on affordable housing types and price points over the concept of a full spectrum. You are asked to reconsider this condition tonight. In June, the policy was amended by the BOCC to include the county and to prioritize middle housing and middle income opportunities. City Council then reviewed that condition of approval, and it was not accepted by City Council. Planning Commission did accept this condition, but also voted that they are comfortable moving forward with or without it. Earlier today, BOCC reconsidered their condition and voted to remove the reference to the county and remain neutral on remaining edits. Therefore, planning board is being asked to reconsider their original proposed condition of approval on this policy as it was not accepted by council. So a little bit of back and forth. We can talk through this more if needed, but this is kind of where we're where we stand. Let's see. The final condition of approval to review is the other condition from planning board and edit of policy 79 municipal airport. While intended to be a city only policy, the BOCC felt this condition implicated the county to such a degree that it required their consideration. They accepted the condition, but council did not. Council noted here that the original language was vetted by staff and community members and some described that the modified language proposed was too detailed and operational for a comprehensive plan policy. County Planning Commission remained neutral on proposed edits and supported the plan with or without changes. Earlier today, BOCC proposed an updated condition that maintains the planning board edits at the beginning of the policy and removed planning board's additional revisions, which implicated the county to agree they were not prepared to commit to. Planning board is asked to reconsider this condition of approval. OK, so those were all the conditions of approval. We're going to move to recommended amendments that planning board needs to consider. So the first recommended amendment would revise policy 53, local energy generation. changing the title to include renewable and updating policy language to specifically reference local renewable energy generation rather than the broader term energy generation. This was proposed by the County Planning Commission. Both BOCC and Council accepted this recommended amendment. The next is on policy 16 out of city utility service. It's a city policy, but the BOCC had one recommended amendment they asked city bodies to consider, adding the final sentence in red on your screen. Council accepted this recommended amendment. Next, County Planning Commission proposed an amendment to the land use goals of the rural class to describe economic land-based activities. BOCC initially rejected this change, expressing concern that it could be interpreted as extractive practices. So because it was rejected by BOCC, council did not consider the recommendation. At their second round meeting earlier this month, Planning Commission reiterated that the intent of this recommendation was to recognize rural lands as working lands. They re-proposed the amendment and asked that BOCC propose language to address their interests. Earlier today, BOCC proposed the following language, support economic livelihoods that are based on the land that are consistent with responsible land stewardship and environmental sustainability. Planning boards asked to consider The second amendment on the screen here tonight. City Council also proposed recommended amendments. The first relates to the future of housing section and builds on Planning Board's recommended amendment adding the term near transit to this sentence. Planning Commission approved this recommended amendment without discussion, but also accepted the plan with or without the edit. This afternoon, BOCC approved the amendment 2 to 1. One member opposed the near transit sentiment. The second recommended amendment proposed by council relates to policy 89, fire adapted communities. They proposed adding a sentence to the policy, which you can see in red on the screen. County Planning Commission is neutral on the amendment as it does not implicate the county, and BOCC voted to approve the amendment earlier today. OK. So that's all the conditions and recommendations that are left on the table. I hope it was clear. We have some draft language prepared if needed for motions. As Brad mentioned, we can pull the slides back up If that's helpful to work through the motion language. But that's it for me. I'll turn it back over to the board chair.

Thank you so much, Kathleen. I thought it was very clear, very helpful. Thank you so much for helping us wade through the complexity. I love the charts. So any questions from board members for staff at this point before we go to the public hearing? Kurt?

Thank you for the presentation, I had one question, first of all, about I think it's reference G about the the change to the. The rural lands sorry changes from in the county from in one to rural. I thought that city council considered a modified version that would only apply that to gun barrel. Did that not happen, or was that not a formal motion?

Yeah, so good evening, Planning Board. Christopher Johnson, Comprehensive Planning Manager. Yes, City Council did put that forward as a potential alternative, and that information was relayed to the Board of County Commissioners. They decided earlier today at their meeting that they would like to continue to proceed with their original condition, which would be to make that change to all Area 2 lands.

But I believe that the council formally voted to accept that, right? Or did the straw poll or whatever.

Yeah, they did a straw poll that that would be an alternative that they would accept.

Okay, correct. Great. Thank you. And then my other question is about reference 16. And I forget what it was, so maybe you can bring it up.

I can bring it back up.

Oops.

Did I skip it? 16. There you go. Sorry.

Oh, OK. You have a different 16. Oh, no. Same 16? OK, sorry. the the county commission today uh voted in favor of the near transit language right um and so they did not i thought that they also said that they would accept it without the near transit language is that not correct

Based on my recollection, and I can revisit my notes, I don't believe there was... I don't believe that they said that. I know that there was one commissioner that voted against their motion to accept this change because they actually did not support the near transit language. So my sense is the commissioners as a body supported the near transit and would not necessarily support it without that language. But we would have to go back and refer to the recording just to confirm that.

Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you for those questions, Kurt. I saw Claudia's hand and then I saw Mark's. So, Claudia.

Thanks. My first question is actually about our process tonight as a board. And I know that staff has given us some recommended motion language related to approving or amending these conditions and recommendations that other bodies have made. If we as a board choose to reject any of these conditions or recommendations, do we need to have motions to reflect that rejecting or can we just decline to approve? Does that make sense?

Yes, your question does make sense. It would be preferable for the board to actually have a motion to reject or not support a particular condition, just so that's very clear on the record.

OK, thank you for that. And then I had two questions about some of the engagement related to some of these recommended and conditioned changes. The first, let's just dig into it, is with regard to the gun barrel community in particular. So dealing with this question about future land use in some of these area two neighborhoods. Could staff describe at all what engagement was done with the gun barrel community in particular during the early stages of planned development?

Yeah, happy to speak to that. You know, we took the approach throughout this process to be as broad and open as we could with all of our engagement activities and, you know, made special efforts to make sure that those were notified and advertised well throughout really the city, including those areas of the unincorporated county. Staff did not hold any specific engagement events that were particular to the gun barrel area or those particular residents. We did host a couple of office hour opportunities and other kind of informal opportunities for those residents and property owners, business owners up in the gun barrel area to participate. you know, to be able to participate within the project. And certainly we did have representatives and residents from that area attend most, if not all of our, you know, broad community open houses and activities as well. So they certainly were engaged, you know, throughout the process and had access to the both county staff and city staff teams for the last year and a half, but there was not any real specific engagement that was done for that one particular community, which was consistent. We didn't do special engagement activities for individual groups.

Okay. And was there anything in the...

If I can interject and add to that, there was some staff that thought we That the county may have done some special reaching out to that area. But we don't have firsthand knowledge of that.

OK, I'm just I'm trying to get some information to assess some of the statements that the commissioners made about Neighborhood One not being the vision of Boulder County, etc. And, you know, is that is that response that they are hearing now in communication with constituents? Is that something that developed out of that? our engagement process, perhaps the survey that was done as part of our engagement process, like what are our data points or what are their data points is what I'm trying to determine here.

Yeah, sure. You know, I think it's difficult for us to, you know, put a real precise answer on that. But certainly I would say as the draft plan was released in the spring and through some of those public hearing opportunities, in particular in May, as we started to really formally review the plan, there were a number of gun barrel issues. residents that expressed you know their opinions and participated in those public hearings and I think in part that is what the county commissioners are trying to be responsive to and I my sense is you know there there has been you know comments and opinions expressed throughout the process of Certainly, some community members are more comfortable with a level of change than others. And, you know, certainly that is information that has been brought into our thinking and staff's analysis as we've gone through this entire process. But I would say comments specific to Neighborhood 1 and how it applies in gun barrel have been relatively recent developments within the last couple of months.

Okay, thank you. And then my second question about engagement more broadly, this is more of an internal engagement question. related to city council's recommended amendment to policy 89. This is the fire adapted communities. So city council recommended an amendment which adds language about egress capacity and residential density. And I'm wondering if those are issues that came up in the development of Policy 89, maybe in discussion with Boulder Fire, or if Boulder Fire has had any input on the necessity of that kind of language collaboration.

Yeah, it's a great question. Certainly we had representatives and subject matter experts from the fire department and our office of disaster management participate throughout the process. And I will say that was a frequent comment of theirs in terms of really being, you know, critically thinking about egress capacity and other aspects in terms of disaster related evacuations. That certainly is one consideration that we have to put into the mix with all of the other city goals and policies. And so that is something that has been considered and I think is something that was then presented and added to that policy to be a bit more explicit that that is a consideration or that is something that the city will be thinking about as we continue to work through future implementation steps. And Brad, if you want to add to that.

Yeah, if I can piggyback just to give the context of that conversation as I heard it, which was very affirmating of adding the language was certainly my take on it, that the emphasis was around when development is proposed, when that implies density, there should be plans for egress and plans for exit, not so much a controlling factor.

I'm sorry, Brad, could you, if I could colloquy, Claudia? Brad, could you say more about that? Because I had a concern about that too. What does this mean in terms of, you know, revisions to Title IX or revisions to the site review process, if any? Would we be adding new criteria? I think there's two ways to look at this. One way to look at it is for folks to say, well, we don't have enough egress capacity, therefore development should be denied. Another way to look at it is to say, well, we're considering adding development. Therefore, we need to be really careful about our egress capacity and evaluate that and upgrade it if we need to. Right. So I'd really like to understand better. I mean, I think.

Yeah. No, I appreciate the question. And I think it really speaks to. a common theme about the comprehensive plan, which is how does a particular policy get implemented? And I don't know the answer of that. There may be a desire to implement it through a variety of different techniques. The context of a lot of wildfire discussion right now is a priority around how do we make sure that there is a strong plan for egress? What is that capacity? What is the mechanism for that, whether it's having buses available, walking routes for folks that can't drive out, that kind of thing. I can't project how that may evolve over time. But I think it was very clear to me, at least, I won't speak for all of the staff, it was very clear to me in hearing council talk about it, that they thought that the emphasis and the acknowledgement of egress and safe exit routes and a plan for all that was priority and wanted to make sure that that was reflected in policy. But I think nobody could say exactly how that plays out. And I think that's, you know, for future boards and yourself to determine just what that means in the future.

Okay, thank you, Brad. Back to you, Claudia. Can I also call a quick? Yes, go ahead. Thank you. If that's okay with you, Claudia.

Yes, please do. And my questions are finished, so please continue.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, I had another question about that. Specifically, it calls out residential density only in the proposed language there. When you've had discussions with the fire officials, for example, in the Office of Disaster Management, have they expressed that there's particularly greater concern about residential development than, say, an office building or, you know, an industrial facility or that sort of thing? Is there some reason why we're focusing only on residential?

I can speculate a bit on that. And just for context, I'm on the wildfire executive team, which is several of the directors and some key staff that kind of look at the entire program for the entire city. So I and a couple folks, not these folks, are more directly tied to that. And I would say this whole issue of egress and creating safety plans and safe route plans is relatively new, not that it hasn't been thought about for decades, but looking at it with fresh eyes and finding ways to emphasize that. And I would just interpret the term residential here as an acknowledgement that the vast majority of development that's in the high-risk WUI areas are residential. and that that represents the majority of density. I wouldn't say that it's to the exclusion of other types of land use, just an acknowledgement that that, and also the fact that that's where round the clock activity typically exists as opposed to commercial areas where it's eight hours, 10 hours, that kind of thing. I'm quite confident that there won't be kind of this interpretation of heavy segregation to residential only, just an emphasis.

Okay, thank you. Mark, you were next with questions.

Thank you. I want to go back to the N1 to rural proposal by the Boulder County Board of Commissioners. And there are times where My interpretation and your interpretation might disagree about things. What I'm interested in tonight is your thought on the practical effect of this change, this designation change, should annexation not... Let's just say in the next 10 years, we don't have a big... move to annex portions of gun barrel, etc. What would the, my first question is, what would the practical effect of this change from N1 to rural be, should there not be a move to annex any portion, particularly of gun barrel?

I would say that if there are no annexations, then this change would have zero practical implications. Really, the only implications would come into play during an annexation, and really at that point, the only... The only practical effect is that city staff would not have a direct understanding of what that future land use should be. We would have to just evaluate an annexation on its own merits at the time that it is brought forward within the context of the surrounding area. Brad?

Commissioner, I would also add to KJ's comments that we do have various administrative tools at our discretion already during annexation, not to mention the various criteria and such that I alluded to earlier. So again, outside the practical effect that KJ just spoke to, if there's no proposed annexations, if there are proposed ones, we do have annexation criteria. You all have criteria to consider. And we do have annexation policies that we could refine that speak to reference towards a designation ultimately as well. So that just is reinforcement to my earlier comments about maybe the practical consideration of it at this point. Thank you.

As a follow on, this does seem to be somehow connected, related to, motivated by the Twin Lakes affordable housing, BVSD, open space, county open space, city open space, the Twin Lakes thing that came up a number of years ago. And does this change? Should we have either an opportunity for typically affordable housing, is multi-unit housing and by switching from N1 to rural in the county without annexation, are we precluding any future multi-unit affordable housing projects, whether it might be a bringing back to life, a Twin Lakes type proposal, or some other proposal we haven't anticipated, the county is a named participant and partner in fulfilling the community's both need and desire for multi-unit affordable housing. So how does this affect any possible multi-unit affordable housing located in the county?

Let's see, a couple of scenarios to consider. So if there was a property in the county that happened to be an Area 2 but was not eligible for annexation, let's say it did not have the contiguity, That property is going to be reviewed. Any future development would be reviewed under the county jurisdiction. It's going to be a county development review process. County will ultimately make that decision. County staff would work on that. If a property were... if a property were in the county in area two and was eligible for annexation and they proposed an annexation and as part of that, a multi-unit development, That ultimately would fall to the city decision making processes because as as that annexation would occur, there would be a land use map change from rural to whatever the most appropriate land use was at that time. And then ultimately, you know, a zone district would be applied and that project would be reviewed. The other thing I'll mention as well is that, you know, if there was an opportunity that was in the county and was under their jurisdiction, but they felt strongly enough that that opportunity was large enough that they wanted to entertain a land use map change, they could propose that as part of that process. So there would be nothing... precluding the county from exercising their right to propose a land use map change to take advantage of a particular opportunity for affordable housing or whatever it might be. I'll also just mention as well, the way that the rural lands definition is written is that, you know, it's very, very broad in its description and essentially defers to the county's jurisdiction and the county's zoning code on what can be constructed. So even a multi-unit affordable housing definition, opportunity could be developed under the rural lands land use designation if the county zoning allowed for it and the county approved that project. So again, I don't believe the change to rural lands overall places an undue burden or potentially restricts future opportunities in a significant way.

Great, thank you. Okay, that's it for me.

Can I follow up on that too? I don't think I've ever been involved at least in an annexation where we actually ended up changing the land use designation. Usually, you know, it's LR and we leave it LR or it's VLR and we leave it VLR or whatever. Are there guidelines or any kind of restrictions on how the land use map could change in that situation?

No, not at this time. Actually, the amendment procedures within the IGA for the comprehensive plan allow for a land use map change at the time of annexation as part of an annexation process. So that is certainly already allowed and you know, perhaps as part of a future implementation step, if this land use map changes is approved by the bodies and it becomes rural land, we may want to take a closer look at, you know, what some of our annexation criteria or guidelines are saying so that we make sure that we have really clear processes in place to be able to, you know, be able to do those land use map changes as part of annexation. But right now there's nothing

restricting city staff and and planning board and city council from from doing that as part of an annexation thank you okay i'm wondering if this is the most efficient way to do questions rather than doing them one by one as we consider each item so i'm going to ask any other burning questions for staff knowing that we can ask additional questions as we consider each item mason

I have one very simple question I didn't see in the presentation, the land use. update changes that we propose last round that were rejected by city council is coming before us again.

No, those were those were recommended amendments as part of your initial review and those were not supported by city council, so those have since fallen off the list.

Thank you, Mason and Christopher. Any last questions before we go to the public hearing. Okay, so yes, ml has a question.

So it seems like there's a couple of things policy 48 future of transportation isn't that still kind of. Or is that just done City Council rejected it and everybody else approved it is that not on our do we not do anything about that today.

That was also a recommended amendment. So all four bodies have to accept it for it to move forward. And because council rejected it, it did not move forward.

Okay, perfect. And is that the same? Well, so we've got with the industrial change to industrial land use language. I don't see it on here anywhere. And is that just because they're both approved? But I didn't see it moving forward. How does that work?

So the change to the industrial land use definition, and I'm just, there it is, was approved by city council. And so that one does move forward, that edit will be made.

Amel, did you have any more before I go to Max?

So these, again, direct their recommendations and if they didn't both approve them City Council hasn't seen it so irrelevant if they're if they're not all approved. Okay. I think I'm policy 53. That's a recommendation and all the other three bodies have approved it. Do we not weigh in on that?

Yes, that was one of the items we presented this evening, Policy 53, to add the term renewable to that policy. So yes, you'll be looking at that. You'll need to make a motion on that tonight.

Okay. And Policy 16? That's also for your consideration tonight. Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you, ML. Max?

Yeah, just a brief synopsis. Anything that's already been approved across isn't coming back in, and anything that we had as a recommendation that was turned down is also not coming back up. And I believe that we only had two conditions. So almost all of this is other bodies' conditions. And I kind of get that, especially for the sake of our beloved staff. But it's worth noting that there are some weird ones that slipped through for odd reasons. And one that springs to my mind is the modification that we made to Neighborhood 1. The county commissioners shot down. So then the council just brushed off the table because it was already gone. But it's worth noting that the county commissioners didn't want it. And they're also getting rid of all the Neighborhood 1 in the county. Or a large portion of it. So... It might be worth talking about that one again, because neighborhood one is primarily a city thing. And the county commissioners are the ones that got rid of our recommendation and never even made it to council.

So I will say as chair that it is my philosophy that we are not done yet. We have not approved a plan yet. And so if any board member would like to exercise their prerogative to try to revive something that didn't make it through, that is your prerogative tonight. I know staff are going to flinch when I say that, but I am strongly in favor of board members having the freedom to have the conversations that we think are necessary to make this a good plan.

I just want to say for the record, we completely acknowledge that and we don't by any means mean to imply that's not the case.

Thank you for your support, Brad. I appreciate that. Brad, could you turn that mic off? All right, if there are no other questions and Max please do feel free when we get to discuss and discussion and deliberation to make any proposal that you would like. If there are no other questions. Right now let's go to the public hearing on this agenda item, I will turn it back over to staff to run that public hearing.

Thank you Laura we have nobody joining us in the room for the public hearing tonight so. we can go to our online participants. If you're joining us online and would like to speak for the public hearing, this is your opportunity to do so. Please raise your hand at this time to indicate that you would like to speak. First up, we have Lynn Siegel. Lynn, you'll have three minutes, and please go ahead when you're ready.

Wow, I get the only word. It's like nobody else cares. It's fabulous. You know, the problem is, If you're talking about, you know, mitigating fire on these places and egress windows and stuff, the origin of the problem is the structure itself. You're building structure that is fuel. Why are you doing that? I don't want my kids to go up in a fire, much as I might like to have kids. If I have to, I'd rather... that they don't go up in a fire. And the more you build, the more you create fuel. It's like the Ender story. And it's like if you're going to go and make little sprawl cities, right? You know, just like Weathervane. You know, it has nothing, but it's a little city in itself. People want to get out of those things. Like in Boulder, I have pretty much everything I need here. But if you do little sprawl cities, you have to develop a huge infrastructure for people to want to stay there. And there's also the issue of transmission lines. There shouldn't be any. We should be to the point where we're doing microgrids, and we're doing distributive solar, and we're doing reactive energy and balancing the grid intuitively in our communities for energy savings. and for making housing more affordable, integrally making it more affordable, rather than filling in a missing middle or filling in with multiplexes and density that is even more fuel, more bodies to burn in the building, you know? Um, I don't know. What's your logic for this? We need, you know, an open discussion, an iterative discussion on this, which is not happening, which has really never happened to my experience in Boulder politics and Boulder government. And there's a huge intellectual community in Boulder. People, lots smarter than me. Well, smart's a bad word, but, you know, the collective intelligence that's very good, that's not being utilized anymore. And, you know, the understory of what you're saying is area three. Gun barrel, yeah, but area three. No, we don't want to go forward with more before we can sustain it with the water demand and the infrastructure demand. Thank you.

Thank you, Lynn. If anybody else would like to speak to the public hearing, this is your opportunity to do so. And please just go ahead and raise your virtual hand. And I'll give it just a moment, but seeing none going up, I'll pass it back to you chair. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Thomas. I'm going to propose that we go ahead and take a short break, both for anybody who needs a break, but also for staff to be able to pull up their next item. And anybody who wants to write some language based on the Q&A and what you hear, maybe we'll take a 10-minute break and folks have a little bit of a chance. Does that work for everybody? Okay, so we're going to take a 10-minute break. We'll come back at 7.17.

Are we back online?

Have we got our two board members? I see Claudia. I see Mark. Fantastic. All right. I know. It's been exciting. Simmer down. Simmer down. We've had some chocolate-covered cashews, and we're all a little hyper. Claudia, I'll get you some when you come back. I saw that face. Mark, you too. Okay. So we are back, ready for our deliberation. Deshauna.

Yes, if I may address the board. Based on conversation prior to the recess, there appears to be interest in perhaps reopening maybe two or more items that had fallen off after a subsequent body incident. deliberation and so I wanted to address that at the threshold before deliberations begin in earnest and many motions are made and so for clarity's sake and efficiency I'm recommending that the board if any member or individual members would like to reopen a fallen off item that perhaps the best mechanism to do so would be an informal straw poll of interest and then if there is sufficient interest a formal motion to then add that item to the list of things to consider tonight. I love it, Deshauna. Thank you.

Would we like to build that list now at the beginning of deliberation or wait until we have gone through the items we know we need to cover?

Now? OK.

So I think there is a suggestion that we go ahead and flag any items that we want to reopen now. And Deshauna, I appreciate your suggestion. We will, by straw poll, determine whether there is board interest in adding these items to the list. So who would like to propose reviving an item that has fallen off of the list? We'll start with ML.

Real quickly, can I add, too, in most cases, we may be able to pull that up on the screen if that's helpful.

Fantastic. I was thinking that staff could do that for us, and so I'm glad to hear that confirmed. ML, what is on your mind?

I'm interested in something that actually didn't fall off the list because council approved it, but I am wanting to reverse planning board's position on it. Is that something that... You can ask us to consider that, yeah. And so I'd like to consider, and I've got a lot of substantiation as to why we should reconsider it, which I almost would like to read before we do a straw poll to say, do we want to reconsider it? Because all we've got to go on at this point is the prior conversation.

I will allow it. Cool.

And I wrote it down, so I've got a page in it. So you let me know when I can.

If you would like to go ahead and make that proposal now, and if you can make it brief, but be thorough.

That's my point. That's why I wrote it down, so I'm thorough.

And can you tell us which item it is so that we can?

So this is in regards to planning boards recommended language change to industrial land use.

And can we pull that up on the screen? Do we have that in the historic record?

The historic record will be my working spreadsheet. If that is okay with everyone, you're going to see behind the curtain a little bit here.

Whatever you can have for us, Kathleen, is better than what we've got. So we appreciate you. Thank you.

It was also in our packet. On that chart okay um so steps position on this was, and I quote, this is a significant change to the definition of industrial land use and original intent. staff lines, the change inconsistent with Community and policymaker feedback about concerns with losing industrial and innovation activity. that were expressed during several recent planning processes, including the East Boulder Sub-Community Plan, Boulder Junction Phase 2 Amendment, the Comprehensive Plan Update, and the Intent of Policy No. 86, Value of Industrial Land." Staff goes on to further substantiate this position. My point here is that I think we're taking a wrong term with this recommendation. And I feel that perhaps planning board did not carefully weigh this when we made our 3-4 straw poll that city council took action on and accepted. So perhaps it's not as clear as it might be. I have known these industrial sites, especially east of Foothill Highway, for four decades, as my husband, who was a woodworker, had his various shops around 47th and Pearl. These were and remain the only affordable and viable business locations for small industrial enterprises, such as auto repair, woodworking, printing, brewing, and the like in the city of Boulder. We rent it from folks like David Height, owner of McGuckin, and Lou Delacava, a large landowner and avid champion of small industry. These are not out-of-town national investors looking to maximize their profits. These landowners are community makers. In this industrial land, there are also many small enterprises that own their property, such as Rocky Mountain Blue and Indian Peaks Auto. Nobody's looking to flip their land based on profitability. They're just looking for workplace stability. So we see this show up in our values with the BVCP employment and business vision that states, having businesses in a wide variety of industries helps make local economy more resilient. So when the East Boulder Sub-Community Plan, where much of the industrial land use is located, was being finalized, I participated in a tour of the 47th Street area, and along with city planners and Matt Chesanski, who was at that time heading Boulder's Office of Arts and Culture, we uncovered a robust and unique culture that has evolved over decades because these small industries aren't nomads. They set up shop and get to providing their meaningful work that Boulder counts on, staying put for decades, and thereby creating a remarkable and long-lasting culture. We see this in our BVCP values with policy number 24, community character and evolution, and number 38, imagination, locations, recognizing areas with distinct character. Here on Planning Board, we've seen concept plans that seek to place residential and industrial zones bend backwards, sideways, and upside down to convince that it's appropriate. Planning Board has thus far held to the criteria, even in the face of applicants reminding us that it's City Council that they ultimately answer to. Rightly so. I have had current City Council members reach out recently, and I stated my position that Planning Board did not put forth that industrial land use language change unanimously. In fact, it was stated as being a 2-5 straw poll rather than what I think we remember as actually a 3-4 poll. City Council absolutely has the purview to call up and overturn any planning board decision. This council member assured me that the change in industrial land use language to allow residential, when appropriate, would be carefully guarded by city council. The BVCP is a 20-year plan. City council is term-limited, and any long-term plan that has to rely on term-limited politicians to uphold community values, it's simply not doing its job. We value this in the BVCP policy number 86 value of industrial land. So this 2026 BVCP update has lauded its public participation process that included the first ever community assembly. Additionally, stakeholder groups and public at large have weighed in over these over 18 months. Again and again, we hear that Boulder values small industry to provide us with kitchen cabinet manufacturers, flooring suppliers, printers, et cetera, et cetera. And furthermore, the land planning that became the focus of the community assembly and is integrated into this BBCP update, the 15 minute neighborhood is pointing Boulder to effectively address livability as a whole. Imagine this, you walk to the small grocer to get dinner, stop at the pharmacy to pick up allergy meds, meet people at the coffee shop, drop dry cleaning off, then you jump in your car for the 10 plus mile drive to go fetch the cards you had printed and look at kitchen countertop samples, etc., etc., because the city does not provide livability at that scale. This is not what the public outreach asked for. And what I'm going to remind is that I, as a long practicing architect and former university studio faculty, am the only design professional on this board. And to overlook livability at the whole city scale is not what great city planning aspires to. We especially value this in BBC policy number 56 local business and affordability spaces number 68 social infrastructure and number one on one Community enhancement excuse me engagement. Coming to the end, last paragraph. This language change is in direct conflict with at least six BVCP policies. Policies I remind that uphold values for the sort of city we want. It conflicts the 15-minute neighborhood goal. It overrides months of public process to make a, as staff notes, significant change to the definition of industrial land use and original intent. And most reprehensibly, it trods upon the industrial culture of Boulder that has been in place quietly serving for decades. This is an exquisite community, In good conscience, I cannot stand aside and see this threatened. So I asked planning board to reconsider the amendment to allow residential as a supporting use in the industrial future land use designation, big complex little sentence here, in response to city council's approval of said amendment. I believe that planning board did not carefully weigh the implications of that recommendation. And in light of the points I have made, if you will support, I can offer a motion.

Thank you, ML. Thank you, ML. Before I ask for a straw poll, any other brief comments from board members? about the idea of reviving this policy, which was approved as a recommendation by this board and then approved by all the other bodies. I see Mark. Mark, go ahead.

I was going along pretty good until the closing comment of we did not carefully consider this. That I take exception to. This was, for me, deeply, carefully considered with many meetings, many discussions, much thought, some sleepless nights and careful thought. So I take exception to that. But getting to the point, I laud ML's dedication to small industrial uses. Yes, I support that. And in fact, I think if you said, let's take a straw poll of who supports small industrial workshops and uses, printers, auto repair places, et cetera, who supports those? Gee, it would be easy to find unanimous support. What is wrong here is that almost all of those businesses that we love and want to support are in the innovation designation. They are not in the industrial designation. And that much of what is in the industrial designation is big, vacant office buildings, large offices. dead surface parking lots. And so while we might have a goal of supporting these small businesses that are integral to our community, there is no debate there. What the debate is, is does prohibiting consideration of housing in an industrial zone as a secondary, not a primary use, a secondary use with a verbal restriction does that in fact have any negative impact on the small businesses that are primarily located in the inundation zone? My answer is no. And so when we talk about city design, when we talk about being able to go from our dinner table to pick up cards or whatever it might be, have neighborhood places, if we prohibit residential uses near transit, near our large employers, if we prohibit that, any redevelopment, we are dooming ourselves to in fact large swaths of dead area. So I love the idea of supporting these small businesses and I vehemently oppose going backwards on this change.

Thank you, Mark. I'm not going to call for more comment because I feel like that would be stepping into having the discussion of this item. We have had the most passionate defender of this item and the most passionate person who wishes to change this item speak. I think it's time for a straw poll. We're not saying do you support or not support this change. We're saying do you support having reopening the deliberation as a whole board, putting this on the list of things that we might or might not approve changing. So folks who would like to put it back on the list for further discussion, debate, and potential reopening, please raise your hand. I see one. ML, thank you so much. Thank you so much for making sure that we did carefully consider this. And I appreciate, respect, and honor your proposal tonight. Okay, anybody else want to consider adding something to the list? I think Max does. So we're going to pass it over to Max when you're ready.

I mean, as previously discussed, I think the spreadsheet I'm operating off of has this as item number seven from page 89. We might be at reference number seven from I think we have the right packet. Yeah, there we go. That's the one. And for the reasons I previously stated, but I'll keep it brief and go through this again. We had made this as a recommendation, and I... I admire the planning board's spirit of collaboration with making recommendations, but as we are now being confronted with a long list of conditions, I think we may need to be a bit firmer on some things. And this is probably the biggest one to me because it was rejected by the county commissioners after a very thorough conversation with the planning board about Neighborhood 1. Almost all of the neighborhood one falls under the discretion of the city, not the county. And this never even made it to the council. Well, the county simultaneously asked for almost all of their neighborhood one to be moved to rural land. So I think that this is something that we should consider. push forward again because even on my short tenure in planning board i have you know i'm referencing the bvcp weekly i don't think the county commissioners necessarily are going to be dealing with the classification of neighborhood one quite the same way that the planning board will so i think that this was a thoughtful recommendation by us and i think that we may want to change it to being a condition so that it actually makes it to council

Okay. Does anybody feel the burning desire to add a comment before we take the straw poll? Okay, so just just to make sure it's read into the record, this is regarding the neighborhood one future land use designation urban design and that description used to have a sentence that said. That the massing and setbacks are harmonious with the surrounding neighborhood. And that was struck and felt that it was not necessary, given that the rest of the definition talks about it being typically moderate and scale maintaining a residential form and rhythm along a block. generally one to three stories, and that specifics about massing and setbacks could be counterproductive and were not necessary given the rest of the definition, if I'm summarizing accurately where we landed on that.

Can I actually slightly add to that?

Yes, please.

I'll just say that I have other concerns about the wording that was originally in this policy, and that's why I was supportive of taking it out. So I'm happy to talk about that later.

um but i will be definitely supportive of revisiting this okay any other comments before we take the straw poll okay can we thomas could we take this down so that folks can see our faces as we take the straw poll okay everyone in favor of adding this back onto the list as a potential condition please raise your hand I've got one, two, three, four, five. And dissenting as I think ML, you did not raise your hand and I did not. Okay, so five to two, we will add this back onto the list. Okay, thank you very much. Any other proposals to add something back onto the list that fell off? Hearing none, I'm gonna go back to staff. Staff, could you please pull up your presentation and walk us through the items that you want us to weigh in on? And we will try to do that as efficiently as possible.

Give me just a moment.

And just as a process suggestion, it was suggested to me that it might be more efficient if we just vote on these as we go along, rather than trying to collect them all into one motion at the end. Given the mess of trying to write a condition at the end that included everything, I agree with that suggestion. I think it's a good one. So why don't we go ahead and take a vote on each of these as we go. And we will specify if we are voting on it as a condition or a recommendation if necessary. And I think that gets to staff's desire for us to express a level of neutrality. If it were to not be accepted by everybody, we'll let it fall off the list. And that would be making it a recommendation rather than a condition.

And I'll offer you a third option. Much like Planning Commission did at the county, they put forward some motions that they would accept any future iterations of it? Or how was it expressed? I didn't say that very well.

Yeah, it was essentially a motion that expressed their acceptance of the plan with or without the edit. So they expressed neutrality on a particular item. Third option for you.

Okay, we can do that. I think that's the same thing as saying condition or recommendation, but we can do that. I think it's more explicit that we accept that whatever outcome the others agree to, we're okay with. We're not making our acceptance conditional upon that change. Okay. Any questions about process before we move forward?

All right.

Over to you, Kathleen.

Okay.

Or do you want me to just take it away?

Sure, either way. I'm happy to talk you through it or have you go and I'll just click through slides.

Okay, why don't I just take it away. All right, because you've already explained each of these to us so. All right, so reference number C, page 75 policy 102. This is adding and county in two places so that this is a city and county policy it's been approved by all other three boards, any discussion.

And it's also striking American Indian.

Yes, thank you, Kurt, for catching that. It's also striking the word American Indian. Does anyone have any concerns about making this change? And I can't see Claudia, so you'll have to speak up if you do. Okay. Actually, I can see you now. All right. So let's go ahead and vote on this. Deshauna, do we need to do a roll call vote?

It's not required, but if the chair would like to use that degree of formality for the clarity of the record, then that would be acceptable. So it's your choice, Madam Chair.

Let's go ahead and do roll call for everything. That way it's very clear in the record. Okay, so we're going to vote on this one unless there's any more discussion. Questions? Brad?

I would just point a procedure. You need a motion and a second first.

Oh, okay. Thank you. Good. So do I have a motion to accept these changes on the screen?

I move to accept change reference C on page 75.

I second that.

We have a motion and a second. So we're going to do a voice vote. We'll start with ML.

Yes.

Kurt. Yes. I'm a yes. Mason. Yes. Max. Yes. Claudia. Yes. Mark. Yes. It is unanimous. Okay. We can move on. Oh, and are we okay? Well, I guess that's all four of us, so we don't need to see it again. Okay. Next, we have reference D, page 75, policy 103. This one strikes Ann County in two places. The county wished to remove themselves from this policy. This was approved by the commissioners and the council, and the planning commission was neutral on it. They will accept whatever, I guess, we do tonight. So any discussion or concerns about striking Ann County? Seeing none, we're going to do a voice vote, starting with ML.

Yes. Sorry, you need a motion. Sorry, we do.

We need a motion.

I move to accept, to approve change reference D, page 75.

I'll second. Thank you. Okay. Voice vote. ML. Yes. Kurt. Yes. I'm a yes. Mason. Mason.

I'm feeling pedantic. That should be the city is. That does not affect my vote. It didn't do anybody, but yes.

Is it fair to assume that it will be changed grammatically? Yes, it will be changed grammatically. And acknowledges. Yes, the grammar will be updated as well. Thank you to the pedants among us. Appreciate it. Okay, Max.

Yes.

Claudia.

Yes.

And Mark. Yes. Unanimous. Moving on. All right, this is reference number F, page 41, how the city and county address today's challenges. This is just to add the word federally to federally recognized tribes in this policy. Any concerns or questions? May I have a motion to accept reference F?

I move to approve reference F. I'll second.

It is moved and seconded. Voice vote. We'll start with our online folks. We'll go, Mark. Yes. Claudia.

Yes.

Max.

Yes.

Mason. Yes. I'm a yes. Kurt. Yes. ML. Yes. Unanimous. Moving on. All right. This one's going to be a little harder, I think.

All right.

Screech to a halt. Reference number E, pages 14 to 17. This is the Board of County Commissioners has reaffirmed their condition for to strike the history section, basically the 50 years of planning, looking forward or looking back and moving forward. And this is to strike the entire section and staff has offered that they don't think that this is necessarily make or break for the plan. And it has been discussed previously that this section could be moved online. I would like to comment just briefly and say I watched the county commissioners' meetings, both of them, and both times they felt very strongly that there were things in this section that they did not feel fully reflected the history of Boulder County. They felt that the assertions didn't match some of the data that they were aware of. They felt that it just needed a lot of work and that it was not appropriate to try to wordsmith it at this stage, and so they were more comfortable just striking it. Any other questions or commentary on this one before we, what are folks thinking? Yeah, Kurt.

Yeah, I thought that the discussion by the commissioners was interesting. And I think that they did make some valid points that there wasn't necessarily research or data supporting some of the assertions, including some of the assertions that I think that they probably are much friendlier with. And so if we, you know, I can understand given that it's a contentious issue, it probably would have been better in hindsight. to have had something actually written up by an academic with real citations and something like that. So, given all that, I really could go either way. So, I would be accepting of keeping it in, but I would also be accepting of taking it out for the time being and trying to either move the content elsewhere or ideally rewrite it in a more defensible fashion and put it someplace. Thank you, Kurt.

Other discussion? ML?

I believe I understand that the Boulder County commissioners have already come to this twice and they are making, continue to stand on making it a condition.

Okay.

Claudia.

So I'm having some difficulty with proposing, removing this history. I am really sensitive and maybe it's at this moment in time to, to, what feels to me like a movement to kind of eliminate a history that makes people uncomfortable and What I see in this four-page section that the commissioners are having problems with, I actually see this section as a result of some fairly deep community listening that staff has been doing throughout the BVCP update process. And that's something that's new, I think, and unique about this revision to the plan. So I mean, I absolutely understand their concerns, right? Like history is a statement of values on some level, who we are listening to, what narratives we choose to put forward. I don't think we are going to necessarily have consensus as a community on what that should be. But I think that the statement that staff has come up with here really does reflect voices and perspectives that have been left out of some of our planning histories here in Boulder, and I feel strongly about supporting that. So I am not supportive of the county commission voting to take this out.

Thank you, Claudia. Mark, I see your hand.

Yeah, thank you. Up until a few moments ago, I had read this probably once, twice, and hadn't been struck by anything that I thought was didactic, salacious, fallacious. And as we've considered it here in the moment, because for me, hearing the county commissioners reject this and stuff, for me in the moment, I think this sort of history, and it may not be perfectly accurate, but histories are always subject to different historians' views. And so as I read it again, And I think about a new generation of leaders that are coming up on planning board, younger people. you know, people that haven't lived here for their whole life. I think having this as part of the document as a primer is important. And I'm going to say something else, and that is that, you know, I came to the meeting tonight, and this will probably come up again, I came to the meeting tonight trying to be deferential to our elected bodies, to council and to the Board of County Commissioners, and to kind of take Claudia's position that she did during August. our prior deliberation was, you know, let's go along here, and unless it's super critical, I'm just going to accept it. And I hope Claudia doesn't... I'm sure I have mischaracterized that, so I apologize. Anyway, what I'm getting to is the county commissioners, I think, are overstepping here. And it kind of... bums me out and makes it harder for me on other items to be as deferential as I might like to be. And I think in this case, I would recommend that they be the ones to feel the heat of their rejection of this and that they might be more conciliatory.

Thank you, Mark. That does raise a question for me for staff of what happens if we reach impasse on this particular item?

In the past, items that have not been able to be resolved have just been left out of the plan. And historically, there was existing language that we could fall back to. So if there was a proposed change that couldn't be resolved, it would just go back to the original language. Since we don't have that luxury, given the full rewrite of the plan, I think our proposal would just be for this to be removed.

Yeah, just to add to that, it's not as obvious as in maybe previous updates that revised existing language. And I think absent, you know, many, many rounds and then impasse still existing in some detente between the groups, um, it's going to continue to cycle at that point. So we'd be looking at around three, a third round in other words. Okay. Um, we have expressed to council and did want to, uh, and this is as good opportunity as any, that if we find ourselves, cycling too many iterations we're probably going to need to come to both you and council and ask for some special meetings and i don't throw that out to be um alarmist but just the practical matter of getting into september and october with turnover of council and other things gets real problematic thank you i have one more process question so brad you might want to stay stay there

Is there any legal reason why we could not have a subcommittee? Not on this item, I think. This item is too detailed. But if there are other items where we reach impasse, could we not have a subcommittee of one member from each of the boards that disagree?

We could. And I have thought about that. I think the practical reality at this point is coming to consensus on how to pick a person, who that person is, what their charge is, what the scope is. and doing that in a practical timeline would be very, very difficult.

Okay. I'm going to reserve the right to recommend that on certain items if it seems appropriate. I think one of the things that's hampering us here is that we are not talking directly to each other. We're not in the same room. And sometimes we haven't had the luxury of listening to each other and each other's rationale. We're sort of playing telephone to a little bit. And staff is doing a great job of trying to convey to us the rationale. But it's not the same thing as sitting down at a table with somebody and saying, okay, what is... What is your concern here? And can we get to the underlying interest? And we're being a little bit positional sometimes, I think. So I'm just going to say not for this item, because I think this is far too extensive for a rewrite. But maybe for some of the other items, I might ask about that.

Yeah. And I'll just say we understand that and support that. And actually, given a different timeline for the overall comp plan update, that would have been something we probably would have tried to build in at a version of this stage. There were a lot of practical constraints and reasons to try to do it within the timeframe, not the least of which is a real bias towards moving towards action in a short timeframe by the community and yourselves and council. So it's, we recognize that that would be an ideal situation. We've been advised that we can't have four body conversations. That's not what you're talking about, talking about representatives. don't disagree that that could be a best practice. It would, again, I don't mean to overstate it, but it would be very, very hard for us to facilitate that and keep on a timeline.

Thank you. Understood. Okay. ML has a thought.

scary thoughts scary idea um so i'm wondering if it would make sense as we weigh in on um this being the first one where it's not you know everybody's approved it um before us that we uh go with an option to um approve that the approval, our approval or not approval with or without the edit. So take ourselves out of the frame and let city council and Boulder County commissioners who are the elected officials take planning board out so that if it does go to round three and four and whatever, we're not involved. So that will be good with however this lands. I'm thinking that That was one of the intents of the Boulder County Planning Commission was to say, you know, at some point, this isn't really our conversation to have. It's between the elected officials. So I would suggest that this might be one of those.

Thank you, ML. I affirm that that is an option for us. We can be one of those gray neutral squares on this item if we want to be. And I hear you suggesting we may want to do that on this item. Thank you. Okay. Other comments on this item before we go to a motion and a vote?

Yeah, I mean, so we would need to sort this out now pre-motion, but I guess I would be along with ML and I actually very much agree with Claudia and Mark. And I see a lot of merit in preserving these pages, but it seems like this might be an opportunity for planning board simply to remove themselves from the debate altogether and focus on issues that more pertain to to the planning board. And I think that that's a good faith effort towards moving towards progress in the plan.

Any other comments on this item? And when we, well, go ahead, Kurt. No. I'll just say before we go to motions, my perspective on this is that histories always reflect a cultural moment. And if you go back to old versions of the plan and you read their history sections, you can see the culture or biases or spoken or unspoken, whether we agree or not, of those versions of history. And what I'm seeing is that we do not have consensus between the city and the county on what that story should be and how much factual backing it needs to have to be able to tell that story. And so I see this as the city's story that the county has said this doesn't reflect, at least from an official perspective, the county board of commissioners does not feel that that story reflects the way that they would like to tell the story. And this is a joint document. And so I would be okay with the proposal to remove this story from the document, knowing that the city can still tell this story in other ways and put it on the city website and claim it as the city's rather than making it a joint statement with people who don't agree that it should be the joint statement. That's kind of where I'm standing. I would also be able to support a neutrality position, but I just wanted to put my thoughts out there. Other thoughts before we go to emotion.

mason i'll keep my words brief um to i agree mostly with what i'm hearing um two points of contention i suppose brief disagreement is um i wouldn't characterize it as as the county and not agreeing with the with the city because there are two county approving boards one of them did reject this um proposal so it's it's a very it's really two people that represent the county that aren't agreeing with this maybe representing you know members of their community as well but just saying and then the the neutrality argument i'm not really for it frankly because we're a part of this process for a reason we're appointed as uh to be a part of this process so i'm just not one to to take our voices out of it

Thank you, Mason. Any comments before somebody puts a motion on the table? Kurt?

I would just say that I feel like in some ways the county could be and I shouldn't be framing it that way. Those who have sent this back for review, I guess you could say, in some ways I feel like they might be doing us a favor. It's kind of like a reviewer of an academic paper who, you know, says, oh, you didn't justify this statement. And you're like, oh, come on. But then you think about it and you realize, oh, yeah, you know, that it'll make it stronger if there's real justification there. I think it would, it provides an opportunity to really back up the statements here and make it a much stronger history and one that is difficult for people to just discard and say, oh, you don't have the justification, because if there really is, you know, are citations to academic research and so on, it makes it a much more compelling story.

Thank you, Kurt. I just want to comment and say I completely agree with you, and I don't know that any additional work is going to go into this piece anytime soon, given how busy staff are. Okay, who would like to put a motion on the table? Claudia, you got your hand up first.

I'll try a motion here. I move that we reject the Board of County Commissioners condition of approval, removing pages 14 through 17 of the draft BBCP.

I second.

Motion and a second. Any more discussion? All right. Let's go to a vote. We'll start with the folks on. Oh, Claudia, do you want to speak to your motion or Mark? I have said my piece. Okay. All right. Why don't you two be the first two votes? Claudia.

Yes.

Mark?

Yes.

ML? Neutral. I don't think that you can vote neutral. You have to vote on this motion of rejecting. I don't know. Deshauna, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think neutral is an appropriate vote.

That is correct. There could be a second motion to demonstrate neutrality if so desired. But for this motion, we need to know the position on rejection.

And if someone abstains from the vote but it's present in the meeting, do we have a rule about that?

I believe it's in our rules that abstaining from a vote is recorded in the affirmative, if I remember correctly.

That is correct. So ML, would you like to vote yes or no?

So my understanding is we are voting on rejecting the Boulder County Commissioner's request to remove those pages.

Correct. So a yes vote means you want the pages to stay in, and a no vote means you agree with the commissioners to take the pages out.

Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. But I'm still confused. If, as Deshauna outlined, there could potentially be a second vote,

that that would um basically contradict this if they both were to pass then what would that mean well it would only be if it fails yeah i think i well i think mark's inclination is correct that if this vote fails then there could be a different motion made right um but i will note that the uh county planning commission did take votes and express support or not support for a particular item, but then they made a second motion that expressed their neutrality and that they approved the plan with or without the edit. So essentially you would be making a statement about the board's position on the item, but that you're essentially saying we don't need to see this again and we are leaving it to the other bodies to resolve.

Cool. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so with that in mind, on this particular motion, do you vote yes, meaning leave the history in, or do you vote no, meaning take the history out? Yes. Kurt? Yes. I'm a no. Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Okay, I think that is a six to one.

Okay, does anyone want to make a second motion, I would like to make a second motion Kurt. I moved to accept the county board of county commissioners change.

Oh oh that would contradict what we just did correct okay.

Well, he would okay. You would rather have it be a we will accept either outcome?

I think that's the second motion that we had discussed making. You're free to make the motion you just made. Okay. I accept the friendly amendment. Okay. So please restate your motion.

I move that we accept either outcome on this proposed amendment. I'll second that.

Let me ask staff, does this accomplish or do you have different language that you want us to use?

That language is slightly different than what the County Planning Commission use, but I believe that it accomplishes the same intent.

Um, the the language that the planning commission used if it's helpful is um they they moved to approve the plan with or without the proposed amendment that was the terminology they used may i revise my motion again

Oh, but it's been seconded.

It has been seconded, but this could be a friendly amendment to keep the same intent but use different language, which I think we can do. Kathleen, if you want to use Kathleen's language.

I would like to use Kathleen's language.

Kathleen, can you please?

I will write that up here. Thank you. So what I've written is I move that we approve the plan with or without the proposed amendment.

Second. Oh, wait, wait, wait. No, that was a, sorry. You're in. Kurt, would you like to restate your motion? The eighth member of planning.

I move that we approve the plan with or without the proposed amendment reference E.

ML, did you want a second?

I will second that.

Okay. I apologize for inserting myself. I was too eager. Okay. ML, let's start the vote with you. Yes. Kurt? Yes. I'm a yes. Mason?

No.

Max?

Yes.

Mark?

No.

Claudia? No. Four to three. It is approved. Okay. I think we're done with this item. And moving on to the next one, this is reference G, page 121, the future land use map. I would like to take just a brief pause here and say, is it really hot in here or is it just me? Is there anything that can be done to stop the sweating?

I know we had this problem with the different hearing. not too long ago and they've attempted to address it. I don't think we can do anything.

We did also specifically reach out to them today requesting that the AC be put on as strong as possible.

Anything staff can do to try to reduce the temperature in here. It's not because we're hot headed. It just really is the AC, the HVAC. Okay. So we are on reference G page 121, the future land use map change. This is one of the big ticket items tonight. The Board of County Commissioners conditioned their approval of the plan on changing all areas designated as neighborhood one within the area two urban edge of the future land use map to the rural land use designations as a condition of approval. They did this initially in round one. City Council modified that to say only gun barrel. it went back to the board of county commissioners today and the board of county commissioners reaffirmed their position that they believe all of their lands on the edge of the city that are in area two should be rural and not neighborhood one so with that in mind discussion from board members Mark.

I'm super reluctant to acquiesce to this, but I think I'm going to. It kind of goes against a lot of what I have thoughts about. Area 2 is Area 2. It is not Area 3. It is Area 2. And people keep wanting to apply characteristics to Area 2 that are not really appropriate. uh, one of those instances, but being a practical sort, um, I think that, uh, having many discussions about this and trying to, uh, think about and understand the practical effects as KJ and Kathleen had helped us with, helped me explain to me earlier, um, just reaffirming what I've been hearing elsewhere, um, I'm super reluctantly going to go along with this. Or I would, in this case, support a neutral position and let council battle it out with the county commission.

Thank you, Mark. Claudia?

So I find this condition challenging. incredibly vexing for a couple of reasons. The primary one, I think, is that the approach that the county commission is asking for here, first of all, it does not reflect a current reality, right? Gun barrel and most of these area two areas are not rural as we describe it. It also does not describe A potential future land use, regardless of whether we consider that desirable or not right some of these subdivisions are not going to be going back to rural land uses in any realistic future. So I don't think we should be mapping them as such. in what we intend to be a visionary document. That's what the BBC is supposed to be. I think that's not credible to do. And on some level, I think it makes a mockery of this entire exercise of long range planning. Another issue that I have with this is that I think this update to the BBCP has done so much to improve the readability and communication with the community about what we should be expecting in the future. And if we indulge in this kind of game, calling these areas rural, even though we know that's divorced from reality today and reality in the future, I think that is also corrosive to what we're trying to accomplish in a plan. Land use planning is so fraught. It's the focus of so much rumor and speculation and misunderstanding. And I think a lot of that is feeding this pressure to relabel neighborhood one as rural or to do this amendment in the first place. I think that when there is fear about unwanted change, that we have a responsibility to be clear about what the land use map is. what the lengthy process of making actual changes on the ground is, and also what the risks are of leaving land use designation essentially open to chance if and when there ever are annexations as opposed to providing guidance. Like there's risks there too. And so basically, I don't think we should be telling feel-good stories just to get this through. So I'm I'm frustrated by this. I don't see a good way forward. I understand that the Commission is very dug in. That's where I'm standing on this.

Thank you, Claudia. Other comments. Kurt?

I would just say that I would feel more comfortable about this change if there were some sort of verbiage someplace that said that when these areas, when and if these areas get annexed, the expectation is that they would not remain rural designation. They would be changed to some more appropriate designation that I think would at least help a little bit in terms of What happens in annexation?

I think Brad is going to tell us that we do have that proposal.

Yeah, I do want to just remind you that we do have the ability within the city system to create such language outside of the comprehensive plan in other annexation policies. Actually, Kathleen, could you... That would not be in the scope of this presentation.

Thank you, Brad. But I think we do have a language proposal that goes along with this that would be paired with this, that that changed to the rural designation. That was, I think, the next slide. It does talk about the expectation that they would get a new land use designation upon annexation, if I'm remembering correctly.

Yeah, it's not quite that explicit, but it does refer to annexed areas would be subject to the city processes.

Yeah. So I was thinking, you're right, it is there, but it's definitely not as explicit as I was imagining.

We could offer an edit to that to make it more explicit. And it is a little awkward because I do think these two things are paired because this language change was meant to, if the land use map change goes back to rural in Area 2, this change would be needed to square up the definition of rural. And it's worth noting that the Planning Commission, the Boulder County Planning Commission, was not comfortable with this language change because They felt that changing that within language in the first sentence weakened the rural definition, if I'm remembering correctly. In any case, the Planning Commission rejected this change.

And my understanding was that the Planning Commission did not support the previous change. And I thought that that's what you were saying, that they didn't support the previous change, and that's why they didn't support this one.

So the Planning Commission may only approve land use map changes for Area 3. So they actually don't get to take action on those land use map changes, but they expressed their discomfort with the change.

The change to Neighborhood 1.

The map change. OK. The map change.

To make it Neighborhood 1. They wanted to leave it rural.

No.

Oh, they wanted it to be neighborhood one.

They want it to remain neighborhood one.

Interesting. Okay. I got that wrong. Thank you for that correction. Okay. I don't have prepared remarks going back to the land use map change from neighborhood one to rural. I didn't write this out, but my, it's interesting because listening to some of the discussion at the planning commission, they felt very strongly that saying that it was neighborhood one was misleading. They mirrored some of the arguments that we've heard in the other direction right like folks claudia you mentioned that you thought that leaving it rural was misleading they thought that making it neighborhood one was misleading because in their estimation a lot of these areas are built out in a suburban pattern and they never want to be more urban in the way even if they were to annex that they feel they're fully built out and that that's not an appropriate pattern i will say that mirrors some of the objections that we've heard for some of the folks who are city residents who also don't see themselves necessarily in that more urban pattern that is allowed within neighborhood one, but might not be applied evenly across all neighborhood one. So what I think I'm hearing is that there's a sense that this neighborhood one definition is too broad, that we've tried to put too much under one umbrella, and that some folks don't feel represented by that. And there was a suggestion at the planning commission to have a neighborhood three or some other neighborhood definition that would encompass that more suburban pattern and not necessarily push toward a more urban growth pattern. And some of the rationale there was, well, you're trying to do compact development and infill in the area where you have resources, where you have amenities, where you have transit. And that is not these edges of the city, right? And so they felt that neighborhood one was, at least one commissioner felt that neighborhood one was inappropriate description for these like very edge areas of the city. But that, I mean, we only have two categories, right? We have neighborhood one and neighborhood two if it's urban and the city is comfortable with that. I one of my questions is, well, what if it's it just doesn't annex right, but it has a future land use definition that it will never be able to live up to. If it's not annexed right because the county doesn't do neighborhood when the county doesn't do that more more urban development. So it does feel a little confusing right that you have a land use designation that is only triggered upon annexation. But that's the only place where there's a future land use designation that's only triggered upon annexation. And it doesn't actually reflect what that land... That land has two potential futures, right? Annex or not annex. And that land use designation only describes one of those conditions. It doesn't describe what happens if that land doesn't annex, right? If it doesn't annex, it remains under county jurisdiction and it will never have that more urban pattern. I don't know, I am very befuddled about what to do about this because I completely understand the idea that folks should have an idea of what should happen when they annex. But some of those folks don't want to annex and can't see themselves annexing. So have we as a city and a county decided that their future is annexation and that they should just sort of get comfortable with that? We don't do forced annexation, right? they might not annex within the time horizon of this plan or ever. I don't know what I'm, I don't think I have a proposal based on that, but I wanted to put that thought out there. Other thoughts or discussion?

Yeah, I'll chime in. Um, And I followed along with a lot of what you were saying as well about the kind of what I'm starting to think of is neighborhood one fear mongering, quite frankly, and some of the concerns around community members that are like, hey, we're in neighborhood one, but that doesn't accurately depict my neighborhood. And I'm going to really wholeheartedly agree with Claudia that we're talking about areas where with whole apartment complexes on them, or like duplexes, and something Mark said previously, that even, you know, what we think of as a historic quaint neighborhood of Mapleton Hill has quadplexes on it. And I am worried that if we kind of play into this false narrative, that we're losing the plot of the actual plan, which is that Beautiful neighborhoods are not exclusively spread out single family homes. And if anything, that is going to be what causes the kind of suburban sprawl that we all seem to be. as a community, what we've learned people are against is suburban sprawl. We're looking for 15 minute neighborhoods. And that was across the board through a large amount of community outreach. And I'm just worried that a small amount of community members that this isn't even going to affect are becoming outraged as if we allow neighborhood one within a week, it's going to look like Manhattan. And I think that that's not really the case. That's not really the reality. And that we have struggled a lot with a city to open up doors to pragmatic development and this is a step in that direction and kind of playing along with this fear mongering may be a step backwards that being said I do also understand the point that if these lands aren't annexed that it's not necessarily it doesn't make a difference for them to be rural but I am concerned with the image itself of playing along with this narrative

I just want to respond to that and say, since I don't see anybody else champing at the bit to speak, you know, I get what you're saying too. And I like to me, I think it comes down to not every area of neighborhood one is going to be the most dense version of neighborhood one. And not every area of neighborhood one is going to be the least dense version. And people can't, can't see where they fit within that. Um, so I, I don't know if that's fear mongering so much as, as just, um, there's a category that's very broad and, and people want to make, to understand where they fit within that. Right. And understanding that what is possible is not necessarily going to be the outcome. I don't know if that makes sense, but all right. If we were, couple of months ago I probably would recommend that we think about having another category just to make it clear where are we trying to concentrate urban development and where are the areas that will be urban but a little less urban and maybe neighborhood one and maybe neighborhood two is not fine-grained enough of a tool but we're not there so any other discussion before somebody puts a motion on the table or does staff have something to say I see staff conferring No? Okay.

Any other discussion?

Yeah, I'll just say that, again, I would... potentially be supportive of allowing for or accepting the county commissioner's proposed change, but also changing the terminology in that next one, which somehow I can't find in my notes that we discussed that would clarify that upon annexation, those areas would be expected to change from rural to some other designation.

Do you want to express that as emotion? I do see that Mark has a hand up. Do you want to speak before Kurt potentially makes a motion?

Well, all I was going to do was urge Kurt to, um, Timing wise to make his edits that we don't have to do this in the order that it was presented. But if Kurt made his edits first to the portion he's referring to now, that would certainly help me. Curt Brown, With the with with supporting with acquiescing to the county commissioners position, so if we go i'm i'm without having it on the screen here I don't remember the letter number letter reference number, but I get what you're saying Kurt and I would encourage you to make. that proposed changes emotion first, and then come back to the other one. Is that does that make? Am I making sense there?

Yeah, that I think that that's a great idea of Mark. So thank you very much for that suggestion. So I would move to accept Oh, we lost that. i would move to accept the uh proposed amendment to whatever we don't have a reference number for this but page 118 to accept the county commissioner's language here with the amendment that the the red sentence at the end of the first paragraph would the red portion would read except that upon annexation any annexed areas would be expected to change from the rural land use to a more appropriate land use designation And would be subject to city processes, zoning and policies. Can you repeat that last part?

City processes and?

City processes, zoning and policies, which is the language that's already in there.

Yeah, just finishing the sentence there.

Yeah, right.

Any friendly amendments?

Yeah, maybe just a friendly amendment from expected to change from the rural land use. Maybe just say would be expected to update to the most appropriate land use. That way it doesn't sound like we're forcing the hand of a rural out of a rural. Does that make sense? So instead of has to change, it's essentially... Any annex there would be expected to update to the most appropriate land use designation.

Could we just say, and I'm just kicking around ideas here, would be expected to change to a city land use designation because rural does not apply in the city?

Yeah, I think that's a great idea.

Would be expected to update to a city land use designation.

Is that true that we're not allowed to have rural within the city? I mean, I know we currently don't, but...

Correct. The way the definition is currently written, rural lands cannot be applied in Area 1. Okay. Can only be applied in Area 2 and 3.

And that sounds great, what Laura said.

I do want to make an administrative observation that I wonder if the word urban as opposed to city is the word you're looking for.

I kind of like city just because it's the city of Boulder. And when you say urban, I think it gets into some of that fear mongering. Like what is an urban land use designation?

Oh, it's really the only reason I bring that up is city land use designation is an undefined term. Whereas urban land use designations are all those things that aren't rural.

Is that defined in the plan?

Um, not explicitly, but yeah, by implication, I would agree. Yes.

Well, I'll leave it up to Kurt. Do you want city or do you want urban?

Is there any value in using non rural?

Yeah, I was actually thinking that, um, Sure. I'm happy with that. Yeah, right. So let me make this again. I move to accept the proposed amendment to page 118 with the amendment that the red sentence would read, except that upon annexation, any annexed areas would be expected... to update to a non-rural land use designation and would be subject to city processes, zoning, and policies.

Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Any discussion? If none, we'll move to a vote. I would like to speak to the motion. Mason can speak to the motion.

yeah so i think this is an improvement on this language regardless of how the vote on the next item goes um so that's it and just a clarification would this change apply if the other motion

if the area two areas go back to neighborhood one and do not remain rural? Is this only a change that we need if those areas go back to rural?

This recommendation is conditional on the land use map change being accepted.

The land use map changed to go back to rural in area two. Okay. So if that fails, if that stays neighborhood one, then this does not apply because this is conditional upon those lands being rural. Okay, Max.

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, though. I mean, it's already true, as we've said, that we don't have rural lands within the city on annexation. So it's almost redundant to even have this in there. I mean, it's clarifying as it is. But I don't think that we need to. I agree with Mason. It's nice language. But I think just putting it alongside of the map change is helpful. But at some point, it's more symbolic than anything.

I do want to make a practical staff observation about that along those lines is adding language means we're going to make one more round with everybody, not adding language would allow us to not do that.

Understood. Thank you. Okay. So we have a motion and a second. Any more discussion? All right, we will go to a vote. We'll start with ML. You're voting on the proposal to amend this language as Kurt has described. Mason was.

Great, thank you.

Yes. Kurt. Yes. I'm a yes. Mason. Yes. Max.

Yeah.

Claudia. Yes. Mark. Yes. unanimous great thank you and thank you for that suggestion to do this one first mark okay we'll go back to the land use map change all right so given that we have that change to the language which is conditional upon this one it would accompany this if it goes back to rural any further discussion before we put a motion on the table mason

Just real briefly, going back to what Claudia had said, just to make sure it's fresh in everyone's mind, you know, this is divorced from reality and somewhat destructive to the process and our trust with the community. So I will not be supporting it.

Thank you, Mason. We don't actually have a motion on that. The motion could be to either accept or to reject, but yeah.

It's obviously to accept.

Okay. Okay. Yes, Max.

I have a question. This might be for Steph. Would it actually be every shred of neighborhood one would no longer be in the county if this happened?

Yes, correct. But under the proposal, all Neighborhood 1 that is applied in the county would change to rural.

So I noticed earlier in the industrial updates and all of that discussion that the county was not participating in that. If we allow this, will the county be removed from participation on Neighborhood 1?

Um... They will still participate in, they would still participate in the review up until the point at which this plan is approved. If there were future amendments at the midterm update or the next major update, unless Neighborhood 1 is applied in the county, then no, I don't think they would have any authority over that land use designation.

That seems like a good compromise moving forward to me. You know, if there's this much back and forth about it, I mean, I don't love, I cannot second enough. I agree that this is divorced with reality, but if this is causing such a schism in the way that we can move forward with this and we can just say, okay, the county can have rural lands and in turn, Please stop adjusting the neighborhood one definitions. That seems like a good way for us to move forward.

Thank you, Max. If folks will let me have the floor, I don't love this either. My initial thought was folks who are going to annex need to know what they can expect when they annex, and it's a bit of a fiction for folks. Maybe they'll be confused and think that they can stay rural. But I do think that the change that we just made helps make more clear that that is not the case. And as much as I don't love this, I think the commissioners have considered it twice. And this is land in their jurisdiction. This is not city land we're talking about. Area 2 is unincorporated county up until the moment that it annexes. And so I do not feel comfortable trying to overrule the Board of County Commissioners on how the land use map looks in the unincorporated county. So I would support the Board of County Commissioners having authority over that. Any other discussion before we put a motion on the table? Mark has a hand up.

My only question is, is, is should our motion incorporate Max's thoughts so that we approval of the, of And since we just incurred another round, it's my understanding we just incurred another round of approvals here by making the language change we did on the prior item. So I think we might feel freer to have another round to make a language change or condition here uh i know this is not you know a site review or something but the motion could incorporate the fact that uh the county no longer has um input into uh neighborhood one definitions or the county no longer has any authority in any neighborhood one area

So I have two thoughts about this. One is I just want to hearken to some of the discussion that was had at the county commissioner's meeting today, which is that the county does put resources into the city in terms of housing programs in terms of transportation and transit money, funds, and they have an interest in having development concentrated in the city in various ways. And so what development looks like within the city is something that they have a financial interest in, in terms of their investments in transportation infrastructure, especially if I understood some of those comments. So I wanted to put that out there. But also, I think I heard staff saying that in terms of how they are reviewing the plan, they do think that if there's no neighborhood one in the county, then it would not be a city county thing to comment on. Did I hear that correctly?

Only after this initial approval, because we've approached the plan as an entire rewrite, we're allowing for some additional sort of grace in terms of who is reviewing what, you know, technically under the IGA procedures. The county only weighs in on policies that reference the county and then changes in area two or an area three. But again, given that this is a full rewrite, we're asking all four bodies to weigh in on all of the introductory language, all of the relevant policies, but then also all of the new land use framework. So it would really only be in future updates that we would probably scrutinize that a little bit more carefully as to who is reviewing the land use designations if they don't apply in certain jurisdictions.

Okay, so not for this update, no matter how many rounds it takes. But like once this is closed, and then there's a new mid year, midterm update, that's when it would kick in.

Then I think we would look more closely at if, you know, if there's a land use designation, even like industrial or I'm trying to think of a couple others. But anyway, yes, if there were other land use designations that only applied in the city, there's not a strong rationale why we would ask for county review of those items in the future.

Okay, thank you. Understanding that sometimes the county has disagreed with staff's interpretation of what they can and can't weigh in on.

But yeah, Kurt. I have a question for staff. You heard Mark's suggestion of this clarification. Would, what was my question?

Oh my God, getting late.

My question was, I think, would that actually be necessary? Would it make a difference? Or would it just re-emphasize what you sort of already said?

Yeah, I am not... Well, I would say, to be honest, I don't know if we can, with really clear authority, say that they would not have review over Neighborhood 1 in the future. We would have to really go back and look at the IGA and the amendment procedures, which we will actually be looking at those amendment procedures later next year and updating those between the county commissioners and city council. So we would need to do some more homework to really determine that. And I don't think a statement or a condition that is attached to your motion related to this item would really have much practical effect. Because the IGA is ultimately what determines who reviews what and what those amendment procedures look like.

And I'll just say from my part, that feels like overstepping for us as a planning board to try to determine what the county can and cannot weigh in on. I feel like that's not our call to make. Okay, that's, I mean, I'm one of seven. All right, I would like to move this along to a motion if somebody is ready to make one, and we can always discuss that motion further. Is someone ready to make a motion?

I make a motion that we accept the recommendation by the county reference number, I mean, reference G.

Max, would you like to speak to your motion? As the motion maker, that is your right.

I think to Laura's point that this is county land. And if this is what they wish, then so be it. And we can hope that they are as respectful over the things that fall under our purview.

Thank you, Max. Kurt, would you like to speak as the seconder?

Yeah, as everyone has expressed, this is a very frustrating topic. But I do feel that we need to move the process along. And if heels are going to be dug in, then somebody has to adjust. And I feel like the concerns that were expressed are completely valid. But at the same time, from a practical matter, it feels to me like it doesn't make an enormous difference because really the change is going to happen upon annexation. And so I am grudgingly supportive of this.

I want to make a comment, but anybody else want to make a comment before me? Don't see any other hands up. I'll just say, I think that neither solution is ideal. Rural doesn't exactly fit for these lands and neighborhood one, the county board of commissioners doesn't feel fits. And so that to me says this probably should get more conversation in our next update. So I think for me, acquiescing to the county for this, stage is probably the right decision. I will support it. And I would encourage staff to earmark this as something that caused quite a bit of consternation and probably could take another look in the next update. Okay. Any other discussion? All right, let's vote. I'm going to start to my right. ML. Yes. Kurt. Yes. I'm a yes. Mason. No. Max.

Yeah.

Mark.

Yes.

Claudia. No. That is five to two. That passes. All right. I apologize, but I am in dire need of another break. So can we do a shorter break? Seven minutes. Come back at 850. Okay. Thank you. 850. We'll be back. Sorry, Claudia. I'm so sorry. I'm drinking too much water. Okay, are we live again? It is 8.50 and we are reconvening. And 87 degrees, as Kurt says, it's quite warm in here. Okay, Claudia, you don't miss that. All right, Kathleen, what's next for us?

Okay, I will share my screen. Okay.

Here you go. Thank you so much, Kathleen. So we are now at, these are the policies that we recommended as conditions of approval, that we approved as conditions of approval. All right, so... Reference number H, page 70, policy 82, housing diversity and supply. There are a couple of changes in here. And this looks like the version that the county approved. And I thought we were going to go back to the original version that we proposed. Is that so?

Yes. Let's go. Yes. That is the version that you put forward. Okay.

All right, and that is because, remind us, the one that was just up on the screen, who rejected that one?

Yeah, so yeah, if you want to flip to the next screen. So the sequence of events was that the Board of County Commissioners technically rejected your condition, and then they proposed their own, which was very similar to your original condition, except that they used the term prioritizing, and they also added the county to this policy. um upon further discussion today they ultimately voted to remove the reference to the county so they are this is now a city-only policy and then they also voted to remain neutral on any remaining edits so essentially the county has now removed themselves from from consideration of this particular policy so that's why we're proposing that we are back now really to um a decision for you on your original uh condition as to whether or not the board wishes to amend that rescind that or um maintain that condition based on uh city council's um did not support either your or the county's language so city council did not support either version that's correct okay could we flip to our version

And could you remind us why Council, in particular, did not support this? Let's see.

In particular, Council... really was, I think, reflective on the level of just careful vetting and wording of this policy as it was developed by staff and in reflection to community member input. Their concern about the county's version was really that term prioritizing. And I think we had a discussion about that during your previous meeting. So that's why you use the term as well as to indicate a preference or a bias towards middle income, but not necessarily prioritizing to the, you know, detraction of other types of housing. So I think it was council's, you know, council's discussion really was just around kind of maintaining that original language.

Okay. So this is now just between us and city council. This is no longer, the other two bodies have been removed. That's correct. It is just a city only policy. Yes. And so the question is, how strongly do we feel about changing a full spectrum to just be more affordable and changing including to as well as? And how much do we want to arm Russell with city council about this? And either, and I'm not trying to be too flip and indicate a preference there. I certainly don't feel too strongly about it, but I would like to see what other board members feel. Kurt.

Well, I think I was the one who initially brought this forward and I still feel strongly about it. I think some of the communication around this has not completely expressed my, at least, intent. And part of the problem is that I was never able to come up with what I would consider the ideal wording for this, but my primary objection was to this terminology, the full spectrum of housing types, because, as I said before, to me, that implies including up to the 10,000 square foot 15,000 square foot mansion right and and the the port of county commissioners to their credit today did pick up on that and they had the same concern that that is not a housing type that we should be promoting and so that was my concern about the full spectrum language And I intentionally said, framed it as not affordable housing types, but more affordable housing types. And I think sometimes in the communication, it sounded like, oh, this is planning board trying to create more affordable housing, capital A, capital H. And that was certainly not my intent. It was just to focus on all the housing types up to but not including the highest end. The super large, super expensive, super unsustainable housing types. So that was my intent. I still feel that it's a worthwhile thing to change because I don't want policies that are saying, yeah, you know, of course we also want the giant seven million dollar houses because that's the full spectrum I feel like we are not only well supplied but we're over supplied with that kind of housing type it is it takes a tremendous amount of land it takes tremendous amount of resources and it moves us backwards in terms of affordable housing of housing affordability, I should say. And so I still feel strongly that this terminology, this wording should change here. So I will be proposing reinstating this.

Claudia.

So I Absolutely agree with Kurt on the issues at the upper end of the housing market and it being problematic, potentially being perceived as promoting that. However, what I see happening in this debate reflected first in city council's discussion and rejection of this and the county commissioner's initial counter proposal, even though they've withdrawn that now, is that we really don't have consensus beyond maybe this board on what we should be prioritizing. Like, should that be price points? Should it be building typologies? There's just a lot of A lot of diverse opinions on where the focus should be as we seek to expand the housing supply and then so small tweaks in wording like Kurt is suggesting here really change the different coalitions of support for this particular policy. I am in favor of keeping staff's original language, which I think is their best distillation of community process and where we can find consensus. And I would also say, in addition to that, I think the key language in this policy is actually in the second half of it. which talks about housing being throughout the city. It enables people to remain in and join the community as their needs, incomes, and household compositions change over time. And I think that key section, we're not talking about amending that because I think there's real agreement there on the intent. That language describes the what and the why of this policy and less the how. And I think that is the level at which we're trying to get this plan to operate. So I'm going to stick with supporting the original language as I did in our first round of discussion. Thank you, Claudia.

Mark.

So I keep, tonight is one of those nights where it's like, Kurt speaks and I agree with him and then Claudia speaks and I agree with her. It's been a rough go. But since Kurt has said that he will be moving to reintroduce his changes, I've been looking at, I listened to him and his acknowledgement of the struggle around certain words, affordable housing, little a, little h, versus the capital, et cetera. I would just put this out there, that the troublesome words, beginning with promoting, if we just said promoting housing types that are more affordable, such as middle housing and middle income opportunities, dot, dot, dot, and it carries on, and I agree with Claudia, that the real need of that is in that second part of that. But if we say housing types that are more affordable versus affordable, more affordable housing, it might clarify what our actual intent is.

Thank you, Mark. I know that you might be able to accomplish the same thing with a hyphen more affordable more hyphen affordable housing types, so that it can't be misread as additional affordable housing but it's housing that is more hyphen affordable but but mark I think your rewrite looks is good too, and maybe it's clearer than that any other comments. I'll just say I was not bothered by the original language when I read it. I don't think anybody in the city of Boulder is going out and promoting that we need more $14 million mansions, right? And so when I see promoting a full spectrum, I hear that as filling in the spectrum where we are missing things, right? Because the spectrum is not full and it needs to be filled in in certain spots. So I was not bothered by the original language. So for me, this isn't necessarily worth trying to send it back. But I do respect where you're coming from, Kurt, and I do think that Mark's potential edit there makes it more understandable and maybe more palatable. So I'll leave it there. And I will leave it to board members for any last comments, and then we'll get a motion. Mason?

Not to throw a third option out there, but I do have a problem with the full spectrum wording here because, you know, I don't, I don't support the full spectrum. I'm not sure if the board does or the council or anybody, any of the other bodies. But I wonder if it. if this just said the city supports increasing the housing supply throughout the city that enables people to remain and just cut out that whole middle section and leave it to the part that actually has the business would make more sense.

Thank you, Mason.

Max? Just to remind everybody, it On the first meeting, I think I said at the risk of becoming too pedantic, which I do think that this is, and I do think that there is a world where we leave it the way staff wrote it, and it works as intended. I think we're really trying to mitigate bad faith interpretations. But it is worth remembering that I think that this was also a direct recommendation from HAB for this policy. This is like the thing that they did their whole write-up on that they wanted explicit information goals towards middle and affordable housing and increased housing stock. So just throwing that into the mix too. As the HABS liaison on planning board, I feel obligated to mention it.

This is why it is so useful to have you as the liaison, Max. Thank you for serving in that role. Thank you. Okay. Who would like to put a motion on the table?

Laura, I actually had a question for Max quickly, just so that I understand what HAB's intent was. I've lost track of that thread. Max, was HAB's intent or support behind staff's original language, or was HAB supporting this proposed amendment that we ended up adopting?

I think this actually goes back Prior to our meeting, that HAB's contribution to the BVCP was a desire for explicit language that reflected a desire for more housing and in the interest of affordability. They just wanted that as a value that we all share.

Okay, so do you know or is it your understanding that the original policy 82 reflected that or did they seek an amendment such as we proposed?

When I spoke with them about this policy at the latest HAB meeting, it does not seem that any of them, so to speak, were as lost in the sauce as we seem to be about the actual wording.

Thank you very much. I also have emotion then if folks would like to entertain emotion.

Well, we have two people who would like to make emotion. Kurt, I think you were the first person to propose making emotion. Do you want to make your motion or let Claudia make her motion?

I would like to make my motion, and then I'm sure we'll get one from Claudia. So I appreciated Mark's suggestion, and I think that that is a positive change. um so i would like to propose uh a version of this that's similar uh but that reads the city supports increasing one second kurt kathleen do you want to copy over what's there into the motion box and then you can edit that rather than trying to retype it i just want to give you that opportunity Okay, so back to Kurt. So I move the to change policy 82. To read the city supports increasing the house housing supply by promoting housing types and price points that are more affordable. Including middle housing and middle income opportunities throughout the city that enabled people to remain in and join the community as their needs, incomes and household compositions change over time.

I'll second that. If you're ready for me to second, I'll second it.

Curt Brown, I am ready for a second.

Karen Hollweg, Okay, any friendly amendments on the wording before we ask for comments. Karen Hollweg, Seeing none. Curt, would you like to speak to your motion.

No, I think that Mark's wording is great. It better captures what I was going for initially. And I think that it's definitely a positive to get rid of this. Even though I understand the idea behind the full spectrum terminology, it still just bothers me that it is not literally what we want. And so I think that this better captures what sense of the city, what sense of the board, what sense of the city is So that's why I'm proposing this.

Thank you, Kurt. Mark, would you like to speak as the second? No. All right. Any other discussion?

I think that this would be HAB approved.

Okay. We have the HAB liaison giving us an opinion about what HAB would approve that we appreciate. We appreciate your perspective on that. Okay. ML has a question.

So given that we've got new language for council to look at and the Boulder County Commissioners, what was their objection to it? I mean, is this going to pass muster with them? I'm wondering.

The county is no longer going to be reviewing this.

They took themselves out.

Yep. So it'll just be going to council on Thursday, Thursday night.

And council liked the original language. Is that correct?

Council preferred the original staff draft. Yes.

Right. Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Ready to vote. Let's vote. Max.

Yes.

Mason.

Yep.

I'm a yes. Kurt. Yes. ML. We're going to skip ML and come back to you. Mark.

Yes.

Claudia? No. ML?

Yeah, I think I'm going to be a no as well.

Okay, that's a five to two. Okay, five to two. That one passes. Moving on. Although, hang on one second.

I think Claudia might have had a motion.

Claudia? Well, my motion was to essentially remove this as a condition for approval, right? So that is the action that was requested that we reconsider if this is required for approval.

So we could accomplish that by using that language that the planning commission used. Kathleen, do you want to, if you want to make that motion, Claudia, I would suggest that you use that neutrality language that we would be acceptable with either outcome, basically leaving it in city council's hands.

Okay. Could we get that language up on the screen for me, please? Okay, so I move that we approve the draft BVCP with or without the changes to policy 82.

Second.

Any discussion? This basically says whatever council decides, we will go along with it, but this is our preferred version. Okay, let's start the vote. Unless Claudia, would you like to speak to it? No, thank you. Max, would you like to speak?

Yeah, I guess I'll just say again, I think that what we've written is better, but it is not important enough for us to draw a line in the sand over.

Thank you, Max. Okay, I'm going to start the vote with the online folks, Mark. We still have Mark. Oh, looks like we lost Mark. Did Mark have technical problems?

No. Mark, you're back. I'm sorry. I had to leave for a moment.

Okay. Mark, we are voting on a second motion, which is that we would basically make this optional for city council. They can either go with our language or go with the original language. So we are moving to approve the draft plan with or without the changes we just made to this policy.

Yeah.

No.

Mark is a no. Claudia?

Yes.

Max?

Yes.

Mason?

No. No.

I'm a yes. Kurt. No. And ML. Yes. I think I helped me with that. I think that was four to three, four to three. So does it pass or it fails? Pass. Okay. Thank you. This passes four to three. Okay. Moving on. I think we're, we're coming, we're coming closer to the end. We have a couple more at least. All right. All right. Okay. Everybody. Buckle up. We can skip this one. No, no, no. I want to honor everybody. So reference B, page 69, policy 79. So this is the changes that were made to the airport policy. The version that we're seeing here is the version that we approved and that the Board of County Commissioners approved initially, but I believe there were additional edits made today by the Board of County Commissioners. Okay, so Kathleen, is this the version that we're considering now?

So, Deshauna, I believe you, would you rescind, move to remove this condition and then consider the new condition if you wanted to include this language?

Yes. Though rescission is not required, the board could vote to maintain, of course. And so as a threshold matter, the first question would be addressing planning board's original condition language and whether it should be retained, modified, or rescinded, probably retained or rescinded in this regard.

Okay, so it sounds like we have a bundle of options. One option is that we could stick with the language that we have here that was our original condition of approval, which is the plan that we have approved looks like this. The second option is that we could rescind this condition of approval, and then we could look at the county's version and whether we want to support that either as a condition or as a recommendation. And then we also have the version to do our own version, a new version. So we have a lot of options. And the main change that the county made was that they struck the language that we had added about, could you go back to that other one? The city will coordinate with the county to understand and address inequitable impacts of airport operations on the population that lives, works, plays, and goes to school in proximity to the facility. They struck that sentence altogether. And then for the last sentence, they reverted it back to the original version so that it just read the city will coordinate with the county to provide consistent regulations addressing noise and other airport influences where possible. And they took out the piece about providing education and outreach to residents most impacted by aviation lead. So again, we can choose to reaffirm what we did, we can rescind what we did, and then potentially either approve the original version that staff did, approve the county's version, or do our own version. Discussion or questions? Kurt? Oh, Mark has a hand up.

Yeah, just a point of order. I don't think any action in the affirmative requires us to rescind. What I heard Deshauna say and what I think is that we do not need to rescind anything. We could say we adopt our old version, we adopt the county's version, or we have some other version, but none of that requires rescission of what we adopted originally.

I'm not sure that that's exactly true. I think that if we don't want to reaffirm what we approved the first time, which is the plan that we approved, we would need to have something else in its place, which means rescinding the condition that we put on the plan, that the plan can only be adopted with this particular version of the language, and then we could adopt something else.

Well, so for instance, today, did the Board of County Commissioners, prior to drafting their newly approved policy, did they rescind their approval of our prior policy that they had approved also?

I think you're correct, Mark, that they did not officially do that.

So, yeah, I don't think any affirmative action In this particular cycle, and again, this is for Deshauna or staff, but I don't think it requires us to rescind anything. If we have an affirmative action of four or more adopting some version, then we adopt that version.

I think it's a little pedantic, but I will defer to legal counsel on what we need to do.

An affirmative stance of revision is only legally necessary if the board would like to disengage with Policy 79 as a condition of approval generally. If the board wishes to adopt a different version of Policy 79 as a condition, it can do so with a separate motion without getting into the weeds of rescission. But rescission is a threshold question as far as Policy 79 generally, but I appreciate the question mark and the clarification. If you wanted to adopt another version, you could just make that motion and not have to deal with rescission as a general matter.

If we wanted to keep it as a condition of approval.

Correct. But if you would no longer want this to be a condition of approval, you would need to take an affirmative stance to rescind your prior condition. Okay. That is a very helpful clarification.

Thank you.

We are well advised.

Thank you, Deshaun. Okay. Discussion about preferences with what to do with this policy. Kurt. Kurt.

Well, I'm not an expert on this particular topic, but I did think that the Board of County Commissioners conversation about this was was helpful because my takeaway was that their objection to the sentences that they struck was that they were more operational. And this entire policy from the beginning has stood out. It hasn't been consistent with the rest of the policies pretty much in the entire draft. which are very high level and abstract in this has felt all the way along very operational and I feel like that is part of the where some of the contention came from so I think that that's a little unfortunate from the beginning but they were feeling that the last the sentences at the end that they took out or the verbiage was particularly operational and I agree with that on rereading and so I would be I would be okay with sticking with the version that we approved that's here, but I would probably be more supportive. I would be more supportive of the version that the county commissioner has approved that strikes this language at the end.

Thank you, Kurt. Mark, you have your hand up.

yes i just want to see uh scroll up a page so that we can see the uh what the county commission approved today and as i look at this and and i i was reading it earlier before it scrolled off um yeah i i uh i concur with kurt and i'm especially in favor given the subject given the topic given the controversy that brevity and reduction here actually is a benefit to everyone. And so as I read this, I am also in favor of this briefer county version that they adopted today.

Thank you, Mark. Other commentary? I will just note that the sentences that were struck, I agree that they're more operational than the rest of the plan. You know, to me, those were the sentences that spoke the most to equity and to the city's obligation to address the negative impacts that any airport has. This is not unique to the city of Boulder. airports create impacts on surrounding neighborhoods. And so I am disappointed that it was controversial to talk about equity and addressing impacts in that way. But the sentence does talk about promoting or the policy does talk about promoting electric aircraft. It does talk about working in partnership to offer unleaded fuel and It does talk about noise abatement procedures, so I would also be okay with going with the county's version. I think it's an acceptable compromise, and I don't see anything particularly controversial about this policy. I do think that there is one... omission here that we should probably add in, even understanding that we should correct it, I think, even though that would send it back to the Board of County Commissioners. I would add the word voluntary in front of noise abatement. Voluntary noise abatement procedures because there was some concern that that this policy could be seen to violate ANCA, which is the Airport Noise and Capacity Act, I think is what it stands for, which basically says that noise abatement needs to be voluntary. So we do have a voluntary noise abatement procedure. It's already part of our procedures. It's on the website. It is, I think, required by CDOT in order for us to get future grants. We have to have those voluntary noise abatement procedures. So I don't think it's controversial that we have voluntary noise abatement procedures, but the omission of that word voluntary could be controversial. So I'm going to suggest putting that back in. Yes.

Just one quick question. Is it really necessary if it's, if it would be illegal to require noise abatement, do we need to say that it's going to be voluntary? I mean, that was one of the objections.

That's one of the objections that was raised in city council meeting was that this could be seen as illegal if it doesn't have that word in it. So I would suggest putting that word in it. Well, they didn't, they didn't suggest that word. They just, wanted to reject our changes. But I think that adding that word removes any possibility of arguing that this could be illegal. Mark.

I'm ready to make a motion unless I'm not trying to cut off commentary, but I'm ready to make a motion.

That is your right as a board member. Mark, please make your motion.

I move to adopt Policy 79, as amended by the Board of County Commissioners and referenced in, I think it was B or D. Anyway, yeah. Reference B.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

May I offer the friendly amendment of including that word voluntary in front of noise abatement?

I'm going to reject that. As a motion maker, I'm going to reject it. I concur with Kurt that the federal government is like to say government is not shy about making it known, regardless of what our policy says, what they think and what they're ready to enforce or not enforce. And so to avoid an additional round of discussion about something that is essentially moot because it is federal law and supersedes any municipal law, I'm not going to subject this to another round for the word voluntary.

i just ask a clarification if we add this word voluntary does it take us to another round i thought we already had another round with the county commissioners no matter what uh we are going to be going back to the county commissioners but it is one more item to bring to them it would be it would be another item but i think it would be a fairly easy item i'm just concerned that that would um be a reason for city council in particular to reject this policy if we don't include that word. That's my strong concern.

I will let council, my view is I'll let council subject us to another round or another item. And that if planning board has adopted it and the board of county commissioners has adopted it, anyway, the burden is on council then to subject us all to that. So I appreciate your input, but I'm going to I'm going to move. Keep my motion as it stands.

OK, thank you, Mark.

It's open for discussion.

OK, open for discussion.

Yeah, I would. I just want to agree with Mark that I think that. solidarity in the county in what is quite frankly a very controversial issue is going to help us in moving it forward and you know if it does come to the word voluntary that'll be what it comes to but for now i think just creating a united front and then one less opportunity for it to be muddled with again you know being able to say hey we've come back with a compromise i think will make it a little bit smoother

Thank you, Max. Other discussion? Okay. Seeing no hands, are we ready to vote? Or I don't know. Mark, did you want to speak to the motion? No. Kurt, did you want to speak as the second? Oh, sorry. ML, did you want to speak as the second? Okay. We're going to vote. Let's start with Max.

Yes.

Mason? Yes. I'm a yes. Kurt? Yes. ML? Yes. Mark?

Yes.

Claudia? Yes. Yes. That is unanimous. Thank you. All right. Does anybody want to make a second motion about this one?

Is there a need to clarify that this is a condition of our approval of the plan still?

I think it remains a condition unless we change it as per what Tashauna advised us. Is that true, Tashauna?

Yes. Essentially, Planning Board has maintained its position. It's a condition of approval. It's just moved to change the language to align with the county commissioners.

Okay. So noted. I think we have one more to go. Is that right? Just one more.

We will move to the recommended amendments. There's a handful of those.

Oh, yes. I forgot about those. Okay. I got over eager. I'm sorry, folks. I'm sorry. Okay. All right. Okay. The recommended amendments. And so these are not conditions. And so it's just up to us whether we concur or not. And if we do not concur, then these get killed dead in the water. Okay.

I move to approve reference 13 on page 63.

We have a motion on the floor. And second. Yes. Okay. We have a motion. We have a second. Any discussion? Seeing none. Mark.

Yes.

Claudia. Yes. ML. Yes. Kurt. Yes. I'm a yes. Mason. Yes. Max. Yes. We're done. Thank you. That was the fastest one ever. Right. I want to high five you, Kurt. Okay. All right. Reference 15, page 69, policy 16. This is for out of city utility service and board of county commissioners proposed adding the sentence, in any case, the city may provide limited utility services where there are health and safety issues. This has been approved by both the board of county commissioners and council. Anybody want to discuss before we put a motion on the floor?

No.

Who wants to put a motion on the floor?

I'll make a motion to accept reference 15.

Second.

All right. Motion to approve reference 15 has been seconded. Do you folks want to speak to your motion? Nope. Nope. Any discussion? Nope. Nope. All right. We'll start with ML. Yes. Kurt. Yes. I'm a yes. Mason. Yes. Max. Yes. Mark. Yes. Claudia. Yes. Done. Unanimous. Okay, this is County Planning Commission recommended amendments. This one went back and forth a little bit. The County Planning Commission initially changed this to say this is to add another bullet point under the description of the future land use in the rural class land use goals. They had that sentence at the top there, enable economic livelihood based on natural resource management and land stewardship. As Kathleen said, and I'll remind us, the Board of County Commissioners had a concern that this could be used to justify resource extraction like gravel mining. And so they proposed the amendment or the rewrite below, support economic livelihoods that are based on the land and that are consistent with responsible land stewardship and environmental sustainability. That is what the Board of County Commissioners rewrote it to today. Any discussion or questions? Seeing none, would someone like to make a motion?

Mark? I move to adopt reference item 14, page 116, Second.

That was Kurt seconding. You didn't have your mic on, Kurt, but we heard you. Second. Kurt seconded. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Mark and Kurt, would you like to speak to the motion?

No.

Any discussion or questions? Okay. We're going to vote. We're going to start with Max.

Yes.

Mason. Yes. I'm a yes. Kurt. Yes. ML. Yes. Mark. Yes. Claudia.

Yes.

We're done. Unanimous.

I would like to make a second motion on this one.

Second motion.

Can we pull up that language that says we don't want to be a part of this?

The neutrality language? Yeah.

One thing I will just mention is that if this is declined or not supported by any other body, it will just fall off the list. So it wouldn't come back to you. Oh, okay.

Because it's recommended. Because it's just a recommended amendment.

Right. Okay.

So we don't need to do that. Okay. But I appreciate the sentiment, Mason. We remove ourselves from... We have removed ourselves from further consideration one way or the other, or both ways. Doubly. Oh, now I've got Blondie in my head. One way or another. Okay, next. Reference 16, page 36, the future of housing. And this is one of our, this was us originally. So why do we have to re-approve it? Oh, the near transit, near transit. So board of county commissioners, I think. No, no, it was city council. City council added those two words. near transit modifying multi-use buildings in areas like neighborhood one. So they're basically trying to say that multi-unit buildings in areas like neighborhood one would be approved near transit discussion.

Um, I think we should do this quickly, but, um, it's worth noting that it's not exclusive. It's just a good example. Um, Like the list does not prohibit multi-unit buildings away from transit. It just provides a good example of when it's a good practice. So I think for that reason, it's unobjectionable.

Okay, and I see staff nodding along. Is that the way that you would interpret this as a non-exclusive example, or would you interpret this as guidance that multi-unit buildings should be near transit?

No, Max is right. So partly this section is in some of that introductory context language in the future of housing, so it's not a policy. It's just additional information, and it was proposed as policy. an example of where an appropriate location might be for multi-unit housing, but correct that staff would read this and understand that that is an option and that is a potential factor to think about when considering where multi-unit buildings might be most appropriate in neighborhood one, but it would not be exclusive to only those locations.

And may I ask a question, just a clarification question? multi-unit buildings to me includes things like duplexes, triplexes, row homes, or are you interpreting multi-unit buildings to be more than that?

More than that. So multi-units more, the way that it's described, and I believe we do have a definition in the glossary that it's more about the format, that it's a stacked unit, whereas townhome, row home tend to be side-by-side attached units. So there is a minor nuance and distinction there.

It's about stacked units. Like what about like a San Francisco style stacked flats, but it looks like technically that would be a multi-unit as opposed to a duplex or a triplex. Interesting. Okay. All right. Uh, discussion, Kurt.

Yeah, I appreciate the input from staff. I would be very much opposed to this if it were interpreted as being exclusive, partly because There are lots of other places that are appropriate places for multi-unit buildings, you know, near rec centers or near parks or near downtown or whatever, in places that are not necessarily near transit. But given that it's not to be interpreted as exclusive, then I'm much more comfortable with it. Mark?

I'm also in support of this, and I understand the concerns about near transit, but I think it was during our adoption of the elimination of parking minimums, we talked about how much of the city is near transit. It may have been a different issue, but anyway, it depends on how you define near, but I know that we did not We talked about adjacent, we talked about near. And so if you take a 15-minute neighborhood, well, if I walk one direction for 15 minutes and I create a circle that size, that's big. And so what this does is says almost all the city, as we discovered during the parking issue, almost all the city is near transit. So-

Thank you, Mark. And Claudia, I apologize. Mark was showing on the screen, but I think you actually had your hand up first. Claudia.

Well, I will present the counterpoint. I am not as trusting as some of my colleagues. I think I do interpret this or I think it could be interpreted in the future as being exclusionary to multi-unit housing away from whatever we define as transit corridors. And I want to remind folks that one of the more recent conversations that we had about middle housing on this board, I think this was the family-friendly, vibrant communities, we were talking about adjacent to transit as being like one and a half blocks away from a bus line. And that's an incredibly restrictive measure. And somewhat arbitrary, so I worry about this amendment being a backdoor way of ensuring that we keep putting roadblocks in front of middle housing in the wider areas of neighborhood one. in the city I think it's a way of you know saying oh yeah we're opening things up to housing but to still limit that middle housing and somehow keep it as second class housing that is concentrating it in very in very intensely used traffic heavy areas of the city and I think that's inappropriate so I suggest we reject this

Thank you, Claudia. Other thoughts? Mason? Oh, no. No, sorry. I thought I saw you going for your microphone. Other thoughts? Yeah, I'm going to say that I'm with Claudia on this one. I had the same reaction to the addition of near transit. I don't see a reason for adding that unless you are hoping to try to limit it to areas near transit. So I'm not supportive of adding that, even though I appreciate that it is listed in a such as list. It feels like it's expressing a policy preference there that I don't necessarily support the same way that Claudia doesn't. Yeah, Max, did you?

Well, I think that I might be wrong on this, but I think some of the impetus for this was actually to encourage transit for what it's worth.

But I could be wrong on that.

Like you said, it's a bit of a big game of telephone, but I don't think that this was designed to prohibit so much. Could be completely wrong on that, but.

Yeah, and I'll just respond to that briefly. I'm just trying to think of how I would interpret this as a new planning board member not knowing anything about the intention behind it or who introduced it or how it got into the code. I would read this as, oh, we want to encourage duplexes, triplexes, row homes, small houses, But for multi-unit buildings, there's a qualifier, which is near transit, that none of the others have. And so that seems to me to be calling out multi-unit buildings as being most appropriate or mostly appropriate near transit. And I agree with Claudia that that's too restrictive. Other thoughts? Yeah, Emil.

There's that long list of duplexes all the way down to, I believe it says ADUs, right? Or is that scratched? Are the ADUs out? ADUs are in. ADUs are in. ADUs as well. I know. Can you make it big?

Thank you, Kathleen. You get us. You get us.

It sounds to me that it's an inclusive list. So we know that ADUs can happen everywhere. So that automatically creates a near transit is not the limiting factor. So it's a very curious sentence because it makes this big old list and then it says as well as, which almost tries to isolate multi-unit buildings to being part of the near transit rather than having it be just comprehensive list and it should have just had them all and put the, as well as being near, I don't, it's a neurological sentence if you're trying to make sense of where can I put these things because they're all there and we know legally you can do them beyond transit areas, so.

My understanding was that the intent was to apply the near transit only to the multi-unit buildings?

That's a whole third way of looking at it.

That's how I read it as well. That the near transit was modifying multi-unit buildings in particular. Okay.

Kurt, yes. Yeah. So i'm compelled by claudia's and laura's comments here, so I move that planning board reaffirm its original change.

Would you clarify whether that's as a condition or recommendation to counsel second. I said, could you clarify whether that's a recommendation to council or a condition of your approval?

I don't think it matters. I think if we reject the near transit, then it doesn't.

No, we I think that this has been framed as a recommended amendment. And so my proposal is to keep it that way. If there were appetite to make it a condition, I would support that. But I think that when we've considered this in the past, there wasn't.

We'd also like clarification if you mean to intend small homes and small houses and small lots since you were the ones to make that amendment.

yeah so our original change was to simply add small houses on small lots in this and to make it as a recommended amendment so my motion is to retain that original or to reaffirm that original proposal

I think that the original proposal was a recommendation, though. And so it had already not made it. And we wouldn't even be seeing it again right now if it weren't for the fact that they modified it and brought it forward, right? So if we reaffirm it, it would have already failed, I guess is what I'm saying.

So essentially we would just be rejecting this and going back to the original language, I think.

I am confused. Could I think I think the intention here that I'm hearing from Kurt is that we want to reject the near transit. and send it back for reconsideration by all bodies. And the question is just, when we send it back for reconsideration, if the other bodies reject it, then what happens?

Yeah, and I actually think that uh if you reaffirm your original recommended amendment it would actually only need to go back to council because the planning commission and the board of county commissioners saw only saw your initial recommended amendment and they accepted that and then it went to council as the fourth step as the fourth body and they that is where they added the near transit so i don't think we would have to go back to the county to basically they've already approved your change and so ultimately it would come down to council and they would either they would essentially have the choice to either approve your original motion your original amendment or uh not support it and then it would just go back to the original staff language

So what I would suggest is that, Kurt, if I may suggest a friendly amendment, are you okay if council rejects our rejection of near transit? If they want to keep near transit in, do you think it needs to come back to us or would we accept that? Like are you okay with a fallback that if they don't like our change that we would accept near transit as the motion maker? No. So you want to make this a condition rather than a recommendation?

Well, no. I'm making it as a recommended amendment without the near transit language. So as we originally proposed it, if council wants to include one wants to include the small houses on small lots but also include the near transit language then they could send it back to us as a recommended amendment i don't i don't think that's what would happen i think that if council doesn't accept what we do then it's getting a little confusing

I think that this has a bit of overlap. So with the recommendation that I kind of want to send back, and we don't have a great process for sending back a recommendation. And on some level, that's why I was recommending that what was previously a recommendation become a condition. Because if you have a recommendation and it's failed, I mean, it's kind of run its due process. But this is a really weird case because the recommendation didn't necessarily... fail it came back with edits and i think what kurt is saying is like well let's send it again without the edits like we reject the edits but we ask that you consider their recommendation again so could it just be worded like that we move to reject this but put forth our original edits to this policy for and we

Can we try to do this in two parts if this is what we're moving towards consensus on? So there would be a first motion to reject council's recommended amendment. That's where they add transit. And then there could be a second motion to ask for or require a reconsideration of the language that we initially sent up. Would that work as a process?

From staff perspective, that would work.

As a process point, I don't see how that would work because it's all a recommendation and we haven't said this is a condition. So why would it come back to us regardless? So unless we're, I think the first step is to take, have a motion that says that our edits, that we agree, the planning board for affirmative votes agree that what we modified tonight, we are making a condition. Because if we don't make it a condition and it's a recommendation and council says, thank you, we've looked at that recommendation and we reject it, there's no reason for it to come back and there's no reason for the plan not to move forward. I'm not advocating for making it a condition. I don't, I want to accept it. But if we're, we can't have a recommendation that's really a condition.

Okay, but could we start with a motion to reject the addition of the near transit language? And then we could have a second motion that addresses making this a condition if we so want it to be.

I think that's pretty clean in terms of expressing planning boards preferences and what we are trying to send back to council. So if that works for staff, that works for me as chair. Does that work for staff?

So if that works, and seeing as we have not had a second yet for Kurt's initial motion, may I try a different motion?

I withdraw my motion.

Okay. So I move that we reject City Council's recommended amendment to the future of housing, page 36. Reference 16. Reference 16.