Thread by @shayshinecastle

Hey, #Boulder, I'm not late. City council starts at 6:30 tonight. It's a *special* meeting, and by that I mean it is being held on a week typically reserved for a study session, and there are no open comment or public hearings.

Every council meeting in this town is special.

Tonight's discussions include: Boulder's prep for the 2020 Census, and a vote to approve using ~$2.5M of the already approved $20M in debt funding for connections to the fiber backbone. boulderbeat.news/2019/04/23/cou…

Then council will approve (or not) an agreement with the St. Julien to build/operate/manage an event space, which civic and nonprofit entities will get first dibs at reserving (for 3 days a year).

And the planning dept. is asking council to do some prioritizing, bc once again they have more projects than they can handle.

THEN we'll get an update about online petitioning, which the city is saying can't happen until at least 2021 elections due to some conflicting charter language. The election/campaign working group is up in arms about this, accusing the city of suppressing democracy.

LASTLY... just added yesterday, staff is asking council for informal approval so the city can begin negotiating the sale of parking lot to hotel developers on the Hill. This is an interesting one, too, given council's ambivalence on this project. boulderbeat.news/2019/04/23/in-…

Getting started. Jones reminding ppl that this is Earth Week. ("Every day is Earth Day in Boulder," she says.) But the city has listed 10 ways you can get involved here: bouldercolorado.gov/newsroom/earth…

I didn't write this up or preview it, but the permanently supportive housing at Lee Hill has been open for 5 years, which is pretty amazing "given how hard it was" to get it going, councilman Yates says.

31 units; residents have all been chronically homeless and have at least one diagnosed disability. There has been a 93-99% occupancy rate over time (higher more recently) and 0 neighborhood complaints, 0 neighbor calls to the police.

12 original residents are still there.

Many of the residents who move there had a lengthy list of arrests. Since moving in, 0 or 1 "contact" with police.

Shows the importance of housing, and also that unhoused people are probably subject to unnecessary police scrutiny.

I forgot an item: Prairie dogs! It's the last item of the night, also added last-minute. Council is scheduled to hear/discuss further recommendations for prairie dog maintenance on May 7 (I think) but they may want to add a public hearing. Morzel requested on.

Here's why: Open space trustees recommended allowing lethal methods on ag lands, and getting some extra $$ in the budget for that.

The parks and rec board isn't cool with making ag lands the biggest priority, bc pdogs have also overrun Valmont city park, the part that the city intends to develop.

Council thinks these recommendations deserve a public hearing, rather than just a council discussion. They'll decide that tonight via a nod of five (a kind of informal vote)

OK, Boulder, we STILL need ppl to fill the city's boards and commissions. Spread the word. I wrote this 2 months ago, and now they have even MORE open seats. (One on the Design Advisory Board) boulderbeat.news/2019/02/19/sea…

Correx to two tweets ago: The nod of five will really just be majority bc there are only 7 members here (Carlisle is absent).

Morzel is talking about the Hill issue. "There's no ability for the public to comment in this." she's saying. She got an email from Steve Pomerance earlier today about that. "It needs to be a nod of five, is what I'm saying. Not a nod of four."

"I just think the way it's being brought up is not good process," says the council member who has scheduled multiple emergency ordinances.

We're gonna talk about that later, per Mayor Jones. Now we're chatting census. Not gonna start a new thread, bc I'm not sure yet if this is going to get its own writeup.

Here's the staff presentation on that: www-static.bouldercolorado.gov/docs/2A_2020_C…

The Census provides data that determines where $883B in federal funds go. Colorado got $13B in 2016 based on the 2010 census; it went to 55 programs.

Actually today, the Supreme Court started hearing arguments on the citizenship question proposed for the 2020 Census. nytimes.com/2019/04/23/us/…

Two versions of the census has been prepared, one with the citizenship question and one without it. The census goes live online March 23. April 1 is Census Day, and data collection goes through August. The president gets the data on Dec. 31, 2020.

Boulder helps in a couple of ways: City donates staff time to the census effort. Do things like community engagement and verifying addresses. Volunteer group of nonprofits and community members helps encourage participation. And they provide space for census-takers.

And they provide a list of places where unhoused persons are likely to be, to help that data collection.

This time, the city might help boost engagement in the university neighborhoods, which had the lowest response rates in Boulder. (Less than 70%, on average.)

Council will get quarterly updates on the census progress. And an info packet when the supreme court ruling comes down.

That's a wrap on census. Staring a new thread for broadband. @threadreaderapp, please unroll. Thank you!