Thread by @shayshinecastle

OK, last sorta interesting item: Appointing community members to the Police Master Plan Process Subcommittee.

Long name, but what it means is: The police dept master plan is being overhauled and ppl will sit on a group to have input on that.

It's a process committee, so it just makes sure the process is transparent, accessible to the public, etc. Not policy decisions or anything.

Yates and Joseph are the council members on this.

Here's a short staff presentation: www-static.bouldercolorado.gov/docs/Item_8D_-…

There were 10 applicants for community members to sit on this group. Yates/Joseph's recommendations are: Mallory Kates and Marina La Grave.

Kates is already on a policing community group, which recently discussed homelessness and camps. Kates, in that meeting, said citizens needed to pressure council in order to get police to start sweeps, after hearing from Herold that police were afraid to act.

Joseph: "I thought we needed someone who would offer a much more nuanced and different perspective." She has not worked with the city apparatus before.

You can read about the meeting I'm referencing here. boulderbeat.news/2020/08/12/vol…

Kates and La Grave were on both our lists, Yates says of he and Joseph's recommendations.

I do have to disclose that the Beat hired La Grave as a translator during the last election cycle to translate that content into Spanish.

She worked as the translator for the city's Ponderosa Mobile Home project, and works with the I Have a Dream Foundation as well, as Yates is sharing now.

Yates makes a motion that these two community members be appointed.

Friend: I'm wondering what our process is here. I don't remember seeing the applicants. Are we rubber stamping this? Are we evaluating the applicants?

Yates: "I think what Junie and I are asking you to do is trust us."

We went through the applications and we felt these two applicants best served the community need in reaching out to under-served parts of the community.

Friends: If I have concerns or discussion, that would be after the public hearing?
Weaver: We don't have a formal process for this sort of thing. This is a little different bc we're trying to bring in community members.

Weaver: "This is a kind of being invented now kind of process."

There is going to be a public hearing now for the Landmarks Board appointment and these subcommittee appointments.

It's weird to see how this hearing will be handled, bc it wasn't advertised earlier and you can't participate without a meeting link, which you can't get unless you've signed up to speak publicly so... Basically you can only speak if you're already in here to speak.

Definitely not a great process. I would of course have noted these late-addition public hearings in my email, but they just decided on it yesterday and the newsletter goes out Sundays.

As suspected, this public hearing is only open to people ALREADY IN THE MEETING. Which Friend asks about.

That doesn't feel at all like a public hearing, she says.

Weaver: "If we were in chambers, it would be exactly this way. The people who were already there could speak up; people watching on Channel 8 wouldn't be able to either."

V good point. But then council should note what could POSSIBLY be a public hearing in its materials, just so ppl have an idea.

I've been doing this for a few years and am/was still unclear about when public hearings happen.

I've followed up with Sarah Huntley for clarity and assume I'll be hearing back any day now.

She's not here tonight. Brenda Ritenour, neighborhood liaison, filling in. So I'm assuming vacation.

Back to the police process subcommittee... As @bouldersafe just pointed out (and I verified) Mallory Kates is listed as having backed Bob Yates in his city council run. bobyatesboulder.com/backers

Feels like that should be disclosed but.... ?

Rules on these things are kinda fuzzy.

And many, many people on this list. Should probably be checking it more often.

Marcos Ospina: "This public hearing is being done pretty undemocratically. It's only open to people who are already in this meeting, which is pretty ridiculous. No one knew about it."

Ospina speaking about Kates' endorsing Yates' run for council AND her inclusion on a community policing group. She "is very much for these violent sweeps of homeless encampments. ... I just feel like the public should know who endorsed Bob Yates."

"That is the end of my comment in this public hearing that wasn't a public hearing." LOL

Pelusio is appointed without controversy to the Landmarks Board.

Friend has comments on the police master plan process subcommittee. "If we are to weigh in on this meaningfully," I would have liked to see the applicants. "I appreciate Bob's sentiment that we need to trust each other" but who I represent is the community.

"It sounded like the reject pile" for applicants was people who want to change police culture. "I don't think (that) should be a ticket to the reject pile."

Yates reading the names of the other applicants (some submitted after, some not in Boulder)
Paul Bradley
Brad Davis
Kate Daly
Greg Eckhard
Gary Ellison
Peter Judkins
Judy Loopjohn
Sean Moss

Spelling on all of those might be off bc I haven't seen these names or applications.

Young: "I just want to comment on the odd process of having a public hearing" for these items all lumped together. "It's always been kind of a challenge on how to handle matters items. I don't have a solution to offer."

Oftentimes it's hard for ppl to participate, Young says.

Wallach: I understand Friend's approach, but "I have a high degree of confidence in" Yates' and Joseph's judgement. "We do this all the time" in which 1-2 members "handle the load" of processing an issue.

"I don't really want to act as the HR dept for this process committee."

Joseph: I do appreciate Rachel's comments. The way she put it, it does show a dichotomoy. When we talked in the subcommittee, if you go back to the records, you will see that this council discussed that it was about process, not policy.

"I followed council's direction," Joseph says. "I thought it would be better to have someone who was multi-faceted in wanting to engage the community, rather than someone who was singularly focused on changing police culture."

RE: Yates' endorser Kates: "I was not aware of that," Joseph says. But "I think someone can be fair" regardless of that endorsement. Many of us have been endorsed by many community members.

It has been transparent, she says. I came to my recommendations independently, and so did Bob. And they were the same.

But we will revisit this "if it's the will of council as a whole," Joseph says.

Swetlik on the bad processes being uncovered tonight: Maybe we should indicate on the agenda when there are public hearings for Matters. (There will be one next week for the mayor pro tem selection. Only one applicant so...?)

Swetlik not thrilled with the process subcommittee selection process (dear god). I generally like to trust council members, he says, but I don't love how this happened.

Young: It would be nice if council members could read about the applicants, but I will trust Yates' and Joseph's judgement on this.

Young: Process subcommittees should be asking questions that are not leading. If you get someone in the process subcommittee whose focus is to be add substantive .... material to the process, it kind of defeats the purpose.

"I would have been cautious and I would be cautious about folks who want to make substantive changes," Young says.

People be acting like not wanting change is a neutral stance.

Brockett: It would have been nice to see applicants. But we do trust council members to do this work, so I will trust Yates and Joseph on this.

Also not thrilled with the public hearing process for this.

Weaver: "I don't think any of us foresaw that these would be big public interest items."

Our literal only public hearing tonight was about POLICING. But sure... how could we know people would be interested in updating the police master plan and who gets a say on that.

Weaver: The goal for process subcommittees is to make sure community engagement is well done, that scheduling makes sense, etc. It's not a policy group.

"I fully trust that Bob and Junie will enforce that it's a process subcommittee, not a substance subcommittee," Weaver says.

Friend: I think a diversity of opinions on those groups is helpful. ... There's a public hearing and we were voting on it. "It's a little bit hard for me to delegate" my independent decision making.

Asks to delay the vote for these particular issues tonight and to allow sign-up for public hearing on this and future Matters.

If you're wondering what all the references to Matters are, it's a certain section of the meeting. Matters from city manager/attorney/mayor and members of council.

These items are under that section.

Yates: "We brought this to council as a courtesy. ... There was no requirement we have community members on this subcommittee."

"We will lose a month," but we can look at the other applicants, do a second public hearing, etc.

Wallach: "I don't want to get that granular. ... I really don't see the value" in extending the process and doing it a new way.

Brockett: The other process subcommittees I've been on didn't have community members. We haven't had them before; we haven't approved them before. So this is a little different.

Friend, Swetlik opposed to appointing this members, but everybody else on board, so they are approved 7-2.

That's it for this. Very interesting.

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