Thread by @shayshinecastle

Tonight's main event: Council gets a gut-check on what it wants to do in 2022, based on staff capacity.

Presentation from staff, in which you'll see they have v little capacity for anything, and next to zero for anything housing or homelessness related. documents.bouldercolorado.gov/WebLink/DocVie…

There are 45 items on this list (5 from each council member; though many of them are overlapping) and staff definitely can do or are already doing just 8 of them (3 others are maybe can-dos)

"We are trying to be honest" about what's possible, NRV says.

When I say what staff can definitely or maybe do, I mean WITHOUT more hiring and/or stopping work on current projects.

13 items, for instance, can't happen without additional hiring in the Planning Dept.

Many can't happen unless Housing and Human Services shift focus from current work to new work. Like a day shelter, for instance: Staff says they can't do that bc they're working on meth housing

What CAN the city do, right now?
- Uni Hill nuisance abatement
- Fort Chambers land back (to tribes)
- City staff recruitment/retention
- Warning system for disasters (already being improved)
- Outdoor dining
- Broadband

What can they maybe do?
- Non-police response for mental health crisis (currently it's co-response)
- Airport study (to turn into housing; extra $$ is needed)
- Living wage for city council members (2022 or 2023 ballot item)

- Moving CC elections to even years (ballot measure in 2022)
- Head tax (tax on large employers)

We're gonna go through priorities one by one and say what can and can't be done

Middle-income housing strategy: Program is almost ready, but we need more staff to implement it.

City has added woefully few affordable home ownership units, HHS director Kurt Firnhaber says

Code changes to incentivize more, smaller homes: Also need planning staff to be able to do that

HHS and Planning *did* lose quite a bit of staff during COVID, and the city has yet to fully restaff. boulderbeat.news/2020/09/04/bou…

The 2022 budget does allow for a lot of staff restoration, but not all. And they haven't been able to fill all those positions yet. boulderbeat.news/2021/10/16/bou…

Another priority: Allowing duplexes and triplexes in places that currently only allow single-family, detached housing — can't do that without more planning staff (or we need to stop current projects).

Clarification to earlier tweet: The down payment assistance program, to help the middle class buy homes, COULD happen this year, if the program doesn't expand at all. Other council suggestions for expanding missing middle housing cannot. boulderbeat.news/2019/02/23/bou…

We will need to hire a consultant to get this program (approved by voters in 2019) going in the second half of 2022, Firnhaber says.

City has an existing program for this. It used to be $50K in down payment assistance; now it's $100K.

The program wasn't v popular or well-used.

"We're likely to hit 9% of affordable units in the city in the next 2-3 years," Firnhaber says. The goal is 15%. We've been in the 7% -8.5% range for at least as long as I've been reporting on this (2015ish).

Some good (if outdated) info here. boulderbeat.news/2019/04/06/bou…

City has added a ton of affordable housing the last 2 years (last year was I think the second-most ever) but v few middle-income units. There's a goal-within-a-goal of 1,000 of those by 2030.

In 2019, there were 110. Unsure how many there are now, but prob not v much more.

Next priority: Make ADUs and co-ops easier to create. This will delay other projects, staff says, given Planning staff shortages, and make licensing/permitting slower.

Firnhaber: We updated the ADU rules in 2018, and they hadn't been touched for 20+ years. I'm encouraged council wants to revisit, but the staff person who worked on that is now working on Alpine-Balsam and the building of a manufactured housing factory.

Some of the changes being considered now were also on the table in 2018, Firnhaber says (can confirm) but *that* council wanted to go slower (also can confirm).

Brockett: "The complexity level, the investment level, the intensity depends on how we scope these" projects.

David Gehr: "When you start to add additional units in neighborhoods, you start to get the density out of whack with what's in the Comp Plan" and the underlying land use. (That's specific to ADUs)

Plus, occupancy rules apply to the property as a whole, Gehr says, and you're basically adding another dwelling.

Brockett quotes some Comp Plan language that allows for flexibility, but acknowledges Gehr's point.

Some areas of town are ready to implement changes, Gehr says. Others aren't. (That's in terms of zoning and land use, specifically)

Joseph: I'm seeing that staff has no or next to no capacity for a lot of housing things. Aren't we hiring more staff?
Yes, NRV says. That's part of the discussion, is we will be adding staff and capacity over time.

Firnhaber: "It would be helpful for (staff) to understand the goals of these projects for council members," so we can scope them out in stages.

Proposes a study session in the 3rd quarter of 2022 "to dive in much more depth to look at dif options" for some of these projects, Firnhaber says. Staff doesn't even have capacity to plan for this study session right now, which takes "2-3 months" to prepare for.

Benjamin: We need to think about "where we're putting our eggs" in the affordable housing basket and maybe "pull some" to put toward middle-income housing. Those are tough choices, he says, but the prob will only get worse if we don't start to work at it.

Benjamin RE: allowing more than just single-family homes: The comp plan *does* allow for 2-6 units per acre in a lot of neighborhoods. So we have some room there to implement change.

Benjamin again raises the idea of using consultants vs staff. "This town has a lot of great land use attorneys" and other experts who could help ease the burden, he says.

Firnhaber: I joined the city when we had just approved the middle-income housing strategy, which was great. But we didn't put any resources into it.

Last year, the city *finally* started setting aside $$ for middle-income housing: $1.2M/year

"What's holding us back is that middle-income housing costs double what it does to create a rental unit," Firnhaber says, so there's always that dilemma: Do you create 2 rental units or use that $$ for middle-income?

Yates: Why are we struggling so much? Do we not have the $$? Is there no one to hire? Did we have a bunch of resignations we didn't expect?

(with staff capacity, to clarify)

NRV: We have $$ that have been allocated for ongoing vacancies, so I would say right now it's less of a financial issue. Maybe it's that we're no longer competitive on pay/benefits; we're looking at that.

In part, "we were in such a hold, with the pandemic, we let a lot of folks go. We have to rebuild some of that. And there's been a lot of turnover." NRV says

From the exit interviews, we hear that ppl want to work closer to where they live. And they are reconsidering their work/life balance. "They perhaps want a dif pace."

"Sometimes, for the same position we used to get 20 applicants for, we now get 1," NRV says. "We're now competing with every other city who is hiring up."

"Much of our staff is not going to live in Boulder" bc of the housing affordability, NRV says. So we're competing with cities closer to their homes.

Firnhaber: "This was not a worry of mine until a couple months ago. We've had a couple resignations in HHS. The workload is higher bc we lot staff through furloughs and the amount of work increased."

"Half my staff have been working every day since the fire," Firnhaber says. "They are doing jobs on top of jobs."

Firnhaber: "They are applying for jobs that's just 1 job. They are being recruited."

Speer: "I've been involved in a lot of hiring. One of the things I think ppl don't often consider how much time it takes to do a hire, and how many ppl are involved."

How much time does it take to hire? Speer asks. "I'm seeing a lot of work that wouldn't be able to start until Q3 or Q4."

NRV: "It kinda depends. HR is under constraint (director left recently) My hope was to focus on hiring 200 ppl in Q1, but we didn't expect the fire and to have to halt and shift to support that."

For the vacant planning director position: Over 20 applicants. So hopefully that will be hired soon.

Chris Meschuk: The 2022 budget included a lot of restoration, so starting Jan. 1 we were ready to hire. It hasn't gone as fast as we like, but we're working on it.

Especially in OSMP and Parks & Rec, we do "massive" seasonal hiring for the summer. Sometimes 600 ppl. That starts in April. "I think the seasonal market looks dif than it has in the past as well," Meschuk says.

I didn't hear any specific timelines. Neither did Speer; she's asking again to have a "ballpark number of hours" it takes to hire, perhaps provided at the retreat.

Speer: "As a new council member, I'm raring to go, and this initial period is so critical. If we push on the system too much, we're kinda hosed."

Firnahber: It takes months for any new hires to be proficient enough to lead projects.

Wallach Sigh-O-Meter: 1

Wallach: Of the 42 priority items, 30 of them are constrained by staff capacity or the need to shuffle current projects

(My count was 31 of 42, but I think he or I am close enough to give you the idea here)

Wallach, who has in the past criticized the extensive use of consultants, asks that the city consider relying on them next year. We're in a constrained situation, he says. They can be helpful.

I appreciate Wallach's willingness to be flexible on this point. Not bc I love consultants or anything, but I like to see elected officials admitting when there are pros and cons to things and being willing to change their minds.

Moving on to homelessness priorities next.

First: Use ARPA $$ to improve coordination of services, working groups, etc.

That's already happening, Firnhaber says. He is on the housing subcommittee at the county for the use of ARPA $$.

The county homelessness/ARPA group will be proposing two things: A peer navigation program and day programming, "including some health components for persons in a housing queue or recently housed."

"Our services haven't been able to keep up with individuals who have been housed," Firnhaber says.

Reminder that housing + supportive services — regardless of sobriety or anything else — is remarkably successful. But you need both.

It's called Housing First, and it literally means: House someone before you require anything of them, and they're more likely to get sober, stay housed, deal with mental and physical health challenges, etc.

Firnhaber: Ppl need community once they've been housed. We're talking about things like mental, physical health supports and "even pottery classes."

https://twitter.com/LSweeneyMiran/status/1483631136257425408?s=20

Firnhaber: Also looking at shelter and services for folks who have recently gotten out of the hospital and shouldn't be on the streets.

Second priority: A tax for homelessness services, a la Denver.

Firnhaber says the county is working on bringing that forward, for homelessness and mental health.

That's a better approach, he says, bc these are regional issues. (Reminder that Denver is both a city AND a county)

Next priority: Expand services for those living unsheltered, including a working group with people with lived experience.

Firnhaber: "It would be helpful to first have a goal and for us to understand better what those services are."

"There are actually 40 dif services available to those experiencing homelessness."

We have diversion services, Firnhaber says, which is for ppl who "aren't from our community, getting them connected to their community."

This is often $$ for car repair, or a bus or plane ticket. Anything that gets them out of town.

"There's so much happening right now and so many services that have been started the past couple of years under HSBC," Firnhaber says. My goal is to keep those staffed.

(Neglects to talk about the things Boulder is no longer doing, like a day shelter. But that will come up later, I'm sure.)

Another priority: Tracking injuries and death from living outside, and then reduce those.

Staff response: The coroner is doing this. We don't track info on hospitalizations.

Speer: What can we do about unsheltered homelessness? The services that you're working on with ARPA funds sound like they're for folks who are already housed or about to be housed.

"The problem as I see it is we've got ppl living in our public spaces. Everybody is aware of it; nobody thinks it's OK." Speer says. Can we use ARPA $$ — of which there are millions — "to pull ppl from hanging out by the creek or our public spaces?"

Firnhaber: "It's one of the great frustrations of our work. We've made more progress than we thought we could these past 4 years, but it doesn't feel like it when you walk through the city. That's frustrating."

Day shelters are expensive, Firnhaber says. Operating costs of ~$750,000/year. That' a lot of people we could house for that $$, which is why it wasn't pursued.

Congregate sheltering is not something ARPA funds, Firnhaber says. You can't get HUD $$ for it either. "There's really been a shift in funding resources."

Benjamin: The services we're talking about for housed or soon-to-be-housed folks... those need to live somewhere. Can't we use that for overflow sheltering and/or a place for unsheltered folks to be during the day?

"Do you see those synergies as well?" Benjamin asks Firnhaber

Firnhaber: "We're not sure we can find a shelter that can handle the capacity of 100 ppl a day and classes, etc. I'm not aware of such a facility."

Suggests "multiple locations" which is just so, so hard for unhoused folks (and poor folks) and against best practices and data.

"It may be just 2 days a week in a particular location," Firnhaber says. Mentions how many affordable housing properties have community space.

Joseph: "Many times when you come before council, you put forward this idea that you don't have all the resources you need. ... I really doubt we can put homeless services at the forefront" without a tax.

Again, the staff response to that is that the county is considering it. And that if council *really* wants to do it, they'll have to stop doing other stuff.

Friend: "I don't think it's up to staff what we move forward with." Tonight is just about scoping; Friday and Saturday we will decide collectively what to do.

Folkerts: I'm interested in collecting data on exposure injuries. The coroner isn't doing that (that was staff's response).

Firnhaber: That would primarily come from Clinica and BCH. Idk what they're collecting or reporting. This isn't info we could collect.

Next two priorities: Occupancy limit reform and renter protects.

Staff response: We need to hire more planning staff before we can work on these.

Gehr: People have passionate views on occupancy, and perhaps opposed views. Any public engagement will be a big lift.

Gerh: Since I've been back at the city (he retired this summer) I've heard how we regulate too much and we don't regulate enough. Whatever work we do, we need to balance those perspectives.

NRV: The recently departed planning director had started a peer city review and planned to bring it back this quarter to council. Idk where that work is now.

Benjamin: "This community has been going back and forth on occupancy for 2 yrs now. That's a lot of engagement — more than a lot of work we do." Can't we "leverage those conversations to inform us?"

Gehr: "I appreciate that, but I will say in terms of watching public process in Boulder for the last 30 years, one of the things I've found is when perspectives are so diametrically opposed .... If you want it done, do it once. If you want it nice, do it twice."

On issues like this, Gehr says, I often see us picking up the pieces and starting again. Be mindful of that.

10-min break then we continue with the rest of the priorities. (Housing and homelessness were a big chunk, so the rest should go somewhat faster)

Next priorities are ones staff says they can actually do: Uni Hill quality of life / nuisance abatement (parking, trash, noise, parties, etc.)

Some ordinances will be brought to council in Q3, NRV says

"Some of the convos we're going to have here on nuisance abatement" will touch on occupancy reform, NRV says.

NRV: Winer requested moving to a patrol-based model rather than complaint based. Given police staffing issues, we would need extra resources for that.

Next: East Boulder Subcommunity Plan
That's 90% done, so it *will* be adopted this year, but implementation will require hiring planning staff and/or tradeoffs with current projects.

Next: Making sure that when developers promise on-site housing, they have to build it. That's hard bc state law requires a cash-in-lieu option, and that's currently right up until the building permit is issued.

Wallach wants to make that earlier in the process. Again, we need to hire planning staff to do that.

Winer: Can we make sure middle-income housing happens in East Boulder, since those are two of our priorities combined?

Gehr: That would be part of the implementation plan.

These two priorities are kind of being folded into existing work, so they have a higher likelihood of actually happening than anything else.

It's slightly confusing, bc the *notes* say more staff is needed, but *Gehr* is saying we can fold them into existing work.

Next priority that is actually happening: Giving some land at Fort Chambers back to the tribes.

OSMP bought that land in 2018 and is working with tribes right now on ownership and management.

But the timing needs to be flexible, bc tribal participation is of the utmost importance. So it will depend on them and their timing/capacity.

Next: Studying the Planning Reserve for future development. The *last* council actually talked about this. boulderbeat.news/2019/12/07/bou…

It's already in the works and will continue (likely in 2023). It's one of those things where nothing is actually happening yet... we're just studying what it takes to make things happen.

Gehr: This is a staff and consultant intensive project, one we've never done before.

Yates: If we don't start this until 2023, can we still get it done before the 2025 comp plan update?
Gehr: Maybe. Maybe not. The first year of our comp plan update is community engagement, more or less.

Yates: Why aren't we starting until 2023? Bc we don't have staff capacity? Aren't we relying heavily on consultants here?
Gehr: It is the "rebuilding post-COVID of staff."

Wallach kind of asks the same q: Can't consultants speed up the process?
Gehr: Somewhat, but a bit part is community engagement, which our staff usually does.

The study is what services we need to provide in order to expand and use that planning reserve (police, fire, utilities, etc.) It's what it would take in real terms to expand the city limits (and therefore services) to include this land.

Moving on to transportation proposals. Lighter language here from staff, but they do say that we'll need to focus less on existing work to do anything new.

These priorities were also less ambitious than housing and homelessness (except for Folkerts' suggestion to do free citywide transit). It was like "add more bike lanes" or "set a goal for reducing car trips"

Friend: Can we use consultants for any of this?

One of the things staff says it will have to delay is an update of the transportation master plan. We *just* updated that, Friend says, and we haven't met its goals. Why spend time doing a new plan?

Erika Vandenbrande: "This is a zero sum game" bc of our budget. "We'd have to give up staff" to be able to afford consultants. Or "scale back on (fixing) potholes and snow removal. ... There's not a lot of extra budget."

Friend: What if we decided to give more budget?
NRV: We can do a lot of things with consultants. The q is one of priority.

NRV: If council decides this is what you want to do, it's up to us to figure out how to do it.

Vandenbrande RE: creating free citywide bus service: "This would def require millions of dollars of resource. Quite honestly, it is infeasible to do that in a two-year period."

But, she says, we *could* make a plan for it in the next two years *if* we stop doing all these other things.

Folkerts: Doing a feasibility study on potential costs, revenue, etc... that's my ask. Just for the study.

Vandenbrande: That's what we've scoped out.

Seems like a good place for consultants... (if council gives them the $$)

Yates: Didn't we scope this a few years ago?

(The city/county has been contemplating this for a few years, since they've been unhappy with RTD for a long time)

Vandenbrande is new, so she doesn't recall it.
Yates: It was around 2017, a multi-city work group.

Benjamin: "What's the cost of NOT doing, in terms of our climate goals?"

Vandenbrande: We've got great goals in our transportation plan, but we lack the strategy to get there or the funding.

Meschuk touching briefly again on staffing challenges.

Nothing we haven't already covered. Moving on.

Two more priorities: A living wage for residents and city council.

Staff is apparently exploring "guaranteed income" as part of the ARPA $$. Firnhaber talking about that now.

Firnhaber: Several cities have started such programs over the last couple years. We'll be putting forward a bit of cost to actually study this, do community engagement and get some expertise from other communities that have actually tried this.

Joseph's proposal was a higher city minimum wage, something that was discussed in 2019 before COVID shut it down.
Firnhaber: We got that. This is something dif.

RE: living wages for CC, Speer suggested a ballot measure in 2022 or 2023 to that effect. I believe voters have shot that down 4 separate times, but there seems to be a re-evaluation in light of the new focus on equity and participation

Another Speer proposal: Moving CC elections to even years. No real determination if staff has capacity for this; they're already working to implement the mayoral direct elections in 2023.

Pam Davis: We have a pretty good idea of the process this would take.

"That said, we have a lot happening in the election space that is mid-stream," Davis says. We want to look at how that timing change would impact the cadence of the mayoral election.

Another priority, re-establishing an election working group, is something we're really interested in, Davis says.

I *do* have an update on online petitioning, which I will thread later. Or just write a v small update about this week.

Touching quickly on a couple priorities for disaster resilience, like shoring up emergency warning systems. All that stuff is already in process or planning, staff says.

Next priority: A head tax (tax on large employers to pay for things like transportation, housing, etc.)

This had been proposed since 2015 or earlier by various CC members boulderbeat.news/2019/01/10/cou…

Staff *can* do this, but it's a heavy lift, Yvette Bowden says. It's a lot of enforcement, legal consideration, tax collection, etc.

Last couple of priorities:
Outdoor dining — staff working on a 3-yr post-COVID extension
Some emergency procedures needed during COVID are also being retained

Are we working on vaccine passports? Friend asks

Davis: We could start with city spaces. The challenge is the ability to enforce.

Yates: "Cities that have done this have found they don't have to spend a lot of time on enforcement. It's literally. as simple as passing a rule. Restaurants and bars generally comply."

Davis: It's not a deal breaker. It's just something we want to think through before we move forward.

Second-to-last priority: Studying the feasibility of decomissioning the Boulder airport so it can be developed into housing.

"The process involved is actually pretty extensive," Vandenbrande says, but they will hire consultants to do this (if the whole council decides to).

Oh, dang, I was wrong. There's a whole other slide of priorities! Will this never end.

Quickly: Reducing red tap for small biz - something the city was already working on, but anything v expansive will require — you guessed it — more planning staff

Gun control: Already in the works

That's a redo of the city's assault weapons ban AND some further laws. Timing TBD, but it will be soon.

Next: Moving Boulder's mental health response from a co-response model (with cops) to a non-police response (only EMS and/or mental health experts). Denver does the latter and has been wildly successful.

Staff already working on this.

"We're looking at expanding and covering some other areas," Firnhaber says.

Fire Chief Mike Calderazzo: "With some of these co-response calls, we end up there anyway." That doesn't help alleviate pressure on the system. "We want to make sure we're not shadow boxing but hitting targets."

Chief Herold: I'm excited bc I think we have an awesome opportunity to study this and get outcome metrics.

On co-response vs. non-police response

Which will apparently run concurrently....?

Lastly: Winer's ask for public safety, including improving lighting in underpasses (they actually all have lights right now) more security cameras (will cost $$) mandatory bike registration (you can do this for free right now but it's not required)

"Much of this work is already underway," Vandenbrande says. Some more traffic cams being installed.

I did it again — missed some priorities! Fudge this is taking FOREVER

This is REALLY the last one: Broadband. Namely, can/should Boulder take over more than just the building of the 60-mile backbone (which still isn't done)?

The city has more ability to borrow $$ now bc it's not doing the muni, so it's possible to take on more of that. The backbone will be done this year.

So maybe we can get city broadband internet in the next 5 years?

Yates: What I'm asking is to study/scope what a full network buildout would look like

Bonus priority from Mayor Brockett: Finishing TVAP Phase 2 (Transit Village Area Plan — of which Boulder Junction is a part). Lots of council members wanted this one.

I can't really explain what it is, exactly, but it was essentially planning that area for transit-friendly development and bus service. Before my time, tho we've seen a lot of housing there recently.

Given how limited planning staff is, why even bother bringing this up?

"We can't do 30 priorities as we move forward," NRV says.

Benjamin: "There's a sense of discouragement, for me, looking at this. Seeing the 'we need to hire more ppl and it's a heavy lift' seems like a lot of the priorities are maybe off the table."

Benjamin: "If we can't do all the heavy lifts, maybe there's some medium lifts waiting in the wings that we can."

NRV: "I'm sorry you feel discouraged by it. We feel it's a good convo."

NRV: As we scope things, maybe they become smaller lifts. And as we hire more staff, that also allows us to get to more.

So all the 'we can't do this' from today reflects "current capacity — until we hire back," NRV says.

In that last tweet:
"Double quotes" = what NRV actually said
'Single quotes' (and everything else) = my paraphrasing

The question we need to be thinking about, Heather Bergman says, "is what are the priorities now and what are the priorities as soon as there is more staff?"

Yates: These priorities aren't all equal. Certain staff has certain skills and knowledge. So you can't just tell us to pick one project, regardless of what it is.

NRV: It's a good opp to think about what are your critical projects that are going to move the needle the most on these topics

Bergman: "This is meant to inform you, not discourage you."

I *think* (and hope and pray) that this is it for the discussion tonight. We'll pick this back up Friday.

"Come prepared to dig into these," Bergman says to council.

@threadreaderapp please unroll. Thank you.