Thread by @shayshinecastle

Next up: The first adjustment to the base 2022 budget.

Staff notes: documents.bouldercolorado.gov/WebLink/DocVie…

Looks like we're adding some $$ to tackle councils' priorities, including housing/human services stuff and wildfire/disaster resilience.

It also includes $2M for more staff: 22.5 Full-Time Employees. The city is still short on workers.

More details on those:
HHS: $612,500
- $375K to rehab existing city facility for “homeless respite center”
- $40K for middle-income down payment assistance pilot
- $70K for 5-yr strategic plan for inclusionary housing
- $7,500 for survey for updating ADU regulations

and $120K for expansion of HOA assessment pilot

Wildfire + disaster preparedness: $503,900
- $250K to accelerate climate resilience work
- $109,933 to hire wildland staffing for OSMP
- $43,967 for wildfire home assessments
- $100K for wildland fire equipment

And the $2M for 22.5 FTE
HHS staff: housing senior project manager, homeless outreach coordinator, CRIT, eviction prevention and rental assistance services

HR staff

Plus:
- Energy code compliance examiner
- Construction project assistant for Alpine-Balsam
- Increase capacity in communications and engagement

That's all in the presentation I linked to; I didn't see notes on this in the council packet.

This is a public hearing; totally missed that, too. I wouldn't expect anybody. These adjustments to the base budget are routine and kinda boring, tbh.

I would say the thing to takeaway is the city is spending on things it said it would.

Particularly the wildfire resilience spending, given what we heard lately. boulderbeat.news/2022/04/30/wil…

Also should note, bc I don't think council is talking about it, that the city's housing staff is going to be administering a new regional affordable housing effort.

BRL wrote about this. The TL;DR on this (from my notes): Other BoCo cities will start doing more affordable housing, including possible linkage fees.

boulderreportinglab.org/2022/05/04/bou…

Per staff notes: “​​There are several municipalities within the regional partnership that do not have dedicated resources or program infrastructure for homeownership programs and/or compliance programs to manage and oversee future affordable housing”

Boulder does, and it's some of the most advanced in the state (possibly the nation, but I have a feeling that's no longer true. It was 20 years ago when we started.)

“Boulder’s program and practices are well-established and can represent best practices for the regional partnership … it has the most developed infrastructure to support” affordable ownership programs

City of Boulder staff will administer regional program
Other local gov’t without programs (only Boulder, Longmont and the county have them) will pay city for their work through IGA
City has already talked to Lafayette, Louisville and Erie

Regional Affordable Housing Program (RAHP) is a “moonshot” staff wrote — in 2018, group declared they needed $25M/extra per year until 2035 to meet goal of having 12% goal affordable units countywide. That's $400M total
dailycamera.com/2018/06/28/400…

Of course, the money will have to come from somewhere. According to staff, cash-in-lieu fees from each municipality will fund affordable housing moving forward. The rest of the year would be local gov’t coming up with and approving IGAs (and possibly those fees).

No city of Boulder $$ will be needed for this collaborative effort, which could be launched by late 2022 or early 2023

There are some startup costs, tho, being covered by the county's ARAPA $$$

$1,790,598 total
- $1.2M for foreclosure prevention fund (1 yr)
- $13,098 for database and license support
- $577,500 for staff, implementation and rental/ownership compliance, licenses

I'll revisit this thread later if council touches on this subject, because it kinda seems like a big thing to add to staff's plate when they were already overwhelmed. Remember council's priorities? They had to put a lot of things on the back burner.

As I said, council is not scheduled to talk about this... it was an info packet item.

We never got back to this one either.

@threadreaderapp please unroll. Thanks!