Thread by @shayshinecastle

I'm at Boulder City Counicl because it's BUDGET NIGHT!!

Folkerts: More $$ for parks + rec, paid for by repurposing $$ for encampment removals

Friend + Winer: More $$ for potholes /road maintenance. They did not ID a funding source.
Winer also asked for more $$ for underpass lighting. Again, no suggestion where it's coming from.

Speer: More $$ for emergency assistance, shelters and encampment cleaning (not removal) + public bathrooms, paid for by repurposing $$ for encampment removals.

Also more $$ for community connectors, paid for by cutting council's travel budget

Yates: $103K for downtown ambassadors (also expanding to the Hill) paid for by the downtown parking district

Wallach: Don't do upgrades to the airport (which will extend the amount of time it has to stay an airport; he wants it redeveloped into housing) saving $449K

Getting started now. You can see all the above (and more) in the staff presentation: documents.bouldercolorado.gov/WebLink/DocVie…

Mark Woulf, budget guy (for now; he just got a promotion. Yay Mark!) We as staff tried not to weigh in on council's particular proposals, but they are sorted by their impact on the budget and policy:

Limited implications:
- More $$ community connectors (Speer)
- More $$ for ambassadors (Yates)

Potential implications
- More $$ for potholes/paving (Friend, Winer) and lighting in underpasses (Winer)

Significant implications
- Repurposing $$ spent on encampment removals for shelter, bathrooms, emergency assistance, cleaning (Folkerts, Speer)
- Not doing upgrades/updates to the airport (Wallach)

Folkerts clarifying her request to put encampment removal $$ to parks and rec: I would like to bring the program back to 2021 funding of $1.8M versus the $3.1M proposed for 2024.

Benjamin: I'm wondering where the utility dept is gonna get $$ to do waterway cleanup if we don't have the encampment removal program anymore. They're gonna need to do that regardless, right?

Some of the $$ for encampment removals is in the utility budget. The city's two removal teams are housed under utilities, since so many encampments are along waterways (and utilities is in charge of those).

Encampment removal $$ comes from the General Fund, CAGID (downtown parking district), and Stormwater-Flood Utility

Also police have a dedicated unit for those, but that's not reflected here.

Joe Taddeuci, head of utilities: We could potentially move some ppl around. We do still have to manage flood and drainageways, keep them clear of trash whether from storms or camping.

Friend: We would continue to do that in-house? Previously we were using ServPro (an outside vendor used for encampment removals).

Taddeuci: That work was really associated with the camping ban (not waterway cleanup). That's a policy decision.

Wow, 11 whole people for this public hearing

I used to harangue people to show up and harass them for not showing up, but I've given up trying to make people care about where their tax dollars go. I do my story, I tweet the meetings, I go home.

Ana Casas Ibarra: Please listen to us even though we are not white homeowners. Thank you for the $$ for affordable housing and projects like Ponderosa Mobile Home community. But it is not enough.

Casas Ibarra: Do you know how many families were displaced? The project has taken so long, families were forced to leave because their homes were in such bad shape. The residents are tired of waiting.

Ja'Mal Gilmore: I thank you for the affordable housing program. I used it, I'm thankful for it, but I have some problems with it. The rents are too high; they're tied to Area Median Income. That's out of step with what people make.

With what many* people make, I should say. Or half of people, to be exact.

There need to be better inspections in the rentals and we need to do something about rising HOA fees, Gilmore finishes up.

"I can't afford to waste my time trying to engage in local gov't" when I need to be taking care of my family, a speaker says (I do not know his name and I don't want to butcher the spelling!).

My community of African immigrants has shrunk bc of rent and housing costs, he says.

Julie Van Domelen from EFAA highlighting the $7K Boulder is spending on Keep Families Housed, which provided rental assistance (up to $1,000 3X a year) to, well, keep families housed and prevent homelessness.

Family homelessness, as we've heard repeatedly this year, is up.

After going through the program, "no family is experiencing any type of homelessness," Van Domelen said. "We saw significant reductions in food security and economic insecurity."

"It's much cheaper to prevent homelessness than to treat it afterwards," she says.

For a $700K budget we have this year, we spent $300K in the first quarter. Projecting $500K deficit by June 2024.

"If you have any extra $$, I'm hearing you don't, but if you come across any," Van Domelen says, we could use it.

Likewise to you, Boulder: efaa.org/donate/?gclid=…

Marianne Shiple: "We can't continue to let our people suffer and die" from systemic racism and climate change.

Shares this, which I didn't know: Heat kills more ppl than any other weather event. .scientificamerican.com/article/extrem…

Friend: To the people who spoke about affordable housing, there's a county tax on the ballot (1B) for this. You may also want to let the commissioners know how you want them to spend this $$ (if it passes — it's a tax extension, not an increase, so probably)

Alright, we're going over council member's recommended changes to the budget. Doing the easy ones first: Speer's proposal to give community connectors 20% more $$, to be paid for from council's travel budget.

Brockett: Can we get the $$ from somewhere else?
Woulf: You can do a one-time $10K allocation; we can absorb that. For ongoing, we could probably spread it out over departments.
Speer: I would like this to be ongoing and not just a one-time expense.

Winer: I'm wondering as a second option, if we could take a little bit from everywhere, we could help (EFAA) raise that money? Is that crazy? You just keep taking a little bit and it adds up.

Brockett: We can come back to that later.

Friend: I'm concerned a bit bc we're looking to reform all boards and commissions, and this is giving $$ to just one group when we might need it for all the folks who volunteer their time with the city.

Joseph: I'm in support of this. Not all council members use their travel funds... can we take $5K from that? But then again, council members don't get paid much, and if they want to take opportunities to learn from others across the state and country, they should be able to.

I can speak to how much that helped my capacity, Joseph said. But I would vote to take $5K from the travel budget and find $5K somewhere else.

Folkerts: Can we do this as a one-time and then work to find ongoing funding?

Yes, Woulf says. We can work with the community connectors on that for 2025.

Wallach: There are any number of boards and commissions we should be looking at providing financial support to. Can we make this a workplan item and look at it holistically? "We ought to be looking at all of the people who spend substantial time volunteering to serve the city."

I haven't used my travel $$ in a couple years, but I would certainly like to be able to if the opportunity presented itself, Wallach says.

Benjamin: "In our community, pilot is synonymous with perpetual."

Just a reminder that this was one of the *easy* requests.

Speer: The financial compensation is meant to offset the challenges that historically marginalized folks have faced. And it's supposed to be taking something that benefits us and it goes to people who aren't represented here, on the dais.

So they're gonna fund it with one-time $$ this year, and then look for ways to to keep funding it moving forward.

NRV: We are looking at compensation for boards and commissions as part of a number of changes we're considering. That will be coming to council in November.

Next up: Yates's suggestion to give $103K more to the downtown and Uni Hill ambassadors, from the downtown parking district. The downtown management commission asked for more $$.

boulderbeat.news/2022/06/18/bou…

Yates: We're paying all city staff and contractors $22.44/hr next year so they have a living wage. But since the contract for ambassadors isn't under the city (it's the downtown biz group) they don't get paid that wage. This $$ would get ambassadors to $20/hr in pay.

$20-$21/hour, rather

Friend: Are there any other contractors not covered by the city's living wage policy?
Yes was the answer, but I missed who that is.
Friend: What makes the ambassadors different?
Yates: Idk. This came to me from one of our boards.

Chris Meschuk answering who is covered by the living wage policy (adopted in 2016) Contractors who work in janitorial services and emergency services

Kara Skinner, CFO, adding: The rationale was those were services we could do in-house

Unanimous support for this funding proposal. $103K to pay ambassadors an (almost) living wage.

Next: Friend + Winer's separate proposals to fill potholes and address road maintenance generally

Friend: This seems to be a new issue. Our roads used to be good. "No offense to Indiana" (where she's from) but we're feeling more like Indiana in terms of our road conditions.

Friend: Only the city can take care of its roads. The state needs to take care of its roads in the city, too, but this is something only we can do. This is a core service.

Natalie Stiffler, head of transportation: "Our staff is feeling it, we're all feeling it." There are "many variables" creating the "perfect storm" like weather, staff shortages. "We can't even get contractors to do the work right now."

Stiffler: "You're not going to get the immediate gratification of seeing the improvement tomorrow, but frankly we do need to be investing more in our pavement management. That's going to continue to be more of a challenge to us as the climate changes."

The freeze-thaw cycle really contributed to all the cracks and potholes this year, Stiffler says. And there are tradeoffs: More $$ on pavement means less for new bus and bike infrastructure and such.

Friend: We don't have to take from the transportation fund to pay for pavement maintenance, right?
Woulf: Correct. There will be a tradeoff, but it doesn't have to come from transportation.

Benjamin: I think this speaks to the need to restructure how we do our budget. We're in the 11th hour talking about what the core services are and what's extra that we'd like to do.

"If it's a core need, it should never be done at the 11th hour," Benjamin says. We should be answering that question earlier in the budget cycle.

Wallach: Is the basic constraint lack of funding or lack of available contractors?
Stiffler: We have funding today to fill potholes. "But we don't have the people to do it."

Stiffler: So many of our roads are state highways. CDOT does that long-term maintenance. We do reactive maintenance.

"We're basically dumping $$ into potholes" on the state's system when long-term maintenance is not being done. One example is East Arapahoe.

Speer: Was this ID'd as a need by the transportation dept?
Stiffler: It was, but we recognize the desire for enhancements to the system, and we're trying to balance that with maintenance. Pavement management budget in 2024 is $5.4M, an extra $500K from 2023

"Best-case scenario, we'd have another $2M a year," Stiffler says. "But the reality is a constrained budget." We're trying do to the best we can.

Also going to increase the budget in 2025 by another $500K, so $1M extra from 2023 to 2025.

Yates: It sounds like there is a good long-term plan. If we need a longer-term funding source, we can't just patch this year by year, no pun intended.

Council giving $500K extra to road maintenance / potholes.

Next proposal: More $$ for lighting in biking underpasses. From Winer.

"What I'm asking for is not the greatest-ever lighting, but I feel like we should fix the tunnels that are completely dark," she says.

No specific dollar amount or suggestion on where it will come from.

Winer: Rachel [Friend] and I rode through every underpass in the city, so we have a very expensive report that would have cost you a lot of money, for free."

Stiffler: We have 12 underpasses lit 24/7. Others are just dusk to down. We spend about $27K/year on the energy costs to light them, in total. 24/7 lighting for all underpasses would be $30K extra.

Stiffler: We also painted an underpass with white paint to ease the transition from the bright sun into the dark underpass. Anecdotally, we heard that helped.

That cost $15K(!)

Council giving an extra $30K to underpasses, also from the transportation fund (like the extra $500K they approved for pavement)

Those were the easy ones... now the fun ones

Wallach is pulling his proposal off the table. The compromise was to not spend any money from the feds on the airport until the community / council makes a call on whether or not we want to redevelop the airport.

As a reminder, that's because every time the feds give us $$ for the airport, it comes with requirements that it keep being an airport for a certain amount of time. Usually 20 years.

So the only ones left are Folkerts and Speer's proposals to repurpose $$ for encampment removals to other things. They're gonna describe those in detail now.

Speer: We have a lot of alternative things we could invest in to try to end camping in our public spaces and minimize the impacts. We're now spending over $3M/year on this work; we've tried to end unsheltered homelessness with removals for years now.

Speer: "The idea is not to stop cleaning up but to find more efficient ways to keep public spaces clean. It is not saying we're not going to take care of things. It's saying we're going to find a different way."

Folkerts: "Encampment is at best a temporary solution. It doesn't address the root causes of homelessness. Continually pouring funds into this program is like putting a stack of bandaids on a bullet wound."

Folkerts: This program began 2.5 years ago, Folkerts said, with a budget of $2.8M. It's now over $3.1M. We're spending more than $18K per person to do encampment removals.

Friend wants to hear from the parks and utilities dept directors. What would happen if encampment removals went away? What would that look like to clean up but not remove folks?

Ali Rhodes, parks + rec: The park ranger program has delivered significant benefit to all our parks, not just in relation to encampment removals. (Park rangers paid for out of this budget.)

It would have a "significant impact" on our downtown team, Rhodes says. We had high turnover on that team, that's stabilized a bit.

Tadeucci: If the entire budget went away, all that team does is work with the police dept and encampment removals. "If the entire budget for that went away, I'm not sure where the cleanups would occur."

NRV: This is a philosophical and policy question. "If the budget goes away, we don't have a budget to do that work. That is the budget intended to do cleanups around the city."

Speer: "I'm not saying we just leave trash there."

Tadeucci: If there were more restrooms or more dumpsters, there would still be costs we need to discuss.

I'm a little confused... how did the city clean up waterways and parks *before* this program got OK'd? They obviously had that in their budgets, just probably to a lesser degree.

Benjamin: "This stuff doesn't fit in trash cans; it barely fits in dumpsters. I'm trying to figure out what ending (encampment removals) would do" beyond removing these items.

Wallach: "I understand the intention, but I think this is tantamount to abandoning portions of our public land to public use."

Only Speer and Folkerts support this, so that's not happening.

Friend: "I think it's worthy of the philosophical conversation, but it's really a policy change." Someone can ask for that, but not on a budget night.

Folkerts: My biz is downtown. We called the ambassadors only for human waste cleanup. If there were public bathrooms nearby, we wouldn't have to do that.

Moving on.
Speer: We heard from EFAA, we heard from folks who are struggling to afford housing. A small amount of $$ could keep our homelessness problem from getting worse. "We found $500K for potholes. I'm wondering if we can find $500K for people."

Brockett: Where could we get that $$?
Woulf: We know the available funding does not meet the need, including in housing and human services. "We feel like we put together a budget that reflected a lot of those needs."

Winer: "Anything that we can find, even if it's $100K, is better than nothing."

Benjamin: What about our cash-in-lieu fees? That pays for affordable housing. Can't we use it to keep people IN housing?

Wallach: I would be very leery of treating our cash-in-lieu funds as some form of cash cow for something other than creating affordable housing, which is what they're for.

Council supports asking staff to figure out where to get more $$. No decision tonight; there's another hearing on the budget on Oct. 19(?) I believe.

Sum of tonight's changes
- $10K to community connectors
- $103K to ambassadors
- $500K for paving
- $30K for underpasses

New this year: Speer and Folkerts vote for the budget. Last year they declined bc of the increased spending on encampment removals. That increased again this year, but they prob got so much shit last year that they didn't want to vote against it again.

That's all for the budget one.

@threadreaderapp please unroll. Thanks!