Transcript

1 Xcel Energy Partnership Update Staff Time: 30 Min Council Time: 60 Min

0:05:18so much for joining us. We have two hot items today on tonight's agenda. one the first one is the XL uh energy partnership update and the second is enhancing Boulders's wildfire resilience through one the development of a comprehensive wildfire home hardening implementation hub and two assessment analysis of current or planned city wildfire related programs projects and actions. Both of those are a mouthful. Before we go into our work item, I would like to outline how the meeting will be conducted. We will review the staff's presentations and then we'll have time for questions. For questions, since these are both topics we are all very interested in, let's ask one question each first and then if we have time, we can do a second round. At the end of the presentation, we will conduct our council discussion with staff. And if you have questions, please wait for the staff to complete their presentation first. For comments, I won't be timing anyone if I don't have to because we all share some uh we all care so much about this topic. But let's try to be as succinct as possible because we want to stay on schedule and end on time. We will now turn to our city manager, Nuria Rivera Vandermide, to introduce our first item. Thanks so much, Mayor Proam.

0:06:39And because we've got a pretty heavy night, I'm going to send it over to our director of climate initiatives, Jonathan Cohen, to open us up with some introductory remarks. >> Excellent. Thank you, Ner. I'll take that hand off. Uh, good to see you tonight, mayor, members of council. Uh, and good evening to community members who are watching tonight. Uh, as Nuria said, I'm Jonathan Cohen, and I'm honored to serve as the director of the climate initiatives department here at the city. So, we we have a pretty big group uh for tonight uh tonight's update, but I do want to welcome and thank our Excel colleagues for being here. You can see them on the screen. Robert Kenny, the president of Excel Energy's Colorado operating company. Andrew Holder is a director of community relations and local government affairs for Excel Energy and Nicholas Cole is our Boulder Area Manager at Excel. So, uh totally appreciate your willingness to have this conversation with us tonight. So, really great that you're joining us. Uh we can go ahead and pull the slides up and I think we'll get rolling.

0:07:39So, just to as those come on up, you can go on to the next slide if you don't mind. Just to give you a sense of where we're headed tonight over the next 90 minutes or so, uh we'll spend a few minutes up front providing a little context from me. I'll turn it over to Excel for the bulk of the presentation and then once Excel's done with their slides, Carolyn Elam will jump in and give a short update on the energy resilience council priority that came out of our conversation with Excel last year and then we'll bring it back to council and the questions that we have for you. I I did wanted to note that the first question is really an opportunity for council to have a dialogue directly with Excel and then Carolyn's going to tee up a more specific question related to the resilience priority. So, since we don't do these updates all that frequently, I thought it might be useful to start with just a little bit of background, particularly for folks in the community who might be a little bit newer to this conversation, but I I would start by saying I think most people are likely to know that Excel is an electric and natural gas utility that serves Boulder and Boulder and Excels

0:08:35have have had a pretty complicated history. We all know that. Uh for more than a decade, the city explored the possibility of creating our own electric utility in large part because of the community's desire for greater local control over our energy future. In 2020, uh the Boulder community voted to enter into a new franchise and energy partnership agreement with Excel. And that agreement established really the framework for how we work together around a number of shared priorities. So at the center of that partnership is a commitment to work together on things that matter a lot to Boulder. So accelerating our emissions reductions, improving the safety, reliability, and resilience of our electric system, advancing innovation, and making sure that the benefits of that transition are both accessible and affordable to our community. You go on to the next slide.

0:09:24So we are continuing to work towards 100% emissions free electricity supply by 2030. uh supporting Boulder's broader emission reduction goals, really focusing on how we improve reliability and safety, how we center equity, how we engage the community, and how we work together on projects and investments and help us get there. So, this slide really lays out the areas of focus on the left side and then how we work together uh on the right. So, the what and and a bit of the how. And I just really want to acknowledge the incredible work of our advisory panel has really helped shape uh how we have advanced a lot of the priorities uh through the partnership. And I also think it's important um that we have to recognize and celebrate that there are some really great examples of collaboration that wouldn't have happened without this partnership. But it's also fair to say that we have a ways to go and I know that that's particularly true for the issues that I think are going to be on a lot of people's minds tonight that are watching at home. So reliability, uh, recent outages, wildfire risk, infrastructure resilience, and cost. So we're six years into this agreement, and a lot has changed since 2020. Uh, I think it's easy to say that climate risks facing

0:10:34our community are becoming more immediate. Uh, we're seeing more extreme weather, more increased wildfire risk, and the reality of an aging electric system. At the same time, our dependence on electricity is increasing. So, as we electrify our buildings and our transportation, reliable electricity becomes even more important to just about every aspect of our lives. So, tonight is really that opportunity to look on honestly at where we've made some great progress, where we haven't, and what we need to do differently or better going forward. One of the things that we heard pretty clearly from council last year was that along with a clear focus on emission reductions, wildfire protection and infrastructure resilience needed to be a major focus of the partnership. And I think that's exactly right. Uh we know there are concerns in the community about recent outages, about reliability, and about the balance between reducing wildfire risk and maintaining reliable power.

0:11:27Those aren't simple issues, and there aren't always simple answers, but they're incredibly important issues for us to be working on together. And I know Excel is here tonight prepared to talk about what they are doing, what we're doing together, where they're seeing progress, and where there's still work to do. And again, just to take a minute of acknowledgement to all the people who will actually make this partnership work. There are a lot of folks from both the city and Excel teams uh either watching tonight or possibly here. Um our team spent a lot of time together uh working through these issues and I really do appreciate the expertise and commitment that everyone has been bringing to this work. So to wrap uh these are important conversations. We appreciate the opportunity to have them and I'm looking forward to the discussion. With that, I think I'm gonna turn the presentation over to Nick.

0:12:16>> All right. >> Appreciate it, Jonathan. And uh again, thank you city council members and city staff and uh citizens listening today. Definitely appreciate the opportunity to talk to you all about the different things that we're doing in the community. So definitely looking forward to this experience with you guys. Can I go to the next slide, please? Um so today, kind of as Jonathan teed up, we'll be going over our wildfire mitigation plan. We'll start from a wide view and then get more granular on the different things that we're doing in Boulder. Then we'll highlight some of our underground projects that we currently have in the works as we speak. Uh speaking on those projects and reliability that it will uh serve in the community. Then we'll uh highlight a transmission rebuild project that we have broken up into two phases in the community that we're proud of mentioning to you all today. Then we'll get into uh some of the system reliability uh upgrades that we're doing in the community to not only increase capacity but again increase the reliability that we have in the area. Then give you a sneak peek of some of the future initiatives and projects that we have that we're looking forward to. And then we'll wrap things up with going over our

0:13:19border emissions targets through our energy partnership agreement. So uh next slide please. Um as I mentioned before just taking a very wide view of uh what we do in the community. So these six priority uh uh areas are what we uh cartel our wildfire mitigation uh plan around. So system maintenance and upgrades again with anything technology definitely needs to be upgraded and improved upon. So making sure that we're maintaining our system and making sure that we are upgraded and hardened in areas that we can. Um and then going into preventative measures. Uh we have EPSS settings, enhanced power line safety settings. We use these for any contact on our power lines just to ensure that our assets are not causing any damage in the community, keeping our customers safe. We take a lot of pride in that. Our vegetation management uh team take a lot of pride in making sure that areas that we have identified as a vegetation areas that have caused contacts to our power lines that our crews are out there proactively and working with community members um to make sure that that is not an issue and get into that a little bit more once we get granular with Boulder in particular.

0:14:26again making sure that we're good partners with our first responders and community outreach partners. Again, we do a lot of things on our side, but we're nothing without our um external partners in the community. You guys have eyes on the ground. So, relying on those contacts is very valuable for us as a company and what we do, making sure that customers are safe. Our advanced technologies starting to get a little bit more granular on what we do in Boulder in particular. Uh different things that we have implemented AI panel cameras. We have a couple of those spread out through Boulder County and the city of Boulder in particular. In a couple instances, these have caught wildfires. So, this has allowed us to turn off power when it was necessary to avoid any damage in the community. So, again, we take a lot of pride in that and that also kind of co-lines with our enhanced power line safety settings as well. And to wrap this up with our strategy before getting into more details of what we're doing in Boulder, uh safety and preparedness. again, making sure that we're getting out into community, letting folks know um what we're seeing on our side and the different initiatives that we might need to do if it is necessary for us to do a PSPS,

0:15:27public safety power shut off or whatnot, and just making sure that we're keeping our customers informed more granular on the different things that we're doing in Boulder. As I mentioned before, we have our AI panel cameras that we have. We also have weather stations um that our meteorologist team uses just to get an idea of the weather in the area because that is one of our metrics that we do use if we do uh feel that a PSPs is necessary to keep our customers safe. We also have a good relationship with Boulder Forestry. Our vegetation management team works with them just to uh ensure areas that have been identified as trouble areas that we're um looking in those areas making sure that they're not causing any disturbances when we do know that they have in the past. Also myself and some of my team members, we uh do outreach events in the community, just letting folks know how our system runs, explaining what a PSPS is, explaining what EPSS settings are. Again, with the acronyms, I know that can be confusing for a lot of folks. So, we do a lot of different events. Just this year alone, I believe we've already done like 11 different events. I've done a couple with the Boulder Chamber, being on the board of directors and uh getting out

0:16:31the community, talking with other um chamber members, especially uh as you guys will know on this call, business community is a large part of um what makes the city drive. So, making sure that they have the most information that they need to understand the different things that we're doing to not only protect citizens, but also they can understand what we're doing to make sure that their businesses are thriving and also residents as well to make sure that their day of life uh can continue as uh it should. So, um, next slide, please. And getting more specific. So, currently, right now, through our WMP plan, uh, through 2025 and 2027, we have three underground feeder projects, um, going on in the area. Currently, we already have one that is kicked off already. Um, and this feeder in particular serves the water treatment facility, and we're very proud to be able to get this one started first, just understand the importance of this critical uh, infrastructure in the community. And so this project is already started and we anticipate it to be uh done in Q1 of 27. And then the other two feeders we expect to be done in the Q Q3 of 207 and then Q4 of 27. So again these feeders roughly serve 9,000 a little bit over 9,000 customers and

0:17:42again with that critical infrastructure on the first one that's already um in the construction. We're very proud to be able to get these three feeders um through our WMP and then as we do look to go to our next WMP plan in the future identifying other projects along with the city to make sure that we're looking at uh different feeders in the community that would support reliability and these projects and future projects again they help with increasing uh decreasing uh wildfire ignition and increasing uh system hardness with undergrounding these uh infrastructures. Again, even though underground feeders are not bulletproof and they are susceptible to outages, these have been identified working with the city um to make them underground to improve reliability and prevent, you know, any issues that could be associated with uh wildfires. So again, these projects are just the first three that we have in the pipeline.

0:18:36Again, working with the city currently now and then obviously our um our operations team does their own scoping. We'll continue to identify different projects and as we go into our next uh WMP plan, wildfire mitigation plan. Uh we'll work with the city to identify other projects to make sure that we're uh looking for projects that we can underground to harden the system in Boulder. >> And just to zoom out real quick, we have 50 miles that were approved in our wildfire mitigation plan. This represents a significant more portion of this project and I think it highlights the the partnership we have with the city of Boulder in particular. The team that was able to help bring that voice to the commission when we were going through um the regulatory process to advocate for these projects and understand and and bring that community voice really helped bring these to the forefront to ensure that they got approved by the commission. Um, and this represents a significant portion, like I mentioned, this is close to about 12 miles of the 50 miles that we're targeting here in the state of Colorado here over these three years. It's generally about a $70 million investment between these three. Nick uh touched on um uh the amount of customers that we're going to be able to help um kind of

0:19:43insulate from when we do potentially do uh future PSPS events while also ensuring that we keep system hardening for critical facilities. Um I know Mike Shard, I saw him earlier. uh the partnership where we have with the emergency management teams across the state that have helped us identify critical facilities in the community elevate onto our system so that we can make the strategic investments to ensure that we're keeping our community safe. I think these three projects kind of highlight the three confluences of those coming together get these moving forward. >> Yeah, and just to add on that, I appreciate you reminding me of that too. Then definitely a big shout out to Mike and his team. Again, that goes into our wildfire preparedness as well, having an open dialogue and communication with his group so we can see what's on the ground and again making sure that we're assisting where we can to make sure that he's able to provide the assistance that is needed in the city of Boulder and Boulder County at large. And then the last thing I'll add to this slide before we move on as well, um we are planning on trying to do leverage some of our social media channels to highlight some of these projects. We're still in the works on what that will look like, but

0:20:44the idea will be to try to have and in certain certain aspects try to have stakeholders like yourself, city council members to potentially come out to some of these sites as we do them. And then from a social media standpoint for the larger uh customer base, just give an idea of what these projects take. You can see our crews and our guys who work on these projects on a day-to-day basis. This is still in the works. We had a media event where we um kicked off the first one. Um, but we're still working out a couple of the kinks, but definitely wanted to highlight that as you know, trying to be as transparent as we can with our customers. We definitely have uh targeted these projects as some of the ones that we want to highlight through our social media channel. Just knowing how big social media is and again just knowing customers want to see what we're doing in the community. So, we feel like this is something that would be very beneficial. So, more updates to come on that. So, um, next slide, please.

0:21:35Um, transitioning to a bigger project. So, as you guys can see on the screen, um we have a transmission line that runs uh from um down in Boulder County uh uh Boulder open space and uh runs uh through a couple neighborhoods for example to name some. Uh it will go through eventually Folsam Street, Edgewood Drive, just to name a couple of the lines that it will cut through. But this is a transmission rebuild line. This is a 100-y old transmission line. This has been in discussion with the city staff and our staff for a while now as a as a project to be redone for reliability purposes and we're glad that we were able to get this kicked off the ground. Um this project will be broken into two phases. If you can see on the screen, the blue line will go through mostly um Boulder open space and then the second phase will go uh go through the city of Boulder and go through some of those areas that I mentioned before.

0:22:33We understand um we understand that phase 2 will uh cut through the city and we have been working in conjunction with the city and have made a commitment that we will be uh locking step with making sure that full communication is given before and during the construction of the uh of this project. Currently we do have this project labeled on our transmission project page at the moment. Um as we get closer to phase two with more scoping exercises we will have more details on that. There will be a u standing email that uh customers can send uh questions or concerns about with this. In conjunction with the city, we have agreed to making sure that we are um working with the city to make sure that the communication package that we do is fully fleshed out. Um we will be doing virtual and inerson open houses.

0:23:19Um this is still in the works working with the city. But the biggest thing that we do want to tell everybody with this project in particular is it was a very collaborative project. again getting it kicked off the ground. And again, when this project is kicking off, more so with phase two, just because it does cut through some of the city, we will be fully engaged with the city, making sure that the public messaging is very heavy and both sides are agreeing that the communication pathway is the best for the city. So again, more to come on this, but this is definitely a major project that we're glad that we're able to get off the ground. Again, this will provide reliability. Also going to more system hardening, just the way that we're rebuilding this line. And then again, uh this is just another uh example of the great collaboration that we do have with the city because it did take some time to make sure that we were doing it right, making sure that we found the right pathway to get this project done. And we're definitely glad that it's u going to going to go forward. And as you can see on some of the dates that are on the screen, um we're hoping that we can get

0:24:18phase one done uh in November uh well, yeah, end of November 26. And then um phase two, we're still in the scoping exercises to determine when we will be able to break ground. There's some more scoping that we need to do, but our target completion date is March of uh 28. So again, more information to come on this. it will be updated on our um website page and we will be working in conjunction with the city to make sure customers in the area are um notified about this project. So, >> and uh just to just to add real briefly as we start to and we still have time before uh we really get our construction sequencing all put together, we do want to make sure that we're obviously working with the staff. Caroline Elim and then the rest of the team has been fantastic in regards to putting together a a communications package that we can roll out, but we also want to take feedback. I think that we can always get better at communication here at Excel Energy. So, if you have any tidbits as we start to roll this out, please feel free to reach out to myself or Nick and we'll be able to adjust and change our communication strategy um prior to that construction kind of kicking off. So, we

0:25:22want to make sure that this stays collaborative and meets the needs uh of the community in particular. >> Y um next slide please. And getting more into reliability in that same target. So um through our distribution system plan that was approved by the PUC at the end of uh 2024 um we anticipate to have an extra 120 megawatts added to the city of Boulder. What that means in particular um this helps with electrification efforts in Boulder. Um getting away from gas. Um also again increasing reliability with some of these uh with some of this increased capacity. This also uh comes with new equipment. So newer equipment just increases the reliability in the area. Also, this supports EV charging. We've done uh projects in the past, especially since we have um I started our partnership with the city, but this also allows us to explore different projects and also community solar. Uh this also helps uh different customers be able to take full advantage of this. So, again, adding this extra capacity just allows us to be able to help Boulder meet their goals as a city and also just provide more opportunities for citizens to take part in the different initiatives and programs that we have at Excel. And again through u 120 megawws just for reference one megawatt generally uh

0:26:36could serve 750 to a,000 standard US homes just to give you a ballpark of what that could look like. So we're definitely proud of that and by the end of 2030 all of our um system upgrades will have taken place. So, we're definitely proud of working on this. And again, even getting to our distribution system plan for Boulder. That was a collaborative effort with the city uh staff as well, just identifying some of the areas and some of the needs that were needed in the community. So, we're definitely glad that we're able to get that kicked off. And on my next slide, I'll be able to kind of get more into the weeds of that. But overall, we're definitely glad with the collaboration. And uh speaking on that, um we have a uh weekly meeting that we started with our staff earlier this year just to identify some of the uh some of the outages that we've been experiencing in some of the areas um through the city. And through this collaborative meeting, we've been been able to identify nine uh feeders out of the 35 that serve the city. And through these uh exercises that we have done with the city, uh we have noticed that some of these issues range from vegetation management, wildlife contact, vegetation contact, and just some system

0:27:43upgrades that we need to do in certain areas. And we're definitely proud that we've been able to work with city staff and to be able to identify these things because as we've been hearkening on since we started this presentation, the collaboration is very big for us. As Jonathan mentioned, the history between Excel and Boulder has been tricky, but again, there's a lot of people who are going into this with good faith trying to make sure that we're making our system in the uh Boulder area work as best as possible. So, um this collaboration, just being able to identify these nine feeders, we definitely appreciate that collaboration and um as we work through these, we definitely have work orders that are currently open to uh mitigate some of these issues that we've identified. And then on the internal side, we're doing some scoping exercises on some more challenging uh issues that we found with some of our feeders. But overall, we're definitely glad that we're able to start this conversation and continue it as we continue to uh make sure our system is more reliable in the city of Boulder. Um next slide, oh, do you have >> No, go ahead.

0:28:40>> Um so this slide in particular, this slide more or less highlights um the initiative that I mentioned, how we're going to actually get to the 120 megawatts. And to kind of break it down a little bit more granular with uh new feeders in the area, this will allow us to shift load better in the community just in case if we do for whatever reason have to um turn off a feeder, whether that's due to wildfire concerns or if there's contact to the line. Having these new feeders in the area will allow us to be able to shift load so we can get customers turned back on for if they were to be cut off. And again, adding transformers just allowing us to have more power in um in our substation. So again, we're definitely glad that we're able to have all this planned out and we are on track and even in that 120 megawatts, we've already started this process. This is just the remainders that we have. And again, with all these different um upgrades, whether it's the substations or the transformers, we um these are this is new equipment. So new equipment just equals reliability. And then it allows us to harden our system a little bit more using newer technologies that we're more aware of. So again, this is more of

0:29:48a granular look on what it's going to look like um between 26 all the way to 2030. And again, as we do get, you know, through the middle of uh some of these projects, we will start our own uh resource planning on our side that's already kind of in its infant stage at the moment. But we'll continue to look at different areas where we can improve our system and add different um equipment and different ways that we can increase reliability and increase capacity just knowing that the city of Boulder wants to grow and we want to be um supporting that as much as possible and not being a hindrance to that. So um next slide please. And then on the horizon. So again that public messaging piece we definitely want to be um more transparent with our customers. We hear you guys. There's definitely been a lot of conversations about how does Excel do this? What projects are they doing? Where are they going to be? And again, working with our social media team. You guys might have seen more of a social media presence this year just with some of the increased marketing that we've done.

0:30:47That's just not a 2026 thing. We intend that intend for that to continue as we go along. And again, highlighting some of those underground projects that we're doing, highlighting just different projects as well. Um, so we're definitely looking forward to doing these. And again, as Andrew mentioned, if there's different ideas that constituents have, city staff has, city council, please send that over to us so we can get our social media team engaged with that. But we definitely are looking forward to leveraging our social media channels more just knowing that's just the era that we're in. So just lean into that more as a company. Um, and we're also working on our second voter report. um city council members if you can recall uh report got sent around I believe end of October November time frame of last year and basically our first voter report highlighted a lot of the projects initiatives and uh different uh collaborations that we've had with the city since uh 2020 since we reentered our franchise and started our energy partnership agreement in our second border report we intended we intend for this to get released excuse me closer to the end of the year, so in the November, December time frame. And the idea for this, just another channel just to highlight some of the different

0:32:00projects that we're doing. Um, again, currently our border report can be found on the uh city's website. I forgot which page, but on our website as well, we have a web page dedicated to our partnership with the city of Boulder that we were able to stand up um I believe end of summer last year. So, that's been up for almost a year now. So the current border report can be viewed on that just to get a preview of what the second one look like. But again, this will be another opportunity for us to highlight the different uh projects and great collaboration that we have with the city. And then again, uh we're definitely looking forward just to continue to work with the city staff on different public messaging and um projects that we have in the area because again, we have a team. We have our operations team that finds different projects, but city staff has a post on the city. City council, you guys also have a post on your constituents. So being able to keep that open line of communication, we're definitely looking forward to making sure that we're hearing what you guys are hearing and uh making sure that we're messaging those properly so we're lock step and everybody um has a full picture of what

0:33:01we're doing as a company. And then to highlight one of our projects that we have currently in the pipeline, our clean heat pilot program, we were able to kick this off. The PUC approved us um for neighborhood scale pro uh clean heat projects in June of this year. And uh we're definitely looking forward to um exploring this with Boulder. Boulder was one of five communities that were picked for this. Again, we take our partnership with uh Boulder very seriously. And again, this is just another example of being able to bring you guys along on the different pilot programs that we do have. Again, this pilot program in particular just gives a different opportunity to um look at different opportunities to uh get rid of some of the gas in Boulder. Um but again this a pilot program that we're happy to um have and again right now it's very early in the scoping phase at the moment. So we've only had a couple of meetings with city staff to identify projects but we do have a list uh that we're definitely proud of. So as we get further into this project uh program in particular we'll definitely keep uh city staff and uh citizens in the loop on that. But definitely glad that we're able to get motor tied into this pilot program.

0:34:08>> And this one's driving to a clear deadline. We have a June 1st filing of 2027. Once we go through the scoping, like Nick mentioned, within partnership with our communities, once we get a couple of the projects identified that we want to propose, we have to drive those towards uh approval by the public utilities commission. And that filing date is June 1st. So, it is though we've had a couple meetings and we're still working through exactly which ones we want to explore with the city of Boulder, just uh driving towards a very concrete date that we're going to have to drive towards here within the next 9 10 months. Um, which is going to come up quick. So, I know this is going to pick up steam and we'll make sure that we're transparent and communicate with all you all as we work through this process.

0:34:46>> Yeah. Next slide, please. >> All right, that's me. >> Andrew, thank you both. Can I I'll just start by saying thank you to uh the mayor, Mayor Prom, and members of the city council for having us here tonight. Um, I'm looking forward to going through the next few slides, but then I'm more importantly I'm excited to hear your questions and be able to answer them. I'll also just say thank you to Nura, Jonathan, and all the staff at the city uh for their ongoing uh collaboration and partnership throughout the process. So, I think this is uh not a new slide. Um, and I'm going to just reiterate that we were the first uh electric and gas utility in the country to make really bold emission reduction goals. And our overarching goal is to be net zero by 2050. And that's across the provision of electricity, natural gas, and then building the infrastructure that allows for the electrification of transportation. Um, and so we're well on our way to doing that. And so in Colorado, we know that we're going to meet our statemandated carbon reductions and we will be able to achieve uh net zero methane emissions reduction by 2050 is the goal and that goal remains unchanged. Next slide, please.

0:36:14So this is this is a slide of which I'm extraordinarily proud and what this really shows is that by 2030 we will be 85% carbon-f free. That means our customers will be receiving uh electrons from us from wind and solar uh and we will be 85% carbon free which equates to a 90% reduction in carbon emissions measured from 2005 levels. We're so I think the the main takeaway from here is the steep reductions that we're seeing as well as the steep increases in renewables that we're providing. At the end of 2025, we were actually 46% carbon-f free. Um, and we'd also reduced carbon emissions by 60%. We expect by the end of this year to be uh se to reach a 70% reduction in carbon emissions. And you know, these these numbers that you see here are industry-leading. Um, and our customers in Boulder significantly benefit from these numbers as well. So every uh every additional amount of electricity that we generate from carbon-f free resources is another less carbon emissions that our customers in Boulder are are are receiving as well.

0:37:26And so we're just very proud of what we've been able to accomplish thus far. Um move to the next slide, please. So, this is illustrative. >> I'm not seeing any of these slides. Is anyone else? >> Oh, golly. You haven't seen any of them thus far? >> No, I just see them. >> Oh, sorry. Okay. I don't know what's happened. >> Did you see them? Were you seeing them before and just now you're not? >> I saw some and then you said it was when you was like, "Hey, you might have seen these slides before and I haven't seen any slides since." But if it's just me, I'll I don't want to interrupt. I I'll figure out a different way to grab them. But I don't know if anyone else is having that issue >> or not.

0:38:11>> Council member, we can send you the slide deck um by email as well. >> So I think this slide reads Boulder agreement progress and forecast. And this slide is intended to illustrate the progress that we've made uh in meeting our act our our emission reductions as compared to the Boulder agreement targets. We acknowledge obviously in 2022 and 2024 we did not meet our targets. Um I will say while we didn't meet the targets, we were awfully awfully close. 2026 we expect to be below the 27 target. And the reason it's noted as not applicable there is because there's not a 26 target in the agreement. But what this shows is where we expect to be this year. And then moving into 27 and 30, which are uh the commitments that we've made in the Boulder Agreement, we expect to be well under the targets for both 27 and 2030.

0:39:12Um so I think we will ultimately by the time we get to 2030, we will have exceeded the targets uh set forth in the agreement. Next slide, please. So what we're illustrating here is again another view of the journey that we've made in reducing our coal capacity. I mean a significant component of our commitment to being net zero by 2050 includes not just adding significant amounts of renewable but retiring our coal plants as well. And this is illustrative of the journey that we've made starting in 2005 and where we expect to be by 2030. And this is across our eight state footprint. The next slide, please, illustrates where we are in Colorado from 2010 to 2030. And what units remain are the two units in PBLO, Comanche 2 and three, Craig one and two, and then Hayden one and two. and though those will all be retired by the end of 2030.

0:40:20So you see the 2030 we'll still have the 500 megawatts but that just reflects the fact that we will not retire Comanche until the end of 2030. Next slide please. So you don't get to talk to me as much as Nick and Andrew. But what what I what I will also note here for um your future reading, we've produced a sustainability report every year for the last I don't know how many years. And the sustainability report contains a lot of detailed information about our journey in sustainability across all eight states with but you'll find information in there I think that you would find useful specifically related to Colorado. And then our Colorado impact report, you'll see the QR code there for that as well. We started uh producing this in 2024 25. And and what the impact report is intended to illustrate are all the ways in which we add value to our customers and our communities. And so it has a lot of detail about our economic impact, our job creation, um what we're doing to reduce carbon emissions, how we're mitigating the risk of wildfire, and a whole it's chalk full of a whole lot of detail and information about how we positively impact our communities.

0:41:39And so we we added these two QR codes for your future reading opportunities. and and if there's other questions that come out of that, feel free to follow up with us as well. I think at this point we're just going to open it up for questions. >> Uh nope, you pass it to me. >> Okay. Well, right on. There you go. >> Thanks. Uh and good evening, uh council and thank you. I'm Caroline. I'm a senior manager in the climate initiatives department. I'll be really quick. I know we're a little over and I want to make sure we have um time for council questions. Um, but I did want to take just a moment and and really acknowledge um, you know, I think you heard from the Excel team um, quite a bit about a lot of work going on in our community and it really does take a village and I just want to appreciate my colleagues across the city who are playing such an important role in making this happen from our um, forestry team who were out marking trees um, to make sure that the right ones got trimmed and the important ones were protected. our rideway team who's dealing with just a tremendous volume, our open space team who's um especially Bethany Collins who's been working to navigate work in

0:42:41the county, our attorney's office who's had to do some unique agreements including I think our first helicopter permit um inside the city. So, just really want to appreciate everybody um who's who's really been helping. So, this is just a reminder of our council priority work plan item for this year, which is the power reliability and resilience. Just wanted to touch on this. Um we've been working through the summer with Excel on data collection and what we will be presenting this fall is the more detailed you know project by project outline um that Nick summarized in his presentation. So we'll have a lot more detail about what each one is and its specific impacts as well as the risk analysis that staff have conducted. Um and then um we will be bringing that back again as a Q4 milestone as a road map and I'll talk about our engagement in a second. And I just wanted to reiterate we um you know we've gotten a few questions. Our our we don't anticipate this project stops um after this year. Our plan is to complete the road map and then come back to with to council in early um 2027 to to further dive into this topic. So just wanted to say that. Next slide please.

0:43:46Um so we have been doing engagement and I just want to note um you've gotten an opportunity to um hear from us here tonight and the Excel team. Um we also think it very important for council to um have a similar conversation with the community and that is coming up on October 8th with our community council forum. Um from that we'll be wrapping up our engagement um from window one um and providing a summary report of our survey results, our workshops and everything ahead of that October 8th study session or it's it's the forum. Um so you'll have all the results from our surveys. We had really good response to our survey. We have two final actions. um a plug in for our forum next Monday at the Boulder Chamber with the business community as well as we have a small business survey out. Um and then as I mentioned more work in 2027. Next slide.

0:44:34Um I figured council would be very interested in our resilience hub grant program that did close in the middle of August. We got 20 applications um and just um amazing and and we learned so much from the applications. We've um been reviewing those and we plan to um start to make those announcements to those that have been selected. We're anticipating a tiered approach. Um so we definitely have um different nonprofits in different stages and you know some are ready to hit the ground today and some will need some more support advising. Um so we're we're planning you know probably more than just five or six selections but selections that provide different types of um resources. Um so we will um once we make those announcements certainly share that with council and provide more detail um primarily I think in in our memo packet or separately. So with that I believe the last slide is the questions for council. Um I will read them. You have them um and so I think uh back to you uh may prom winer.

0:45:33>> Okay so let's leave that up for a minute. I'm going to read it real quick. Is the partnership delivering the outcomes council expected? And are there areas where council expects Excel to change course or accelerate progress? So, let's see. We can remove this and maybe put in the chat. Um, and then we can have everybody raise their hands if they have if they like to comment on this or actually just com combine your questions and your comments so we can see if we can go a few rounds. So, who wants to talk to Excel or our climate department? We have Nicole Spear up first. Awesome. Thank you. Um, and I just I just have a what I hope is just a quick question um for Excel. Thanks so much for being here tonight. um given increases in electricity use, data centers coming in, um and the resource plan you recently submitted to the commission showing that you're still going to be quite short of your forecasted resource needs for next year.

0:46:35Is Excel gonna going to start implementing rolling brownouts in 2027? No, we don't have any plans to implement rolling brownouts and and and we wouldn't and just to give you maybe just a brief overview of how and I prefer to call them controlled outages, but we you don't actually know whether you're going to do that until the time comes to actually have to do it. So, we wouldn't even know sitting here today if we're going to be doing that. But, I will say we don't have any reason to believe that we would need to. So the shortage that you've seen in our load and resource tables, which is what I'm assuming you guys are referring to, we will be able to use uh market purchases, we're als 27, we do see our load and resource table where we're where we're we're deficient. Um, but that's also deficiency against a planning reserve margin. And and so we plan for a peak load plus a planning reserve margin. And most days of the year, you're not at a peak load situation. And so it's not an issue. On the days where we do see tightness in the system, um, what we will do is make market purchases of power within the market and we see that there's ample depth and liquidity in the

0:47:57market in 26 and 27. And then if it gets to an extreme circumstance, we can also do public calls for conservation. In the most extreme circumstances, if we did have to do controlled outages or managed load shed, there's a variety of different terms for it. It's usually 15-minute increments in specific locations on the system. Um we we drill on this as every utility in the industry actually does. And so we know where um hospitals and other critical infrastructure are located. And so our system operators will do the managed load shed or managed outages in 15minute increments. And so and it's and it cycles through our system in 15-minute increments. So nobody's ever out for more than 15 minutes at a time. But the short answer to your question, just to answer it again, I'll end where I began.

0:48:45We have no reason to believe that we'll be in need of doing rotating outages or or load shedding. >> Okay. Thank you, Robert. We're moving on to Aaron. >> Wait. Uh, Tara, can I call a quick because I answered the same question. >> Yes, there I feel like I didn't quite get a full answer to that one, too, but >> Well, it was no say that that you don't really know until you get there, right? So, I guess you doing things to make sure that they aren't necessary even, right? >> We are. We do. We do. We've that's why our resource plans again when you see a load and resource table table that shows a deficiency that's a deficiency against a peak load and a planning reserve margin and and so we've had that before.

0:49:30It's just that it's gotten more attention lately because everybody's concerned about the data centers. Data centers aren't even going to be online. Most of the data centers we're bringing online are going to be later in 2028 and beyond anyway. Um, and so it's not data centers that are driving um the the resource deficiencies that we've seen in 26 and 27 because those data centers aren't even online yet. So, so the the answer is we don't have any reason to believe that we're going to need to do any rotating outages. The only reason I said we won't know until like the circumstance arises is because I don't want to sit here and give you a definitive answer that we're never going to do a rotating outage because I don't think any utility would say that. But we don't have any reason to believe that that's going to be necessary.

0:50:12>> Okay. Thank you. Do you still have a colloqui, Tina? >> I do. Um, so I just want to clarify that when you purchase energy on the market, does that impact our rates or is that factored into the budget so that that doesn't change the cost to our consumers in Boulder? >> So, it depends. This this one I am not probably going to be able to provide you a satisfactory answer because it depends on what the market prices are at the time. I mean typically if we're making market purchases in real time it's going to be more expensive energy. Um and so and then that gets passed through there's something called the energy we have an ECA there's an adjustment process that happens at the commission where we pass through energy um energy costs. So, I can't definitively say no, it won't, but I also can't tell you by how much.

0:51:05>> And do you So, when we're thinking about um bringing on new energy users, including things like switching to heating and appliances and stuff like that, are are we are you asking us to moderate how much how many new energy users were bringing on in order to avoid what Nicole is asking about? So, do do we need to cap things for the next couple years or um just keep doing what we're doing and we should expect the same outcomes with similar rates? >> I I'm not entirely sure that I'm understanding the question. Are we asking you not to bring on more customers? I mean, can we service is I guess are your are your are your forecasts right now for the next couple years assuming things are more or less the same in Boulder or could energy use go up in Boulder and the surrounding areas?

0:51:57>> Yeah. So, when we do load forecasting, it's and and we have a whole department that does load forecasting and and it's it's an art and a science, but it's more science. And so I'm not going to I can't tell you exactly how they do it, but we do project what we think energy use is going to be. Some of it's based on historic patterns. Some of it's based upon conversations that we have with offices of economic development that tell us that they expect to see new subdivisions being built or they expect over this time horizon to see new manufacturing facilities, whatever the case may be, coming to that particular jurisdiction. And so as we're planning for um both distribution capacity and for generating capacity, it's based upon our load forecasting. So 2026 when you've when you've looked at a load and resource table, what we're projecting in 26, 27, and this gets updated several times throughout the year, but we've been predicting what we think load will be in 26 and 27, 28, 29, 30, and beyond.

0:52:59>> All right. Thanks. Sorry. >> Okay, we're gonna move on. Is that okay? >> All right, we're gonna move on to Aaron Brackett. Mayor Brackett. >> Uh, all right. Well, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate you taking the time. Couple quick questions. One is, uh, during the PSPS's, uh, one of the things that has been challenging and frustrating for our residents and the residents of nearby areas has been how long it's taken for the power to come back on after the incident. Are you all looking at any technological solutions to being able to re-energize power lines more quickly? >> Um, yes. And so several things. To the extent that we were able to put power lines underground, that avoids having to do a PSPs in the first instance. We're also adding sectionalization devices at more frequent intervals on our distribution feeders so that you can be more surgical when we have to do a PSPS.

0:53:57So if you have a 100 foot feeder and right now we might have one device on the line at the 50 foot mark. We're trying to add more at shorter increments so that you end up having to deenergize fewer customers which then means you have fewer customers that get deenergized which then means we have fewer customers to um or fewer lines to have to inspect and we can make them shorter um make them smaller in scope and then that makes restoration times faster. We are so and we're looking at other devices that we will be piloting um that can give us greater visibility into so that we can avoid having to deenergize the line in the first place. And so we have other devices that we're looking at to put on the lines that will allow us rather than having to make the decision to deenergize say five or six hours before we can make a more realtime decision based upon the actual weather showing up which then allows us to to make more rapid and nimble decisions in real time. Um and then and just in terms of inspections, we use drones, we use helicopters, we use human beings to foot patrol on the ground. The challenge with with drones and helicopters, as you might imagine, we can't fly them in the

0:55:08dark and we can't fly them until the wind stops. And so that that is just that's just a a matter of the safety of the of the of the aircraft. Um, but those are some of the things that we're doing to be able to restore power more quickly. >> Thanks. I appreciate that. Mayor, I know this wasn't part of your question, but I wanted to just add real briefly as part of the frustration that we've heard very specifically from our community members is not only the frustration for the duration of the outage, but the information lacking on the restoration progress and getting a real-time point of when the restoration would actually take place. So, there's two things that I really want to point out. The first one is is the communication updates that we've been able to undergo and what we have on the forecast that our teams are working through. First is uh we are allowing customers to self-register so that one of the challenges we've had in previous PSPS events is customers who are renting aren't necessarily the account holder from an Excel meter perspective. So customers can opt in so that we can get information to the renters to the facilities managers but also to folks that are wondering if their uh their kids school is going to be out. You can

0:56:13put in an address to get real-time alerts on that that aspect. So that's on our PSPS uh web web page. um and that went live back here in February to make sure that our customers can get that information. Additionally to that, we've done a number of outage update maps. Um, you've probably seen the latest iteration that went live about two weeks ago if you visited RXL Energy Outage website, but that's also giving us more real-time information and updates from the crews that can update through the control center to give us more up-to-date restoration times based off of damage that they've assessed in the field so that we can pinpoint, hey, it's actually going to be another two hours or if it is going to take a substantial amount of time to actually get the equipment repaired so we can give our customers more real-time information.

0:56:55And lastly, we're starting to uh explore what type of communication channels we can utilize through that outage map. Instead of just getting an outbound call or an email, uh we're looking at text exchanges and then also doing microtargeting through their social media platform so that we're hitting a number of different channels with restoration progress. >> Um just just to interrupt for one second, we have a lot of questions and then we have double questions. So you do not have to feel like you have to have a long answer. Good, good point. Terry, am I allowed one additional question? >> You are allowed. >> Okay, great. So, I'm glad to hear you're taking notifications seriously. My one other question is when we entered into the partnership, one of the areas of interest and expectations was in innovations in the energy area. I know we had the exciting prospect for the virtual power plant, which unfortunately had to be canceled because the federal grant was canceled. Do you have any other things in the pipeline that you're looking at working with the city on that they're kind of different from day-to-day um operations but that might deliver new and innovative ways of approaching our electrical system?

0:58:05Yeah, I'll I think the first one, mayor, is we kind of highlighted that not only through the House Bill 1370 where our, you know, where we're going to look at a number of different projects to use alternative resources other than traditional natural gas infrastructure that so that could include a MPA portfolio, potentially a geothermal project. We're looking at all the above through that innovative process. Additionally, we still have the Pearl Street program that we're looking at for an aging gas line and what that looks like. Um, I know Nick has been working with our uh team and the city staff in particular about how we engage those customers a little bit more frequently and with a little bit more uh earnest to make sure that we're getting some uh real-time adoption and energy efficiency turned around on those. So, those are the two that I can point at um current state, but I think that we're going to continue to explore additional options and we're going to work with our community advisory panel in particular to to help us inform what other innovative projects that we look at as well because they've been really, you know, illustrative thus far.

0:59:01>> Great. >> Moving on. >> Thanks for that. Okay. And then Terry, shall shall I answer the question while I'm at it? >> No. >> Okay, that's it for me. >> What question are you answering? Well, the question from city sta staff about Excel for us. >> Okay. Sure. Well, go ahead. Short. Like you always do. >> It was it's about whether um specifically about whether um we're delivering the outcomes the partnership is delivering the outcomes council expected in areas where we might look to change course or accelerate or ask for all the change. I'll just say that real quickly that I do really appreciate how seriously you're taking the wildfire preparedness and undergrounding work and really glad to see that you're bringing in additional resources um not just on from outside the Boulder system to do that. So I'm applaud that. Really glad to see the wastewater treatment plant in particular being um the lines of that being undergrounded. So please continue with that and more of that please.

0:59:55That's excellent. Um I will say that kind of the innovations more of that would be welcome. So, I hope you can come up with some additional options there and we'll look forward to hopefully hearing from you about that before too long. And then the one thing I'll say in terms of where uh we really need work is just on the base um the basic reliability of the system. I mean, we have neighborhoods in Boulder that are experiencing outages, some of the highest level of outages in in the entire system. And uh we just really need to do better. I have um residents who are just um desperate uh because of the amount of times that they have outages. So just really really want to see a higher level of reliability on the system is my biggest piece of feedback.

1:00:35Thanks. >> Okay, I changed my mind that we were only going to have questions after a because also I'm going to lose control or already have. Originally I was going to have only one question, but I can see that that went out the window. So don't worry Nicole, I'll come back to you. And now keep your questions to two please and we're going to Rob or we'll never finish in time. Thanks Tara and thanks for the presentation. Um I think this is a easy question kind of yes or no. Um the chamber has this uh new program helping businesses prepare before the crisis um which is this complimentary role with um the city, the county and office of disaster management and it's about preparing before the disruption, navigating the crisis, recovering more quickly. Da da da. Have they engaged you or have you engaged the chamber with um the small business conversation?

1:01:34>> Yes. So, uh Rob, I have uh I sit on the Boulder Chamber board of directors. So, have a good uh relationship with John Trey. So the times that we can share information on outages and different things to make sure the businesses aren't uh disrupted as much as possible, sharing that information and as we go through later on this year working on trying to do another uh Q&A session, but we do have a good relationship with the chamber and supporting that manner of uh how we can support our businesses if um plant outages are needed. So >> makes sense on the board. Okay. >> Anything else? >> One other quick question. One um snafu that happened during one of the PSPS's is there were some contractors that Excel had hired to re-energize the system and there was a bit of a communication problem um or an operational uh problem. Has that been addressed? And if so, how >> what was the problem?

1:02:31>> Well, no, it's a good point because I think we could have pointed to a couple of different issues. Obviously, those crews have been 24/7. You know, we we let them We did have a miscommunication issue. It has been addressed. We have a ongoing RFP that goes out that our contractors respond back into. We added some more provisions in there to make sure that we mitigated this issue. We had another issue up in Northern Colorado during a December event. So, we we had two different issues, both of them stemming around communication, but those have been addressed based off of the contract refinements we did with both of our contractors. >> Awesome. Okay, thank you. >> You bet. >> Thanks, Rob, for your succinctness. Next, we are moving to Matt Benjamin with his one or two questions.

1:03:14>> One or two. I mean, must be two. Um, I appreciate you guys coming in and and uh laying it to us straight. I appreciate it. I mean, cander is the best way for us to move forward. Um, so my my question centers around maybe less PSPS, but more recent events. Um, really a week ago today, we had two fires in 24 hours. Um the first one though through the though the investigation is still ongoing. It appears that the fire was started by either sort of faulty or impacted Excel equipment or infrastructure in around People's Crossing. And the second fire uh which happened 24 hours later was an underground electric vault over in South Boulder by Coler Reservoir and behind Noah. These are not typically these areas that we seem to focus on when we're dealing with wildfire or any of these other equipment. And so I'm trying to get a sense of this is just general infrastructure that seems to be failing or having challenges. I know that there's so much focus on the wildfire and those particular lines and the areas of highest risk. So how are we dealing with maintaining the regular infrastructure because sometimes that stuff might be actually what sneaks up on us and maybe actually causes the bigger problems in community rather than

1:04:24the big stuff that we've been identifying. So, how are we maintaining the the sort of almost day-to-day regular low lower level infrastructure um that's clearly sparking fires and causing a lot of concern in community? >> Well, I I'll I'll answer the first one first about the fire and and people's crossing. I It's still under investigation, so I can't tell you that we did start that one. The underground vault one, I can I can just respond generally speaking about how we are maintaining our equipment. Um, and so we do do routine inspections. We do routine maintenance. Um, and we're doing that around the clock all the time. As you might imagine, 40, 50, 60 year assets are going to fail. And so we do have an inspection schedule over the times over which we are inspecting all of our equipment.

1:05:12There's poles, crossarms, underground equipment. Um, and so that's just normal course of business and that just happens routinely. We haven't stopped doing that in favor of wildfire mitigation work. So, our teams are doing that work all the time. The specific vault that you're talking about, I don't know the maintenance. I don't know the specifics of that particular vault um and what the age of that equipment was. I can say just as a general proposition, you know, having equipment underground and historically why we haven't always put equipment underground except for aesthetic reasons was because it is more uh difficult to find it and fix it when you have to go out and fix it. And so that's just that's that's not specific to this underground vault that you're referring to. That's just as a general proposition.

1:06:03>> I appreciate I could add uh just real briefly >> the the other thing I'll just add is we're also putting our money where our mouth is. We obviously have our wildfire mitigation plan, but if you've seen our sustainability report over the next five years, we're projected to invest over 7.5 billion dollars into our distribution system across Colorado. So that's going to be poles, that's going to be cable replacements. We, you know, Nick kind of covered some of the investment in Boulder in particular. We're looking at the investment portfolio north of 500 million. So, it's it not only is it routine inspections, you know, keeping asset health on a clear line of replacement, but it's it's strategic investment to make sure that we're not just tackling one, you know, one part of our business. >> Great.

1:06:44>> Anything else, Matt? >> Yeah. My M my last question is there's just a lot there's a lot going on. And so, I think for folks in our community, how are we quantifying and measuring success for our community? I I know we can measure in lines and other stuff, but but I think it's really important for us to be able to like how do we know that we're being successful and how do we quantify that, hey, by 2030 we're x amount safer from fire than we were in 2025. So, how do we do that? And how do we do that in a cohesive way that combines what Excel is doing in partnership with the city and our other partners and so there's one place where community like, hey, there's this is how we're safer. How are we doing that?

1:07:22>> So, I'll say two things. There's there's the set of metrics that we use as because I think you're asking both about safety and just generally how do we know we're succeeding. So we we do have the quantitative measures of replacing x number of poles, replacing x number of bare conductor with covered conductor. So that's just the quantitative. We also measure reliability. Um and you know even with the um uh enhanced power line safety settings in the PSPS we've still achieved 99.95% reliability. And that's just a simple ratio of uh the the number of hours that are available in a year. It's 8760 and the that's the denominator and the numerator is how many outages we have and we keep track of customer minutes out. Um and so that's another uh KPI that we keep track of. There's the SATI which is system average interruption duration index. We also so we have several reliability based metrics that we track. And then to your specific question about how do we know that we're X amount safer making specific investments and quantifying the risk reduction achieved by virtue of that is a lot of what's in our wildfire mitigation plan. So we've prioritized the various investments whether it's system hardening and and resiliency putting up artificial intelligence cameras, weather stations, all of that is based upon a risk

1:08:47prioritized uh methodology. Our next plan that we will file in 2027 will have an evolved risk um riskbased methodology and we will have a better way of quantifying how much risk reduction we expect to achieve by virtue of these investments. It's a new skill for the industry as a whole quantifying risk reduction achieved by virtue of particular investments. And you might imagine some of it's a bit challenging because you're ultimately measuring the proof you're proving a negative like had we not made these investments might something have happened and so or by making these investments can we definitively say that we avoided something happening because you're trying to prove a negative. Um and so we will continue to refine that um in our next wildfire mitigation plan. >> Thank you so much. Okay. Are we good to go on to the next person? Matt.

1:09:47>> Yeah. >> All right. Thumbs up. Yes, go for it. >> Great. Okay, Ryan, you're up. >> Thank you. Hey team, so um I shared a um a memo in hotline on Tuesday, which I understand um Carolina team shared with Excel. I only have two questions for now, so we won't have time for all of it, but I I will reference it in the next steps. Um, but I do have a question on the Yeah, this picking up on what um Matt discussed on on outages. Um I don't know if it's possible for Caroline or the or Jonathan or the team to show um there was a graphic that um Caroline worked up and this would be you know there's a diff there's a few different metrics but this one is the uh >> I believe it shows the aggregated uh duration of minutes in town in the city of Boulder that were out of power. And it shows something like um Boulder residents have 20 times more um minutes of interrupted power-ish than they did a few years ago. So, you know, maybe the there's details here you you you comment on, but um assuming this is more or less accurate, can can the Excel team speak to the future? Like what what direction is this is this line going?

1:11:10And can you talk to what years we might see it return back to the the pre2023 period? >> Yeah. So you didn't you said can I comment on this and so I what I will say is I would say this just looking at it it's largely attributable to when we started doing EPSS and PSPS. Um and that's that's what I would say that's why you see this the steep incline. We've used EPSS and we use something called hotline tag which is actually a more a less it's a more crude version of an EPSS and as we add uh more reclosers and sectionalization devices and Viper reclosers to the system we would expect not to have to use hotline tag as a risk reduction methodology. So this is this stops at 2025 as the high water mark as we are doing all the things that we've talked about replacing bare conductor with covered conductor replacing small diameter wire with larger diameter wire doing the targeted undergrounding putting on more sectionalization devices in the viper reclosers we should expect to see these number this this the high water mark of call it 2225 I guess is what that is on the on the yax taxes.

1:12:28I would expect that to start coming down in 27 and beyond. I I can't tell you that I've that we've quantified specifically um the impacts on Sadi and Seami. Did we create this? Did you guys create this? >> I my understanding since I have the floor is this is based on Excel data compiled by the city of Boulder team to in a way that's appropriate for public consumption. I I don't have any reason to doubt it. I just don't know what it includes because we because we also take keep track of sad but we also have different ways of counting major event days and storms etc. So but I mean but your your overarching question is when when would we expect to see improvements and and I would say >> sorry to interrupt you. It's not when will we expect see improvements it's when will we see a return to the the norm that that residents have had in 2023 and before.

1:13:22So I I would expect that we would start to see a return uh to something that's that we want too. Just to be clear, we want greater reliability for our system as well. Um in 27 and 28 and beyond as we continue making the investments, I can't tell you explicit or particularly when we would return to either 2018 or 2022. Um, and it's a fair question, council member, and I just I don't have an answer for you about when we will be back to either 2018 or 2022 levels, but I would expect that we would begin to see a downward trend and would expect to start seeing improvements in 26, 27, 28 and beyond as we continue doing the work that we're doing on system reliability and system hardening. the wildfire mitigation work that we will do while it's primarily for wildfire mitigation also will have reliability impacts as well.

1:14:21>> Okay. And just just to clarify because I just on the same question it do will we return like is this is this is this something you think is realistic or are you >> I think it's a great point. If I could just add, you know, the investments that we're making are going to shure up the system and harden the system from those day-to-day outages that we've potentially been experiencing. But I also want to just highlight, you know, going back to when, you know, the National Weather Service has been tracking over 75 mph days here in Colorado, we've had less than seven or eight of these prior to 1996. And then post 2018, we've had over 11 of these. Particularly in Boulder, post 2020, we've had over five days that have had 90 mph plus wind. So some of this is out of our control in regards to the weather that we're starting to experience. Some of that, you know, indication from your graph there does contemplate some of the large events that we've took, you know, we've had in, you know, since April of 2024. Um, so the day-to-day outages are definitely going to be coming down with these strategic investments, but I don't have a crystal ball to see what type of weather we're going to continue to see

1:15:22over the next couple years due to the the effects of climate change. >> Okay, thanks. That's I know that's all we have now for my first question. The second question is >> That was your first question. >> That was my Yeah. Well, it hey, I I only spoke for a small part of that time. Um, so my second question is >> that was on me. >> Thank Thanks, Robert. What, if anything has Excel on to understand and prioritize the disproportionately impacted communities and facilities in Boulder, like for example, medical and care facilities, homeless shelters, places with cold food storage, downtown businesses, residents who have higher medical, financial, and other needs. Um, what has Excel done, you know, in this area? So, we work with our offices of emergency management at the county level in all of the counties that we serve to create critical infrastructure and critical customer lists. That's codified in our wildfire mitigation plan, but we didn't we started doing that after the first PSPS event. And so that process means what we've done is we've asked you, you the county governmental entity, whether it's the office of emergency management or otherwise, share with us their list of critical infrastructure and critical facilities and critical customers. We have a definition that's codified in our wildfire mitigation plan

1:16:35of what a critical facility is. Um, and then we compare that list to our definition and we create that list and then we enter it into our system of record. so that it's overlaid with our GIS system so we know where those customers are on specific feeders. I was just informed today that we are doing this for our tier 2 and tier three uh zones. There's 23 counties. We've completed 16 of those counties and so we still have to uh compare the list that we receive from the county to our own definition to make sure that we agree on that. The other thing I'll say specifically to customers with access and functional needs or customers that are medically sensitive equipment. We do have our battery program, our battery rebate program that is for um incomequalified customers that are on durable medical equipment. They can receive a rebate to buy a battery to use in circumstances where they need where the where we have to do a PSPs or otherwise.

1:17:36>> Okay. But but as far as like demonstrating out um um results with with respect to disproportionately impacted communities, I'm not hearing there's really anything to >> Well, I well results meaning >> change against the baseline, you know, improvement against the what what otherwise we'd be experiencing in in the experience, you know, the lived experience of people who are suffering power outages. >> Yeah, Councilman. Um, so we have our red truck program that we have and we've rolled that out in the community. So basically what our red truck does it uh it has a multitude of functions but a lot of times when we do bring our red truck if there are areas in the community that have experienced outages we do work with city staff and the Boulder Emergency Management Group to identify areas that might need resources. So again, we'll go in provide different uh needs, whether that's charging uh heaters and certain certain points. And then also, we also use our red truck to uh provide bill assistance for customers that might have uh disabilities and whatnot. So we have people on site that can help get some folks that need assistance, whether that's payment plan assistance or just understanding different programs with that available to them. So if they are a medical device customer, we do have

1:18:49customer care agents on site that can help them. So, our red truck program, we do get to disproportionate communities that might not be able to have the resources to be able to um have the access to these programs. And our red truck has been in the city of Boulder um multit multitude of times this year. I can't name them off the top of my head, but I know we've at least done three um and couple of the Boulder um um Boulder uh I forgot the exact area. Oh, mobile homes. So, we've done at least three of those that I I've attended one of those. So, we do uh roll out our red trucks to help disproportionate communities. So, >> Okay. Thank you. And I'll just get I'll just answer the questions. I'll try to be brief. So, >> no.

1:19:30>> Oh, I thought you were doing that. No, >> no, no. Okay. Next, we have um Robert, just do us a favor. Get somebody to send us that information on the battery so we can get it out to the community. Okay. Next question is going to be Taiisha. We'll do the very short comments at the end. I promise. Ryan, don't worry. >> Okay. Thank you. Um Ryan, thank you for asking my question around just the burden. And my question was really on who shares the burden. So I was at a meeting with our community climate resilience community members, organizations, um churches, and unfortunately nobody mentioned um the items that you just shared about the rebate program, about the red truck. Um so it would be very helpful to get tracking um information around that as we rebuild the trust and and have more transparency there. Um because I believe I believe you were on them but when we talked to them nobody mentioned this and um they they actually were talking about the cooling centers.

1:20:31Um the cost is significant. So the rebates are appreciated but if you're in a fixed income that's not going to work. So just curious if you all have considered either a zero interest loans or some mechanism where community members who are already vulnerable and on fixed income can be able to um ascertain and get that. So um that's one and also again if you would be willing to use some of that $93 million profit uh to help to to subsidize some of that. And then the second question is on the um do you agree with the uh public utility commission that um you know there with their staff that estimated a 50% rate increase um by 2029. Um and just curious if you agree with that um estimate that was created by P PU staff. Um so those are my two questions right now.

1:21:26>> Thank you for your great success. I applaud you. So, >> I'll I'll try to be equally as succinct. I I can't validate the PUC commission's and the staff's analysis of a 50% rate increase by 2029 because I I don't know what facts they based it on and it's >> okay. Thank you. Um then if you wouldn't mind sending a response on what rate increases you do anticipate with the uh information that you have available to you, that would be much appreciated. as far as the burden on our community and although again we appreciate the rebates, we're talking about people who are living on fixed incomes. So just curious again, what can you all do? Um and would you be willing to use some of that $93 million profit to help support our community during these treacherous times? Thank you. So, we haven't considered loans and and I'm not sure that we could do that because that would I think >> or some or even just a checkout system.

1:22:20I could imagine you um in partnership with our libraries um having having generators that can be checked out or just some mechanism um that can can um address these issues. Um I also just want to briefly say you know although I appreciate the optimism um the climate community including CU Boulder NIS Noah have all agreed that this is just the tip of the iceberg as it relates to these climate uh chaos that we're experiencing. So just again in this instance I can see this issue and this need continuing to escalate. So really curious um how we're moving beyond um and and and again I appreciate the the lists that you all are forming as well. But as I said when we were meeting with the people that work with these people that you have lists on none of them mentioned um the incredible offerings that you provided.

1:23:10So that in terms of contributions to energy assistance, we we have and we committed in our last our electric and our gas rate case to make a $10 million contribution for energy assistance, not specifically for battery rebates. Um and so we we have made that commitment. Um and that comes >> and then would it be possible to get a report on how that commitment has been allocated to the our residents of the city of Boulder? >> We I don't know. Actually, I don't know that we can do that because it hasn't been allocated yet. We and and it'll >> but you mentioned that you had been giving things and doing things. So can we get a list of that? >> You mean like the red >> what you all have been doing to support communities that are bur burdened and vulnerable?

1:23:53>> Yeah, we can do we could definitely follow up with you just to put awareness like you guys probably remember ify Jenny. She's now our director of strategic outreach and advocacy. >> I do know I do know them. I look forward to that report. Thank you. >> Yeah. So we can we can definitely take that up with you. uh, Council Member Adams and just make sure that you have awareness of the red truck >> and not just me, but I think our whole community would benefit from knowing the ways that you are supporting and and doing doing right uh, for our communities during these poly crisis times. Thank you. >> All right, Nicole, you had one more question. You said >> I do have one more question. Yeah, since I mean I got more than more than one, but I'll stick to one more.

1:24:33>> Uh, equal to everybody else. So, um, as you all know, community scale resilience solutions like micro grids are something that our community has been calling for honestly longer than I've been on council. They were called out as a priority, um, within the energy partnership agreement, and they seem increasingly essential for protecting vulnerable um, populations, especially during outages, on high heat days, that sort of thing. So, what's Excel's plan to support community scale resilience solutions? So, specifically to um micro grids, I don't have an answer to what we've got planned specifically for Boulder. I know we do have a couple of pilots in our service territory, but I I just I I'll have to follow up. I don't know unless you guys know if we have a specific plan for micro grids. >> Not necessarily right now with with Boulder, but we've worked really closely with city staff to see what we could potentially identify. To Robert's point, we have a couple of pilots that we are potentially going to contemplate in our next upcoming wildfire mitigation plan.

1:25:29But your point's well made, Councilwoman. We're definitely going to continue to explore it to be strategic as possible um about where we can keep our communities resilient. >> Okay. Is that good, Nicole? >> I I would really like a little bit more specifics. Um and I understand if you don't have them right now, but maybe you can include them with some of the follow-up information. And I think this is something our community really um needs and and is asking for especially right now. >> Okay. >> Yeah, we'll follow up with you on that counselor. >> Awesome. Okay. So, I'm going to have my turn. My first question, I don't know if it's for you or for staff, but um most my questions, the two that I have are going to have are going to be the questions community asked me. So this first question is is people are very interested in resilience hubs or resil resiliency hubs. I'm not sure what's the right term because of course we're going to have more outages etc. And if we had a resiliency hub at um for instance the library or houses of worship etc. then people wouldn't freak out so much because if you're working out of your home which is a lot of people call me I'm working out of my home that's it I'm

1:26:41losing money in my business then they could go to X place where they know they're going to get power and people who are o on oxygen can get taken to this same resiliency hub etc. So, I know that staff was talking about resiliency hubs. I'm not sure if that means that we're in charge of it or is Excel in charge of it or where are we with that? Well, I'll I'll take a stab at saying that, you know, if we think about in the course of a public safety power shut off, we have stood up community resource centers. Um, I don't know that that would if that fits your same definition of a resiliency hub. >> I don't think it does because I think what people are looking for is extra like like it's really power oriented. So like you've already built into it that if everything else is falling apart that these places are hubs for where people can go. Do you know what I'm saying?

1:27:42>> Sounds like a hardened resource center with a micro grid attached to it or something. >> Awesome. That sounds great. that that that may be what you're describing. I I don't know that we have um I'll just maybe provide you the same answer I provided with respect to the micro grids. Um I will say with the community resource centers which are places where customers can go to charge their phones where they can get you know cool if it's if it's hot and warm if it's cold. We did have those set up during the December PSPS events. Um, and those were in conjunction with the local county offices of emergency management. So, for instance, I think in Boulder, we had one at the Boulder Rec Center. In Evergreen, we were at the fire station. And so, we have worked in conjunction with our county partners to discern where those are going to be. Um, and then we staff them with our folks and in partnership with uh the Red Cross.

1:28:38Yeah, it's probably not what they were talking about since if they lose power then that's not a resiliency hub, is it? No. >> Well, those are we we work to identify the places in advance that we know will stay energized if it's >> Okay. >> All right. You can put that on your list according to with Nicole's question to whether or not we can have something like that for our future. And and if I could um >> Yeah, go ahead. >> Uh as part of the we had um presented that uh idea in um Excel's renewable energy standard plan and there is going to be a $5 million program available next year. It's still to be designed and we expect um them to start the uh design work and engagement around what that program will look like this fall. So we're hopeful that that um can bring some investment. And then we're also using the city dollars to um stand up several um I think that kind of meets some of the characteristics you you described. But we'll follow up and I think for I just wanted to say for um the questions to Excel, we'll we'll certainly follow up and document these in the study session summary and and get the responses.

1:29:45>> Great. And then my >> call on that um Tara. Yes, you may >> just very briefly on the It's really great to hear. Um and that's in condu in conjunction just to clarify with the climate resilient hubs that the Boulder County and the city of Boulder are collaborating on. I just wanted I thought I heard you say it, but I just wanted to get a double double check on it. >> Yeah. So, we're certainly building on all of those models and and learning um together and I think we're going to be providing that feedback to Excel on designs that are are helpful and work and then we would expect to um apply um for some of those dollars on behalf of the community for those very organizations. Yep. >> Okay. So, and that would align with the 15 million neighborhood um design as well.

1:30:27>> Yeah. >> Okay. >> That would be the goal. >> Thank you. >> All right. So, the benefit of having this big team around me, we we are apparently kicking off a resiliency hub project in the fall. This is, you know, to supplement what Carolyn just said. Um, and so that will kick off in earnest in the fall. It is a part of our renewable our res plan. So, it's not a part of the wildfire mitigation plan, but part of the res plan. >> Great. Community will be happy about this. Okay. My last question and nobody grown is A and B, but I'll put it into one and you don't have to speak that long about either so that no one gets mad at me. Okay. There's two issues I've heard that you're having problems with that if you could speak shortly about.

1:31:07One would be I hear through the grapevine that you're having billing issues as in overcharging people. And the other one is um I hear through the grapevine that the PUC opened an investigation into your customer service um and that you cut 400 se uh customer service staff and just real quick there was a community member who and I don't know Nick which one this is at this point I'm confused myself but that she had a few weeks ago or one week ago when we had the blackout here I know in my neighborhood and the hill Um there was uh that person kept getting power shut offs for the next four or five days past um just the four or 5 hour one that we had. So my question is is she had to write to me because she didn't hear anything after writing a whole lot of emails and sending messages. I wrote to Nick. Nick thankfully wrote back that day. That's great. But that shouldn't be the way we do customer service. So, those are my two questions. Customer service and billing. Go.

1:32:16>> I'm going to put them both together because they're the same issue because that the commission when the commission opened its investigation, it was into customer service and billing. So, we have had billing issues. It's a it's a metric that I think every utility tracks mistaken bills and rebuilds. So, we track it because we know it's a measure of customer service. We did have some acute problems in late 24, early 25. The commission did open up an investigation. We had some um longer than normal call times. We had dropped phone calls. We made a bunch of mistakes and and I'm so I'm not even going to try to defend it because we what we said to the commission was yes, this has been an issue. We solved it by restaffing. we had um added more staff in our customer service department so that we um were able to answer calls more timely. We eliminated dropping our calls because what we would typically do is if there were long hold times, we would drop the call and tell the customer to come back. We've discontinued that practice and we're tracking on a relatively regular basis the number of mistaken bills and the times that we have to rebuild. So, um, your your grapevine was was right. I mean, the the

1:33:31commission did open an investigation. It was it was public. Um, and we responded to it and I think we've seen significant improvement. The last issue that you asked about was a specific customer and having you have to contact our area manager. We agree that shouldn't be the way that it is. Um, and and so, but we're not perfect. And when we have those issues brought to our attention, we endeavor to be as responsive as possible, which it sounds like Nick was. Um, and I'm and I'm I'm guessing that we probably apologize to that at customer as well. >> Well, no, you never got back to them, but um that's okay. >> You want to share with me their information? I can have somebody follow up. You don't have to do it now, but maybe. >> Yeah, I'll do it later. Thank you. Um, that's great. Okay. So, just I think what we're going to do next is even though we're out of time, I want to take if we can do this council, there's eight of us. If we in 10 minutes can tell Excel anything else that we want to tell them, each person gets one minute. I think that that will be awesome. All right, we're starting with Ryan. I'm not going to time you. This is a I'm

1:34:40trusting you guys to time. >> >> Okay, question one is Excel delivering? So, a few things. First, it's it's really important that we have an effective relationship, especially with emergency operations and critical operations. And I I do appreciate that we have a a collegial partnership and and this is probably the most important thing and you know, we're having a lot of you know, discussing a lot of difficult issues and I the so the first thing I want to say is I I do I do really appreciate that our relationship and it's really important that we can continue that to work well. Um in in terms of answering the question directly um I don't know um I don't when I look at this mechanically I would like to see a scorecard maybe a self scorecard to provide to us on here's how you think we're doing on the you know with the with rows and columns. It's a little bit it's a little bit hard for me to see it you know to answer the question so not not enough information. Um but the third thing is you know I think the the big thing here is like we have moved from a regime when this agreement started where the community uh took for granted that the electricity grid would work and that

1:35:44if it it turned off once in a while that would be a surprise and and now it is a completely different regime in which the the the the thing seems not to work and um it's an it's a it's a huge problem causing a huge amount of stress, destruction and cost in our community and it's not going to it's not sustainable. So, we have to move towards some kind of equilibrium. And I know, Robert, that you don't know exactly what that is, or at least that's what I heard. But we we have got to get to a place where we have a shared vision and a plan for that equilibrium or or the assumptions that underpin this whole thing, you know, they just don't hold together. Terra, I'll leave it at that, but I there's a little more information.

1:36:23I'd love to see questions those questions answered in advance of the meeting. >> Thanks a lot. >> Thank you. Next for your your minute is Tina. Go with your minute. >> Yeah. And are we answering the second question about information ahead of the council community forum? >> I don't even know if we have time for that. Let's just do your last words to Excel. >> Okay. Um, so thanks for being here and I do appreciate the partnership. Um, when we're thinking about outages in the next few years, I hope that we can come together and support any option we can think of that would increase our supply locally. and I hope you'll be supportive of the ideas that are coming out of our community to to those ends. So clearly local generation, micro grids, uh CCA, all those things I think need to be on the table so that we can weather up these energy shortages together. And the second piece is um you know when when we do have the council community forum, I'm sure people will also be wondering about how we can not increase energy prices.

1:37:25So, we're looking at a rate increase this year, I think, was just approved. And if there's few further costs due to the market not meeting supply and buying things on the market, I think we need to talk to that to the community. And I would encourage you to think about how to avoid that um and minimize those impacts as much as possible. So, thanks so much for being here. >> Okay, Nicole, your minute. >> Thank you. Um, so I just want to return back to something that um, Erin uh, alluded to and that I think is a foundational reason um, that Boulder entered this partnership and and it's really that our franchise agreement is unique. It was intentionally written so that our city would serve as a pilot and testing ground for new and innovative work that responds to a lot of the reliability and resilience concerns that are impacting communities all over the state. But when I look at the past few years and when I listen to residents who are frustrated by the persistent outages, the wildfire fears, and and the limited transparency and communication during outages, it's really hard to see where Boulders actually receiving the benefits of that pilot status. And our community has repeatedly asked for some very concrete things, and I'll just name

1:38:34two since we only have a minute. Um, first is timely and clear communication when the power goes out. If Excel doesn't know why it's out until after it's resolved, that's fine. But there should be transparent communication as to why it went out after it's restored. For our community, it isn't enough to know um that it's out and when it may be back on. As partners, we do deserve to know why. Second is support for micro grids and other distributed resilience tools at the home and business level. Especially if we increasingly can't count on reliability from Excel at times when we most need power, like 100 degree days. Resilience hubs are great, but when there are 90 mph winds and 100 degree temperatures, I don't want people driving or walking around town, even if they are physically able to do so. Our community pays for reliable power in our homes, and if Excel can't provide it, then we should be empowered to create it. No pun intended. Um, energy is a life-saving resource in 2026. It's not a luxury and we really need Excel's partnership in building these localized backup power solutions especially for um older medically vulnerable residents and frontline communities. And I just don't see evidence that these are being prioriti prioritized or accelerated in a way that reflects our role as a pilot

1:39:46community. I normally don't like to lean on Boulder being special, but in this case, we literally are. It's in our franchise agreement and it's it's what was promised to voters. So, how do we make sure that this partnership moves forward on Boulder's terms in line with our community's expectations for innovation, safety, and resilience rather than defaulting to um statewide constraints and timelines? Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. That was two minutes, but it was great. >> Yeah. Come on now. >> Okay. Next, we have Matt and your minute. >> Matt's minute. That rhymes or some it's close. It'sative. Um, so first just uh thank you for being here and thanks for taking the time to talk to us in community. I'm going to sort of I think there's just an echoing and a theme here and I think it's worth as many of us on council being uh unfortunately needing to be redundant. So, it's super loud and clear what we're what we're trying to communicate on behalf of the residents we represent, which is clearly that resiliency and protection from wildfires is of of just absolute critical importance. And we see promises being made. We see glimpses that some of those things may be happening, but we need we need more than that. And it's not that

1:41:00we're saying give more to Boulder necessarily than you already are, but we need to see that more concretely. And we need our community to have that faith that when they trusted us to re-enter a franchise agreement that it pays off and they say that was the right move and that's really important and we're getting we're getting calls to say maybe you should go back to municipalization or exit the franchise and those are not the responses we want to get. We want to know, we want our community to think that this partnership is working for them. And I know and we heard tonight that you're doing great work, but we need greater communication and showing incremental pieces. Every time something's completed, we need to celebrate that and we need to show that we're doing those pieces and we just need to do a more well-rounded, holistic approach to protecting our community and those uh even east of us in that capacity. So, appreciate the work you're doing, but we've got a long road to go and I hope that we can bend the curve and get back to a resilient and and and protected community.

1:41:54>> Great. Taiisha, your minute. >> Um, I echo my colleagues concerns. Um, I appreciate and appreciation um for the community uh meeting. One, I would love to have you all there in person. Um, I think our our community deserves that. too. Um I would love an energy dashboard with information about the with monthly by month by month um information about the number of outages um the um affected areas. So a geographic map um supports or the rebates and the red trucks. Um basically just having more transparency on all of the great things that you shared. We would like to see the evidence backing that. I also have concerns about the 2027 2028 which is respectively 30% behind and 46% behind. And to my colleague Matt Benjamin's comments on resiliency, I would also like to add costs. Um a possible escalation of 50% um by 2027. See, I time myself, Tara. Um is a problem smiling, don't you?

1:43:02>> Is a problem that we simply cannot bear. Thank you. In a relationship we don't want. >> That's an example of a minute right there, council. Just good job. Um okay, we have Rob. Um I'll echo what my colleagues have said as well, but um to bring to the table, you know, you talked about proving the negative and quantifying risk reductions and some of these metrics. I think if you tighten up that time frame um when we have the forum to the next 12 months, the next 24 months, that would be really helpful so we can um have some pinpoints on on those reliability projects and the wildfire hardening period. Done. >> Whoa. Great. Okay, I'll take my minute. First of all, I just want to say that when Excel fails, guess who gets blamed?

1:43:53City council. That's right. We get a lot of grief. You need to help us by doing better. So that's the first thing I want to say is if you think you get grief, we get blamed. So I do agree with my colleagues. The other thing I want to say is about and nobody likes a monopoly because they're not good. Because competition is always good. it stirs up, you know, companies working harder and doing better. So, in light of that, I'm wondering if you would consider comparison shopping. So, I know you're probably going to say no, but I would like you to consider it anyway, comparison shopping for us who have this monopoly where we don't get a chance and the um to do anything about it. and the person, the council member who said, "Yes, we're having a hard time convincing people that this is a good thing." I agree with Matt. I really, we want that to change. Um because right now the community is at their wits end and I'm hoping you can help us. That's what I have to say. Aaron, do you have any last words?

1:45:04>> I got mine in already. Thanks. >> That's nice. I was giving you another opportunity if I cut you off. So that's it. And the last thing I want to say is staff, do you need us to answer this last question or should we just write to you? >> Just write to me. >> Okay. Last question is canled. You can all write to Carolyn and Jonathan with your thoughts about the upcoming um community event. All right. >> You do you want me to respond to anything? >> No. Unless you want to. You you can if you want to. >> May I? >> I I'll say a couple things if I might. I thought the scorecard idea is something that we really want to take into account. Um I also agree that more transparency and more communication is always good. We know that we have not been we haven't met the mark with estimated times of restoration. That's a known problem that we're actively working to correct with better outage maps and better communications. So I just I'll own that. The energy dashboard, I think that's a thing that we can take into account as well. Um, and then just the last thing that I'll respond to is the the monopoly and and and and comparison shopping. And I I'll

1:46:13be very very brief, I promise. We're not a monopoly. We're a natural monopoly. And it's distinct. It's a distinct economic principle. High capital costs act as a barrier to entry. And it's more efficient to have one entity stringing poles and wires than to have multiple entities doing it. in states where there has been um some form of deregulation where you can choose your provider of electrons, it hasn't always resulted in better prices or better service. Um and so while we know that we have opportunities to improve, I do believe that the natural monopoly business model is working. Um we are making significant progress in reducing carbon emissions. I would say arguably better than any other utility in the United States while maintaining bills that on average and I I can't speak to any specific customer, but on average we're 39% below the national average even with this next rate increase coming up and 27% below the national average. Having said that, we recognize that some of our customers do have challenges fa paying their bills. And that's why we started the red truck program. That's why we put a proposal in our last gas and electric rate case for enhanced energy assistance to reduce customers energy burden from 6% down to 2 and a.5%. That's why we've started percent of income payment plans.

1:47:36Um and that's why we put shareholder dollars on the table to help bolster all of those things. So, all of that to say, we very much appreciate the opportunity to be here with you tonight and we always appreciate feedback because it's a gift and we're constantly looking for ways to continuously improve. So, thank you very much. >> I know I'm a blunt New Yorker and I was trying to move us along. So, I hope that wasn't offensive. Um, but I got I learned a lot tonight and I appreciated everything you said and I know that we all did. So really thank you for showing up and for coming and I'm sure our community appreciates it as well. >> Thank you. >> All right. >> Thanks. >> Okay, we are going to go to our next who's taking over next for our next section which staff. Um happy to um just sort of intro it. I just appreciate it.

1:48:32Our next item actually responds to a council priority uh that you gave us. And so because we are uh we know that this is a long night, I'm going to send it over to our assistant city manager, Pam Davis, but not without first just thinking. You're going to see an extraordinary amount of teams and individuals from different departments. This is truly one of the best cross departmental collaborations we have had. Um and so just really appreciate all the work that the staff has done um not just for this council priority but working up to it as that has moved forward. So with that Pam I'll send it to you. >> Great. Thanks so much Nuria and good evening council. I'm Pam Davis. I serve as assistant city manager as well as executive sponsor for our cross departmental citywide wildfire resilience team. The purpose of our item tonight is to provide a progress check-in on your council priority project on wildfire resilience that was scoped in early 2026 as one of your priority projects. This is just one of two touch points this year and we will be coming back to you at the end of October. Next slide.

2 Enhancing Boulder’s Wildfire Resilience through (1) the Development of a Comprehensive Wildfire Home Hardening Implementation Hub and (2) a Comprehensive Assessment and Analysis of Current or Planned City Wildfire-Related Programs, Projects and Actions Staff Time: 30 Min Council Time: 60 Min

1:49:37Before we turn to our tremendous project team, I do want to ground us in the bigger picture that is beyond the scope of our discrete priority project. Our city staff recognize the sense of urgency in community regarding the issue of wildfire and confilration risk and we do feel it ourselves as members of this community. We are working daily to keep our community safe. And while tonight we're going to speak to you about programs and hubs and funding and fuels and buildings and data sophistication, please remember that our true northstar of this work is the life safety of our community and ensuring that we are balancing prevention and preparation with emergency response and recovery. We choose to do this work in order to create a more resilient city overall while using our resources wisely because the city as a whole is responsible as you know for delivering hundreds of services in dozens of disciplines. Our current work is rooted in the 2024 update to the community wildfire protection plan, but it is also deeply integrated across many other plans, departments, workg groups, partners, and our community members themselves.

1:50:49Tonight you will hear a lot about communications and analysis efforts because of the priority project scope. But please also understand we are actively in implementing on the ground projects. We are not waiting to take action but we are continuously improving and enhancing our impact. Next slide please. This next slide isn't easy on the eyes but we did want to just show an itemized illustration of the many initiatives that the city supports. And it's important to us to demonstrate the level of innovation our wildfire team has produced in a matter of three years after building on decades of a foundation. While tonight we won't be doing a deep dive across our entire portfolio of initiatives, we want to reassure council and community that thanks to your leadership, your priority setting and investment, and your consist consistently engaged voices, the city and its partners continue to be leaders in approaching risk of wildfire and urban confilration.

1:51:49Highlighted items you see include significant enhancements put in place in just the last few years. Some of the work has seen more immediate results while others are serving more long-term strategies for overall resilience. I'd call out several briefly, including creation of the city's be wildfire ready homepage and the anchorpoint newsletter, acceleration and expansion of detailed home assessments and the wildland urban interface and including homeowners associations and the complimentary wildfire resilience assistant program grant creation and its continuous improvement. We're addressing the role of landscaping and wildfire hardening include recent code changes, planting guides, and contractor trainings, ignition prevention, early detection, and evacuation planning, as well as notification program enhancements. an accelerated and focused effort on reducing fuel loads on our natural lands within the WOOI, including strategic grazing and perimeter mowing, the power resiliency work and influencing the Excel infrastructure hardening that you just heard about earlier tonight, and amazing leadership in regional wildfire initiated community confilration partnership and workshops. Next slide, please.

1:53:09Given this breadth of projects, programs, departments, and disciplines supporting city wildfire resilience, the team has refined our northstar to ensure a common purpose. We envision that we continually work towards making the community safer and stronger by preparing for wildfire and reducing list risk to life safety. Boulder stands as a model of comprehensive wildfire resilience where community awareness translates into proactive and meaningful action and advance natural area management harmonizes ecological health with public safety through shared community responsibility and partnership. We s seek to reduce risk and enhance resilience. The clarity of this statement is and will remain the foundation of all of our work from analysis and planning to communications to operational implementation. Next slide, please. Turning back now to the focus of tonight, our council priority project will come to you in two parts with the support of an incredibly talented team across nearly half of our city departments being available for questions. Those available are shown on this slide along with a graphic that is a brief timeline reminder that this is our midyear progress check-in with another study session scheduled for October 22nd as we are completing your one-year priority.

1:54:31Next up, you will hear from Mike Chard from the Office of Disaster Management to set the context of our wildfire risk and our current state actions. Then you'll hear from Jamie Barker, our wildfire resilience public information officer, who will talk about sub project one, the creation of a home hardening hub. Then Brian Aneker from Open Space and Mountain Parks will walk through the second sub project on creating a datadriven framework for prioritizing our current work. And now my motion sensor saving us energy. You're welcome. And finally, I will turn it to Paul Dennis who will share a deeper dive on our technical work to develop a local specific risk index for a wildland urban interface which we lovingly call the WOOI. With that, Mike, I pass it to you. >> All right. Thanks, Pam. Greetings, council and community. Uh Mike Chard, director with the Office of Disaster Management, and my briefing tonight is about keeping fire out of the city and knowing the hazards, risk, vulnerabilities, and actions to reduce that risk. Wildfires is a part of Boulder. We all know that. It's always been here. It always will be. Our natural conditions at increased risk include drought, heavy fuels, steep terrain, low humidity, and high winds, which create a dangerous wildfire environment. These factor makes the these factors make the entire front

1:55:52range a high-risisk corridor with the stretch from Golden to Lions facing a particularly elevated threat. Marshall changed the Marshall fire changed our understanding of wildfire risk. The Marshall fire was a wildfire for about 50 minutes before entering a dense urban environment. We face a similar risk here in the city profile and now must focus on preventing urban confilrations now known as a wildfire initiated community confilration or a wick. We love our acronyms and disaster management. This is when structure to structure fires drives fire behavior and impacts in our community. If we go back in time before the Marshall fire and look at the wildfire risk map for Boulder County, it it showed a high risk in wildland areas around many of our communities and low risk in the built environment. And we all know what happened in that lowrisk urban area that it burned. Recent fires show exactly what a wick looks like.

1:56:47Lahina, Los Angeles, Spokane, Reno most recently, and then of course, most importantly to us, the Marshall fire all demonstrate fires that grow or grew too fast for response systems to scale, overwhelm first responders, and cause multiple infrastructure failures at the same time. Wicks create community scale life safety risk cause large-scale evacuations overwhelm transportation infrastructure cause significant structure loss and economic impacts and challenging recovery environments. This is how that day will begin. A wind-driven fastmoving linear firefront is going to threaten our community while simultaneously distributing fire into the interior of the community through Ebercast. These are are the conditions of a wildfire initiated community confilration and we must address them and we must be ready to respond. Today the built environment is a major driver of risk. Where and how we build and how surrounding landscapes are changing directly influence whether wildfire will become a community level disaster. The threat is no longer just the wildfire.

1:57:48It's how fire interacts with the urban environment which includes structures, businesses, critical community sectors and central infrastructure. These impacts occur on a scale different from wildfires impacting mountain residential neighborhoods. This threat is serious, but it's not unmanageable. We cannot prevent all fires, but we can influence and shape the environment to reduce a wildfire initiated community confiligration and their characteristics and impacts. If we continue to succeed in our efforts, that day will look differently. On this day, a wind-driven firefront is moving towards our community, but effective land management strategy will slow the fire's rate of spread, reduce its intensity, and ember production. Home hardening and vegetation management increases resistance to ember ignitions, and reduces the likelihood of fires being distributed throughout the community. These efforts translate directly into more time for evacuations, more time for firefighters to deploy resources, and a better chance of keeping fire out of structures and containing it if it reaches them.

1:58:48We are leading at the regional level and the reason why is because what came clear in our local work is that urban configurations require regional response. In August 2025, ODM and three partner counties expanded this work into the front range uh wick initiative which is the wildfire urban configur community configuration initiative. This now involves nine counties on the front range, more than 75 agencies, and has assumed over 6,000 hours of staff time to build out the work that we've completed and starting to implement. The importance of this work is that any community that experiences one of these types of fires will require regional response across the front range. As this work elevates into state, federal, and professional circles, one question keeps coming up that I hear frequently is, "How are you getting this done?" This has never been done before is what we hear. The answer is unprecedented collaboration and cooperation amongst the many communities, counties along the front range of Colorado. Many of the programs you'll hear tonight are truly unique to Boulder and now viewed as regional best practices. Tonight, you'll hear hear strategies that I believe will work. They will reduce risk, change how fire behaves as it moves towards or into the city, limit community impacts, and strengthen our ability to respond effectively. Thank you for your time.

2:00:00And with that, I'd like to introduce Brian Anker with OMP to continue the discussion. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mike. And good evening, council. I'm Brian Anakur, senior manager for science and climate resilience from the open space and mountain parks department. I'm the overall project manager for this council priority project, which has two tasks. Um, task one, we'll hear from Jamie Parker about the home hardening implementation hub. And then, u task two is wildfire mitigation priorities. And I'll present on that task along with Paul Dennison. As mentioned, this is about a 10-month project with three community touches. We saw the Open Space Board in July of this year. We're here tonight for our first of two uh city council study sessions, and we'll wrap up with you um October 22nd. We look forward to that. With that project overview, I'm going to turn it right over to Jamie Barker.

2:00:59>> Thank you, Brian. I'm Jamie Barker. I'm the PIO for wildfire resilience um in Boulder Fire Rescue in the city. Good evening. Um the simplest way to describe the goal of the wildfire ready hub is to get folks to start the work. We spent a lot of time giving our community really good information about wildfire risk, defensible space, and home hardening. We also have our detailed home assessments which give property owners individualized information about their homes. But there's still a gap between the I understand my risk or I have my detailed home assessment and what do I actually do from here? So that's the gap that we're trying to bridge with task one, which is the home hardening hub. We want community members to be able to jump into mitigation work regardless of their budget, their level of wildfire knowledge, or where they're starting and find something tangible that they can do immediately. That starts them on their wildfire journey. So the space isn't intended to replace our existing wildfire ready information. It's designed to integrate with it and make that information actionable and accessible in a few different ways for our community visually.

2:02:13Well, looks like we might have lost Jamie. I back? >> We can see you and hear you now, Jamie. >> Sorry, I have no idea what just happened. Everything went blank. Um, so it's designed to integrate our wildfire information so that this information is actionable and accessible for our community in a variety of ways. Visually, through video and written information, and eventually through physical examples on city properties. Next slide, please. So, this is an example of what we have today. And I want to be clear, there's some really good information in our current wildfire ready hub, which is at bouldercol.gov/w wildfire ready. But this council priority that you've given us has given us an opportunity to ask a slightly different question in doing this work. So, instead of asking what information do we need to provide for folks, we're starting to ask what do we want people to be able to do with that information.

2:03:16Um, so the hub isn't intended to become another giant web page full of wildfire information. We want it to function much more like a choose your own path tool um or choose your own path opportunity. If I have $100, what can I do? If I have a free weekend, what can I do? I have my detailed home assessment. What now? What happens next? My neighbor isn't mitigating. What conversation do I need to have as a result of that? Um, etc. Next slide, please. Jamie, we see the next slide. I wonder if maybe turning your camera off that might turn my video off if it helps things move. Hopefully, you can still hear me. >> Yeah, loud and clear. We have slide 10 up for you, so we're ready for that if you're ready. >> Okay. Are you able to hear me? Yes.

2:04:25>> Okay. Um, so what you're seeing now is our hub mockup. And the mockup currently has about 10 pathways including instructional videos, community efforts, mitigation cost estimates, pricebased projects, weekend projects, uh, detailed home assessment and insurance guidance for conversations, neighborhood support, state incentives, resilient landscaping, and the existing wildfire ready web page. This is just a mockup, but it shows how we're thinking about folks having this experience. First, we have ways to learn and see what resilience actually looks like through instructional videos, community stories, and eventually examples of resilient landscaping within the city of Boulder. Then, we have tools that can help people decide what work to actually do. We're looking at using the Headwaters economics tool, which is the calculator-based tool to help estimate mitigation work rather than creating and maintaining a standalone city calculator. Um, we're also building high impact project lists based on different price points that folks can engage with.

2:05:30So instead of wildfire resilience feeling like I guess I might need $20,000 to redo my house, someone could select 50 to 500, 500 to,500 etc. and see the highest impact actions available to them in that range. So we're also creating uh very approachable entry points. The weekend project feature is intended to give someone one to five hour projects based on their property. Those aren't meant to replace comprehensive mitigation work. They're just a kickstarter that gets somebody doing the work and hopefully started on their mitigation routine. There's also some barriers to the wildfire mitigation work that we've been hearing from folks. Um like how do I use my detailed home assessment when I'm talking with my insurance company? How do I get my neighbor involved? What state incentives exist? etc. So those are barriers to action as well. So, we're building resources around those questions and how the community can continue to have um those conversations with the relevant folks.

2:06:36The idea is that there isn't one correct door into wildfire resilience. So, we want to give people multiple opportunities and multiple doors to enter into trying to figure out what mitigation means for them and then ultimately making moves towards mitigation that help our community. Next slide, please. So, we're moving rather quickly on this, but since July, we've been working with subject matter um experts across departments to help develop the content and identify what belongs in the hub. You're going to see some of these items on our next slide. What you're seeing tonight is intentionally a draft of that hub because after this council work session, we'll continue development towards a soft launch of this at the end of September where we can get feedback from anchor point subscribers, frequent users, council, regional partners, as well as the public at some tableabling events, etc. In October, we're planning the public launch for this, including an online recorded walkthrough and an inerson openhouse at Station 3, just to give folks um really hands-on experience with this hub. Next slide, please.

2:08:03So, what you're looking at is our hub asset slide. And I wanted to show this because the hub isn't starting from scratch. There's a significant amount of content either already existing underway in development or has been identified for development. We're organizing these assets that are going to live on the hub in several different buckets. Videos, resources, handouts, tools, and incentives. We already have videos on defensible space, home hardening, and the history of wildfire. Um, we are creating more of those videos though. We're also developing things like property owner testimonials as well as testimonials from some of our partner organizations. We do already have a video or two from Ukar Encar related to this as well. Um we are also working on some education videos for top five high impact projects and our weekend project feature. On the resource side, we're looking at insurance talking points, neighborto neighbor resources, detailed home detailed home assessment and mitigation guidance for different type of residents, resilient city properties that people can actually see, and state incentives and other resources um for insurance conversations and neighbor conversations. We're also thinking beyond the web page. That includes hands out, handouts, budget based project list, signage of properties where wildfire resilience work is happening, and other ways of making this work visible throughout the community.

2:09:24Ultimately, success for this hub isn't measured by how much wildfire information we can put on a web page. Success is whether someone leaves it, leaves the web page, and does something about this. Maybe they spend $50 or five hours. Maybe they talk to their neighbor. or maybe they finally understand what their detailed home assessment is asking them to do and have a next action item for themselves. Whatever our community starting point is, our goal with task one is pretty simple. It's to help Boulder start the work. We can do the next slide. And also, that was all I had. Dean, just check in. Sorry. Y >> had to hit the button five times. All right. Thank you, Jamie. Uh we're on to task two. We have a bit of breaking news here. Congratulations to Jamie Barker, the nationwide PIO of the year, recently awarded to just now. Wish I could see your face. Hopefully you're smiling.

2:10:48Okay, so um task two, wildfire mitigation priorities. We've broken this down into three phases as you can see here. Phase one describes an inventory of our city's work on wildfire resilience. Phase two is work to prioritize the everything into programs and geographically as well as you can see in the packet. And then phase three is really asking how do we know if we're making progress on risk reduction for the city of Boulder. So this task two is really implementation planning, but we just want to underscore that while we're doing this planning effort, the boots on the ground work is not slowing at all. In fact, it's accelerating and uh we're really proud of everything we're able to keep going while we run this council priority project for this year. When it comes to inventorying our work, we want to start by acknowledging some of the really deep roots we have in wildfire resilience as a city. All the way back to 1991, we had the origin of our wild wildland fire response team. In 1999, we published a forest ecosystem plan for the open space department and began a forestry crew to do important fuels reduction work in our forests. We published our first community wildfire protection plan in 2007, updated that just two years ago. In 2024, we adopted

2:12:06the international WOOI code in 2013 and updated that recently. as well. As Pam mentioned, we stood up a really impressive 10 department wildfire uh resilience team. Many of those leaders are here tonight. Our initial estimates are that citywide across those teams, we're looking at around $10 million plus into wildfire resilience year-over-year. Part of that funding is coming from the uh climate tax fund as well, which got a specific earmark for wildfire resilience. So to more formally inventory all the work the city is doing on wildfire resilience, uh we conducted what we're calling a plan action review, we started with the community wildfire protection plan, which at its foundation on the right here, you can see includes these three strategies. Fire adapted communities, resilient landscapes, and safe and effective response. Under each of those strategies, the CWPP lines out a lot of different project ideas. So, our first move was just pull those out, put them in a list. Then we comb through about 20 other city um plans and extracted more and more projects out of there. We then went to staff and looked at their annual work plans and project ideas, pulled those out, grew that list to be several hundred projects long and we normed the project data, removed some duplicates.

2:13:27We're really happy to share with you tonight as attachment A, our current understanding of our project portfolio, which includes around 137 different projects. Now, we can organize that work in a couple different ways. One is by project status where you can see here we have 102 of those projects are active and 35 are in draft. We can also organize it by those national strategies that underpin the CWPP fire deputy communities resilient landscape state and effective response. Again to that you can see on the right we've added a fourth area that we're calling responsibly governed which we will define for you momentarily. So on top of that project inventory and below the level of these national strategies, we still felt like we were missing a scale that was the right scale to organize our work to talk to our community and think about where our priorities lie. So we created the concept of programs and put all the work into 25 groups which you can see in attachment B here. I'll just illustrate those 25 programs for you. Starting with fire adapted communities on the left. Um, this includes programs like wildfire risk reduction for homes and property, wildfire building and landscaping standards as well as community emergency preparedness and more. In the middle, resilient landscapes, that's where you have fuel management, fuel brakes,

2:14:52prescribed fire and more. On the right, response-wise, we have wildfire response program, tactical evacuation, ignition prevention and utility hardening, which is relevant to the power resilience conversation we just had. And to all of that, we added this fourth group below called responsibly governed. And you can see the programs under there really act as catalysts for all of the work above. things like communications and engagement and program administration you can find on there. So to demystify the programs for you a little bit and show how they connect to the projects, I pulled an example of one of our programs which is the resilient landscapes one wildfire fields management in the wildland urban interface. And you can see an example of uh some of the projects here. There's 11 in total. We've got the project numbers here and just shows the range of work under this program which includes perimeter mowing which is mowing a 30 foot strip along the built environment cross boundary fuels management places like Sans Susie and Wonderland Lake prescribed grazing um as well as reducing timber fuels of course.

2:16:13So with our project and program inventory complete, we wanted to move on to phase two which is prioritization where we really wanted to take a dual approach here prioritizing not just our programs but also our geography. So starting with our 25 programs we created the concept of tiers and the idea is that tier one programs are those where we want to pay the most attention to now because we have the greatest opportunity to reduce risk here. These are also the programs that are going to move into phase three of this council project and get measures and more attention especially in October. And then we have tier 2 programs which are still important. They're on the list. They're priority. They're just not going to receive as much attention immediately as tier one. How do we determine which programs are tier one and which are tier two? We created a survey instrument which was completed by 34 wildfire professionals including both our own city staff as well as partners throughout the west who have communities with urban interfaces like boulders.

2:17:19We asked them a simple question. Which of these programs reduce risk the most for communities like Boulder? And these are the results. So I'm just going to animate these in and show you that we have 10 tier one priority programs. And for fire adapted communities, you can see again the top three look like that. Resilient landscapes, it's fuels management, fuels break, prescribed fire. Response wise, it's the response effort itself, evacuation, and ignition prevention. And then to that we added a tenth uh one, which was communications and engagement. knowing how important it is to not only conduct this work, but describe this work and do outreach to our communities. So, on top of this great program prioritization, we sought to do the geographic prioritization. And for that, I'm going to turn it to Paul Dennis to tell you more about the WOI risk index.

2:18:12Thank you, Brian. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. I'm Paul Dennison, the Wildland Fire Senior Program Manager with Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks. Tonight, I'm sharing the city staff's work to more clearly define the Boulder Wild Interface, the WOOI, and analyze relative risk across it through a project we're calling the WOOI risk index. While wildfire resilience work continues to accelerate across all parts of our city, this risk index gives us the data to prioritize our resources and set more aggressive mitigation targets in our most vulnerable areas. Staff began by defining the WOOI through the existing ignition risk zones 1, two, and three within the built environment based on building proximity to wildland fuels. These zones are shown as building footprints in red, orange, and yellow on the map shown on the slide. We then established a newer concept, WOOI natural areas, by drawing a 1500 ft buffer into adjacent city, federally, and privately managed open spaces. These areas are shown uh as blue on the map.

2:19:12Based on long range ember transport research, this 1500 foot zone represents the concrete distance where landscape hazards directly impact home and neighborhood risk in Boulder. These natural areas are shown, excuse me, already said in blue on the map and include the areas of greatest importance to neighborhood level risk, uh, which are, uh, areas within 100 and 300 ft of homes. Next slide, please. With our boundaries established, staff assessed broad risk patterns across the city, keeping human life, community safety, and home survival at the center of our assessment. This map displays one modeled risk factor, potential wildfire intensity, and shows how potential fire intensity moderates as you move from west to east in the areas in and around Boulder. By analyzing fire intensity, likelihood of fire occurrence, and neighborhood exposure to burnable areas, our landscape assessment confirmed that our highest risk is concentrated in the western parts of Boulder, west of Broadway. Compared to the predominantly agricultural lands to the east, the western WOOI features denser forest fuels, steeper terrain, higher potential fire intensity, higher likelihood of fire occurrence, and neighborhoods directly interfacing with wildland areas without major roads or water waterways to act as a barrier to fire spread. And with these neighborhoods situated directly downwind of areas where wildfire could occur. Next slide, please.

2:20:45To move from broad landscape patterns to actionable neighborhood level wildfire risk information, we subdivided the western WOOI into 12 separate sections. These sections are bounded by major roads and waterways as their north and south breaks extend 1500 ft into the natural areas to the west and capture ignition risk zones one and two to the east. Across these 12 western WOOI sections, staff evaluated three wildfire risk factors. Home susceptibility to wildfire impacts, neighborhood exposure to burnable areas, and potential fire intensity. Likelihood of occurrence, as you've already mentioned, is a fourth risk factor, but which is best interpreted at the landscape scale. And so that factor was held constant in our analysis of the 12 western WOOI sections. Next slide. To see how the risk analysis works in practice, this map compares two specific western WOOI sections. In the map on the top left of the slide, we have the Dakota Ridge section, which sits at the north end of residential Boulder. And in the map on the top right, we have the Nwood section, which sits between Mapleton, which becomes Sunshine Canyon Drive to the north, and Boulder Canyon to the south. Staff evaluated 11 specific risk indicators across our three core risk factors. These two neighborhoods present different risk profiles and the text beneath the maps summarize a sampling of the 11 risk

2:22:06indic ind indicators evaluated for each of the western WOI sections. Dakota Ridge on the left map has higher building density which puts it at greater risk, but it benefits from newer construction standards, less tree canopy, overhanging roofs, lower potential fire intensity, mainly consisting of surface fire and indirect home exposure given that the neighborhood is surrounded by roadways. Whereas Nwood on the right has lower home density but higher overall vulnerability due to older legacy construction, heavier canopy overhang, higher potential fire intensity consisting of potential tree torching and some crown fire and direct structural exposure to wildland fuels without a signi significant barrier between the neighborhood and the natural environment. Next slide, please. By evaluating all 11 risk indicators across all 12 Western WOI sections, we generated a relative risk rank for each section and group these the sections into three categories. Highest risk, very high risk, and high risk. You'll notice the risk scale does not go lower than high because every section in our Western WOI carries significant baseline risk. And to re reiterate the purpose of this work, the WOOI risk index will allow staff to establish ambitious timelines and direct high impact mitigation to the most vulnerable parts of the WOOI first while maintaining continuous wildfire resilience efforts across the entire city. As a final note, this map is currently March draft. We

2:23:41are continuing to vet and refine the underlying risk analysis and we look forward to bringing the final WOOI risk index report back to council this October. Thank you. And back to you, Brian. >> Thank you, Paul. Okay, so we're ready to move on to our third phase, which is measures. Um, we, as we reviewed earlier, we've got these 10 tier one programs. Uh and the concept moving forward is that we'd have one or more measure for uh one per program or more to give us a final batch of 10 that we would use to tell our story on making progress on risk reduction over the next four years or so. To guide this work, we started with a measures template. And what we're doing is during staff workshops, we take one program at a time and we start by listing out what our highle outcomes are that we'd like to achieve. We then brainstorm as many different measures as we can think of and filter that list down using some criteria, keeping the ones that are really closely connected to our outcomes, measures that we can actually control and move the needle on and are also feasible to measure.

2:24:56Once we've pulled selected our favored measure and assigned a target to that, we add definitions to make sure that measure is as legible as possible uh to our community. And we also um identify the challenges inherent to doing the work to move the needle as well as some of the things that aren't under our total control. Because measures is a work in progress, what we have for you tonight is one worked example. It's the same one you can find in your packet. I'll walk it through here following our template. So for the RL1 program area, which is wildfire fuels management in the wildland urban interface, our outcomes are we want to keep fire flame lengths low and keep fire as close to the ground as possible and out of the canopy. We want to slow the spread of fire across the ground. And we want to manage the vegetation in a way to hit these outcomes while maintaining or potentially even improving our ecosystem health. We don't want to have a tradeoff there.

2:26:02The measure that was selected by staff is printed on the screen here. It says 100% of city-owned acres in WOOI natural areas, which Paul just defined, across those 12 priority WOI sections going north to east, are traded to wildfire risk reduction prescription by the end of 2030. So you can see this is a quantitative measure. It's geographically specific and it's time bound. You can also see mentioning of resourcing. So the plan is to hit this measure in our target using existing resourcing. And we note that enhanced resourcing we could potentially get there sooner. If we were to decrease resourcing, we would push that date of completion out. Final uh detail there is that of course fuels management is not a oneandone especially for grass. The grass grows back. So even what if we hit this ambitious target by 2030 in four years time we still going to have ongoing work in this area. Now to fully understand the target we felt like we needed to define what we meant by wi natural areas treatment and prescription. So these definitions would roll out with this measure. We also wanted to make a note about the amount of acres here. In our initial tabulation, we've got around 2,383 acres represented across the maps that Paul had shown you in natural areas. So,

2:27:35we have that to work on now. And then for challenges, the main one here, and you could see in the measure that we mentioned that we're going to manage city-owned acres, which is to say that we don't own and manage all the acreage, but we do own and manage about 70% of those acres. So we have direct control there. Another 15% of those acres is owned by ENCAR and NIST who we have got great partnerships with and even management uh agreements with. But that does leave 15% of those acres in privatelyowned um management responsibility. And so to get those acres managed, we're going to need crossboundary projects or voluntary compliance. So to wrap all this up, this slide shows our three phases. Inventory, prioritization, and measures, and the deliverables that go with them. So for phase one, we've got a project inventory, 137 projects long. And for programs, we've got 25 programs.

2:28:38Prioritization, we have now 10 tier one programs out of that list. And we also have a geographic prioritization scheme called the WOOI risk index. And then for phase three, we now have a handful of measures that are in draft and a promise to develop the rest in time for October um and our next touch with council and a commitment to track our progress year-over-year as we attempt to move the needle. I think I neglected to mention that we're having a default time horizon here of 2030, which gives us four years for implementation. And we picked that because that's when we will be due to do a six-year update to our community wildfire protection plan. So most of the measures are going to have that 2030 target. So what this analysis has shown is that program prioritization coupled with geographic based prioritization to reduce our risk is really a best way to prioritize all of our resource decisions going forward. Um and as we develop our remaining measures, it's going to give us the ability to refine the exact actions and ways to focus our work that we're going to have the biggest impact on behalf of our community. and we're looking forward to giving you even more information in October. So for next steps on task one, as Jamie mentioned,

2:29:53she's going to keep driving on asset development. There's a planned soft launch of the implementation hub um planned before October. And for task two, we're going to keep building these measures and thinking about um how to build a system to track our progress over time. And just one more time, I want to say that while this planning um project continues, the ongoing boots on the ground work for wildfire resilience is also continuing. So to wrap up, we want to just put the list of questions as we wrote them for council tonight. We covered so much material here. We've organized these three questions kind of aligning with task one and task two. And then a more open-ended question is our third question. And at this time, I think we're ready to open it up for Q&A.

2:30:42>> Fantastic, Brian. And thank you so much. So, I think what we're going to do is we are going to do one and two together. Is that what you think is the best? >> Yeah. Okay, >> you can do this. >> Okay. So question one, does council have questions or feedback on the wildfire home hardening implementation hub and its approach to connecting homeowners to resources, guidance, and incentives? Two. Does council have questions or feedback on the proposed wildfire resilience framework progress to date to prioritize resources and measure progress, including the inventory of programs and actions, tier one program designations, geographic risk groupings, and measures and targets. Does any of my council members disagree with doing one and two at the same time? All right, no one said anything. That's great. So, who wants to start us off?

2:31:38It looks like Rob Kaplan is the winner. >> Yay. Thanks, Tara. How many questions did we get? >> One, two. I can't hear you. >> Oh, how many questions do you get? >> Yeah. Is there like a first round of just one question, two questions? >> I I don't know. Let's see how it goes. Just ask your questions. Uh, you don't have to ask both questions one and two is what I meant. >> Okay. Um, thank you for all of this hard work and um, Matt and I were on a council walk and talk and it was um, it was really informative and I do appreciate everything that OSMP OSMP is doing. um to the and the rest of staff and specifically to the home hardening or I'm sorry the home implication hub the information hub um I asked a question initially about having a list of contractors and then I kind of redacted it because I actually found a list of landscapers but I only found that list of landscapers through searching it with a AI um uh tool. It's not um search engine optimized apparently. But I'm gonna go back to my first question. Can It seems like it was 30ome percent of people um that's where they get hung up just finding like a general contractor to do all this kind

2:33:07of stuff. And this is what I hear consistently. Um, I went to the county site, um, and they have a list of contractors and how to apply a contractor to apply for renewed septic professional license. So, they've done it somehow. They've made it through legal. My first question is, can we do that? >> I don't know if anybody wants to take the question. Oh, Brian, I see you coming. Yeah, I was just gonna pitch it over to Jamie to see if she had an initial reaction. Otherwise, I can jump in. >> Sure. Yeah. Um my Are you able Oh. Um I from the legal perspective, I think somebody is probably better off speaking to whether or not we can have a contractor list or not for the home working aspect. We do have a contractor list for landscapers which is currently linked off of our urban resilient landscapes web page.

2:34:14>> See that? >> Um now that list can also be added our urban resilient landscaping list um and web page can also be added to our RAP page if that makes sense. But in terms of having contractors, I'm assuming that if the um folks that are in charge decided they wanted to have some sort of training, it could work very similarly to that of our landscaping list. Though I do want to note that the city attorney's office was very specific in how they crafted the language about our landscapers list in that um they made sure that folks were aware that they had taken the city training um but were not being referred um or referenced as a contractor by the city of Boulder. So, I I certainly I might not be the author saying we can do that, but I I think that if we've done it for landscaping purposes there there's probably a good um opportunity based on our conversations with the city attorney's office that that could be a potential as well.

2:35:15>> Yeah, this might not have been a fair question for you guys, >> but it's all right. And I'm I'm happy to just say uh we can always look into it. Our concern always is that anything that appears on an official city website may appear as an endorsement. And so we're thoughtful about what does that look like? And the fact that some folks have gone through a certification or a training process that we vet gives us more confidence to do that. Uh if there are other ways in which we can think about that, happy to um lean into that, but we usually do not endorse particular um companies or individuals, but for folks that perhaps have been trained, and I believe the county does something similar, but happy to take that um back. >> Yeah, that would be great. And I can send you the licensed septic professionals that the county has. Um, can I ask another question, Tara?

2:36:08I'm gonna keep going till she tells me not to. >> I'm sorry. Can I call aqu on that one before you move on? This is Taiisha. >> Yes. >> Um, would it be possible to prioritize those companies that are in the city of Boulder >> while we're vetting the list? Thank you. Um, so the first thing I heard is the northstar is life safety and then um, thank you Mike Chard for your presentation. I mean, what we want to do is keep the fire out of the city, influence and manage the fire. OSMP is doing a great job of keeping it on the ground. I still didn't get a a great answer for why certain areas are high and not very high. um because I know right in my backyard we've had some fires and there's a lot of standing uh timber and a lot of dead and down. But it sounds like they're going to come back with um um another round of this and it's preliminary. All this to say I think S&P is doing a great job. I would love to, you know, empower them whatever they need budget-wise or FTE wise. if they need, you know, more people for grazing, more people for sawyers, more people for burn bosses, whatever that looks like to manage that

2:37:231500 foot barrier to give responders time to get there before it hits the built environment and to allow evacuation to get people out. Once it's in the built environment, if it gets into the built environment, this is this is where I'm I'm seeing the gap. And you know that Northstar is life safety. And I would love to see a statement just like um you know, affordable housing has a statement 15% of all homes permanently affordable by 2023. Climate initiatives department reduce emissions by 70% by 2030. um and become carbon positive by 2040. And OSMP has a goal of 2030. I would like some um a policy statement on our built environment and what that looks like for home hardening. And yes, this is where I'm going. I'm going to retroactive home hardening. I'm seeing Lions do it and it it's kind of like we're we're not, you know, talking to both sides of this equation. Um, and you know, also to Excel is like we're measuring things that haven't happened. I want to measure so many things that haven't happened.

2:38:46And if we can just at least look at the 5-ft perimeter, uh the non-combustible plants, uh screening and whatever else staff comes up with. I don't want to get operational here. I'm just throwing some ideas out there and then maybe have where people that can't afford to do that, they apply and maybe they get some funding. But if we could do also a 15 uh 100 foot perimeter of homes within the built environment, whether that's two rows or more just to start, I think that would be a true northstar for the life safety of our city. Um I would love somebody to speak to that. Um, as the team sort of thinks about uh some of the additional evaluation that they are um working on, I'll say uh Council Member Kaplan that you're hitting on some other work that we're doing in the city right now as we think about citywide KPIs. Those numbers that you were talking about um uh with affordable housing and our uh climate goals. That's the very thing that we are working on um that will be attached to the strategic plan in addition to obviously all the measures and metrics that um project initiatives and departments do all the time. But we are on that and actually we're thinking about how do we bring some of that

2:40:15performance holistic performance management um to council to throw some uh daylight onto it because it is not one of the things that you usually see. But I know the team is also thinking about a variety of metrics as we're moving forward. And so Brian, if there's something you want to add, feel free. >> Yeah. Yeah, Rob, we're we're definitely talking about that. And the 10 priority programs, if each one's going to have a measure, then that's going to be looking directly at fact one, which is home hardening and landscaping at home. So, we're actively talking about how to measure that. What do we control? It's a voluntary space. So within that space, we can set an ambitious target, but if we're never going to reach it, how do we um how do we kind of balance that with those kind of tradeoffs and uh stay tuned. We we don't quite have it ready for you here tonight, but we've got a lot of great ideas and clay on the wheel and we'll definitely have something for the October packet in that area.

2:41:11>> Okay. Thank you. I'm gonna let some other people ask some questions. We can come back to you, Rob, since you are the actual fire person. Okay, so let's go next to um Matt. >> I thought Tina was ahead of me. >> Okay, Tina. Tina dropped out and then came back, but it's fine. Go ahead, Matt. Tina, you can be next after him if you'd like. >> Okay. All right. I would Go ahead, Tina. I I'd like I'd like to hear your question. Go for it. >> Sorry. Okay. Um just a couple things. Um the first is uh thanks for doing all the work and also thank you for explaining how you created the risk areas. I'll also just be looking to understand a little bit um and and I u just kind of that encarnist area. I thought it looked a little bit like the others, but I'm also not um someone who's wellversed in all of this. So, I'd love to at some point hear more about how we got to that because I think community will be curious um how we got there. And then my other question is in the final report, we we might be looking to add funding at some point to try to get to some of these goals that we're defining faster.

2:42:30Will there be a way for instance if I'm looking at two priorities, one being the wildfire fuels management and the other one being the home hardening in the WOOI? How could how will we be able to frame that to say, well, I think it's going to be the home hardening one that we want to do first versus accelerating the wildfire fire management. I think we're kind of at top 10, but even between there, will there be a way for us to um like clear direction on what would be sort of the best thing to invest in and accelerate if we have the opportunity? >> Yeah, I love the question on prioritization and as you could see we sort of a top one, two, three for three different areas. So, how do you compete the top one across the separate three programmatically? you know, those are run by different departments, different work groups. So, they're not actually can't take the OS&P staff and put them to work on home hardening, per se. So, those programs kind of have a life of their own and can be accelerated in parallel without trading off one thing for the other would be my initial response to that. And we sort of intentionally built it that way that there wouldn't be a priority a way to

2:43:41prioritize fact one over RL1 just because we think they're equally important and it's maybe a losing battle to try to put one over the other. They're all pretty important and by really different complimentary pieces of risk reduction. So that's my initial thought if others want to add to that. >> Yeah, thanks Brian for that start. I might invite I'm looking at um Mike Charter or Chief Calderzo as well here. Um you know both of these mitigation opportunities exist on a spectrum and um and so Charter I saw you smile. Do you want to jump in here? >> Chief, if you if you're ready to go, I'll defer. If not, I'll jump in. >> Yeah. No, I was just actually going to speak to I was going to build real quick on what uh Brian was saying about uh going some things going in parallel. So, it's the answer to that question is probably a little more um I hate to be vague with nuance that that some are general funded um projects and programs and some of course are are funded by open space funds and so uh they can go in parallel.

2:44:52So, it depends on if we're talking about doing this this project that a lot of general fund money is spent on or not or other other kinds of funding sources. So, so I think that has to be part of the conversation, not just part of the question. Um, but then in just purely if if if we're talking about tradeoffs, then we can start talking about all right, which one of these is more important with the limited resources that we have. So, so that I just wanted to throw that out there just to to build on what Brian had said because there are some things that even if they're not quite equal in in terms of value to to the prevention um we would do in parallel anyway. If I could just jump in one one second, uh just to uh build on that, uh Dan Burke, director of open space and mountain parks, I would also add that even though we've identified the top 10 and we know the geographical prioritization is the western WOOI and even within that WOOI, there's some higher areas of risk than others, even though it's all high risk that in terms of the 10 programs, some may have uh capacity levels that are pretty adequate right now where uh one of the other ones

2:46:03may be a little bit underresourced. So we would also want to be looking at what are the current capacities of all of the 10 and there could be uh for instance our WOOI fuels management we feel like right now is a pretty wellresourced uh program area but our prescribed burn program may be a little bit underresourced. So, it's also looking particularly at at those that are uh how they're right now resourced versus uh uh what that enhanced level looks like. And Mayor Prom, I'm sorry, I forgot to identify myself. Um Mike Alderazzo, fire chief. Uh just to get that in there for the record. I apologize. >> Um okay. So, was that good? The I already forgot who that last speaker was. I think uh uh director Chard wanted to say something and um >> Awesome. Thanks, Naria. Uh Mike Charard, director office disaster management. Uh council um person uh Maris um I want to be very direct here. For me, it's about keeping it out of the homes. Once we start getting structure structure transmission, home hardening starts to lose effectiveness because that's an ember resistance tactic. So I feel very strongly that a lot of the land management especially with the way that Paul and Dan and his team have really kind of identified this 1500 foot

2:47:24multi-layered strategy of reduce embers, you know, helps us out immediately with the home hardening because it will take time to get there by percentage and then the 300 foot creates that fire reduction zone that really takes I think a lot of the wind so to speak out of the fire in ways that lets then Chief Calder Rouse and his team and Chief Redford and his team get in there, do the evacuations, do the fire control, and really try to do the structure protection plan that we've had a lot of years of DNA and building and implementing. So, uh that's I mean I think by the October uh presentation, that's where I feel we need to bring you good data and advisement also with it to help you then set the table for that policy and fiscal distribution of where maybe those investments can give us the better return. And uh I think that with Paul's further risk assessment and detail that that's going to feed into being able to get the fidelity into that recommendation for you.

2:48:21>> Just quickly add I'm sorry um Mayor Pro just quickly add I appreciate that and the cander of all the responses. I think what you're what I'm hoping that you're seeing is that the team has really developed and continues to develop hard criteria to really um tell us what the greatest risk is. What is it timed for? and that will always evolve. We are here for um the marathon, not the sprint. So, as we get more resources, as we continue to apply for grants, as the moment change and maybe we catch up with burn areas and there's another area, we will always be assessing what is it time for. Uh and those conversations will um come to you periodically as we move forward. >> Okay. And then Terry, should I just complete two and three or >> No.

2:49:08>> No. Okay. That's now we're gonna have a second round because it feels long. >> Okay. Can I just make a quick comment though? Um the way uh Mike Chard just talked about how the different teams deal with the fire at different stages really gave me as a non-fire professional just a really good idea of how that works and how the different mitigation connects with the fire prevention. So just the way that was framed was really great. Everything's been great, but I just wanted to particularly call that out. >> Yeah, I agree. I agree on that. Okay, let's move on to Nicole. >> Thank you. Um I have one question and one area for feedback. Um so my my question is this. So the wildfire resilience framework that we're putting together organizes around 130 projects into 25 program areas. Um it establishes 10 tier one priorities. It uses a multi-layer WOOI risk index with 12 model geographic sections and it ties all of this to measurable targets and annual um public tracking. Uh and all of this is supported by an annual cross- departmental investment of about 10.5 million. Is this level of scientific rigor and geographic specificity and structured prioritization and dedicated resourcing typical for a city of our size? Um, and how does that kind of position us relative to peer communities

2:50:29that are also at high risk? >> And start with an answer. I think we're way ahead in many ways. The CWPP is a common denominator. Most cities have that and it helps them be eligible for uh external grant uh and it really puts everybody together in the room to think about risk mapping and and prioritization of your work. After we got through to ours, we just felt like we had additional need for clarity and prioritization in terms of like an implementation plan for the CWPP. What we really didn't want to happen was for it to be a plan on the shelf. We wanted to make it um really active and engaged with a lot of different staff and keep it living. And then with this council priority, we really saw the opportunity uh to tell the community how we're how we're doing and to do it in a measurable fashion above and beyond what a normal CW PP uh would would bring you, which would typically just be a story map where we know those are useful. we have one, but we thought there might be a better way to storytell and engage the community and also then start to think about that 10 plus million dollar investment and where it's currently going and other kind of realignments or

2:51:43unmet needs that might flow out of it. So, this year has been a really interesting implementation planning process and without doing a formal kind of benchmark study. My my feeling is we're well ahead of of peer cities and I' I'd be happy to hear what others on the call would say to that. I would second that what uh Mike Chard director of disaster management council person spirit um definitely I think in the scientific community uh there's there's research going on that has been beneficial to help us build I think where we're current going with methodology too but then also there's areas around implementation that is where I think we're stepping out onto that forefront uh for examp I'll just give you one example with the natural hazards college coming up September uh they have what's they're calling it a go fast fire symposium and that that's their way of describing wind driven type events what we're calling that wildfire initiated community conflration I'm involved in that so there's emerging science around it so I think they're excited to see the work we're doing and contributing that space and I think just anecdotally just in the conversations you know we've had I always like to say who's doing this already uh who's the community that has the things that we're

2:52:54trying to do uh already completed so we can go to school on that and I've yet to find anyone that can direct me to that community. So the the work that the more this gets sunlighted in my in my sphere of of disciplines and peer, the more people are going, how are you getting all this done? It's and it's not it's usually there's something that's either close or maybe a little bit ahead, but the scale of comprehensive work across departments and implementation and strategy and vision is the stuff that's that's really putting people kind of on on their heels going, how did this all happen? So that would be my sense of it. >> Okay, good. Can we should we move on? >> Well, I had Aren't we doing it's questions or feedback? >> Question one and two. That's answers one and two.

2:53:44>> Yes. Yeah. So then I I do have some feedback on that. >> Okay. Um, so it it's one of the areas that I see some room for us to keep thinking about um is in the long-term usability and the ongoing support for residents and property owners who are making and maintaining changes to their property. Um, so just like with the mitigation on our own city land, mitigation for property owners unfolds over several years. It's not sort of a oneanddone situation. Even if you trim your trees, they have this weird habit of growing back. Um, so for many residents, if they're able to do the mitigation work, that's huge and it's already taken up a lot of their time. Maintaining it then takes up more time. Reporting it back may not make it onto the priority list. And I am guilty as charged um in in that uh regard. So, how do we think about making it easier for people to to not just do the work, but maintain it and then report it back to us? Um because if if you know as a resident you're sort of choosing between doing the work, maintaining it and reporting back, I would expect that reporting back is maybe not going to get you know the the highest priority there.

2:54:49So, I just encourage us to keep thinking about um and looking for ways to reduce that friction and make it easier for people to um to maintain the mitigation and engagement over time, too, so that we're helping them think about mitigation as something that's really a sustained multi-year effort um versus just something that, you know, you do once and then you're good and and and you're sort of done uh for the foreseeable future. So, it's just it's the only place where I really just still see some friction between, you know, where where community um where we're pushing community and making these changes and um and and what they're able to do. >> Thank Oops, I was muted. Thank you, Nicole. We are going to move on to Aaron, Mayor Brock. >> Thanks, Tara. And thanks so much to everybody involved in this. This cross-dep departmental work is truly impressive. And to Nicole's question in the subsequent answer, um I think the level of engagement and effort here is really remarkable for any city, certainly one of our size. And I think what you've come out with here is is what the community has been craving is this set of sciencebacked priorities where we're looking at the things that are most important, doing those first on a timeline, and then giving people

2:56:06metrics on how we're accomplishing those. So I I think this is top-notch work, and I now we have a really good answer when the community says, "Okay, how are we prioritizing our wildfire work?" we have very clear answers to point them to and I think everyone in the city who's concerned about this which is pretty much everyone will greatly appreciate that. So just kudos um and look forward to the implementation into moving forward to things in October. Um I did uh want to second Rob's comments and questions. So I thought those were those were spot on as well. So I look forward to the next steps in terms of metrics and looking at possible um retroactivity options as we move forward to the next steps. But overall, I just want to say um thank you for showing that we as a city appreciate the urgency of this work and showing how everybody is all hands on deck on addressing it. Thanks so much.

2:56:57>> Thank you so much, Mayor Bracken. Next, we move to Matt Benjamin. >> Thanks, Dar. Um, couple things. Uh, one, I mean, I think this is a great update. I think has been said our community has been clamoring for some comprehensive information on this. Um, I gotta give credit to to Rob for for initially proposing the the hub. Uh, because one thing I noticed real quick clearly is when we went to Wonderland Lake, people around there know the great work that's happening, but people in South Boulder have no idea. And so they kind of go, "What's happening?" I'm going to assume nothing's happening. And maybe vice versa for people in North Boulder. So connecting the dots so people can know what's happening around the community even if it's not right next door to them, I think is really helpful. Um, in in regards to to the hub, I'm gonna echo again where where Rob was going. Uh, one of the biggest barrier of entries, and I've heard this from countless people, is just who to call once you get the recommendations to begin this. I I I I really don't care about the legal mumbo jumbo to be honest. I don't mean to be flippant about it, but yes, and here's how is the mantra of this city. And we

2:58:01have to say yes and here's how we're going to do it. and not get caught up in in in the nomenclature or the semantics and just deliver the list that people need to have with the proper disclaimers and allow the training like let's just get it done. And the fact that that wasn't already in there or thought of gives me a little pause as to why a clear barrier wasn't already being looked at and being sought after to be addressed and that we have to sort of bring that up there. So that to me is a major priority for how to improve the hub because we it's a known barrier of entry for folks. Um, regarding uh the second question, you know, I want to circle back to where Mike Chard was discussing a little bit because it kind of comes also back to our goals. You know, in the memo, it talks about outcomes. Lower flame lengths, keep it on the ground, slow the rate, but there's no real functional goal here.

2:58:50And what Mike Chard was pointing at, I think, is the actual goal of all of this work. And I think we need to be clear on that because it really helps us prioritize the limited resources we have. and that is to simply keep the wildland fire out of our urban environment. And so my question really comes around, you know, given that our resource maximum suppression capability is roughly 30 to 40 homes, and I know folks were loving that sort of sobriety factor of hearing that, and maybe Mike can can take a few minutes to sort of discuss what that means and its impacts, but at maximum capability, we're we're we're protecting 30 to 40 homes as a fire comes into this town and and the fire enters. So how do we look at that as a maximum capability and then reverse engineer from that the practices and focuses of resources to prevent that from happening or buy the most time so that we can get in front of the fire and prevent that from happening to begin with and bring the most resources to bear. So I was wondering if Mike could expand a little bit about that situation and how it impacts everything we do before that first fire enters uh our community.

2:59:56>> Yeah, thanks sir. Mike Chard, director of disaster management. So, in one of the workshops working with the fire department, it was great conversation with Chief Oliver and uh um others. And really what it was looking at three different ways that response happens and Chief Colorado can jump in here if I'm mis speaking here, but this is where we started to look at some performance metrics around it. All-ining capability of all first engine companies that we have in the city. What is the suppression sealing capability of our units in the first 30 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes? It's right around five homes, five structures. And then uh it leans into then how do we get county mutual aid? And so we're looking at those assist those systems of how to do that the agreements. And then uh that came out to be another, you know, 15 engines.

3:00:42So you're, you know, if you're doing the math, eight engines get you about five homes. So you're getting another 10. So now we're up to 15. And then the regional work that I spoke to in my opening comments was that's where we were like, "Oh my gosh, we got to get some regional connection here because that's where the next surge capacity comes in." So that mutual aid then is designed to be after that 30 minutes getting there in the next hour, 45 minutes to an hour and then going regional with the next one to two hours, how many more resources can we get? And that then builds out to about 35 to 40 homes. So that's predicated on sort of the scale of what's coming into the city. um and that that firefront, those distributed fires and how well we can effectively move at the scale of those impacts to contain. And ideally, the less that we have exposed, meaning if the fire doesn't come in fast and hit receptive fuels and start igniting things and doesn't start dropping embers and igniting, you know, distributed fires throughout and overwhelming our suppression capability at the time that we have it. That's the sort of scale of time, resource, and then application of those resources into the fire environment that they could encounter.

3:01:48So, I hope that's what you're looking for there, Council Person Benjamin. And uh that's what we were kind of working on in that workshop. And I think more of that detail will be coming out as you get into October. >> Yeah. I mean, I guess to boil it down real simply, is the variable that we have any influence of controlling is that it's just time, right? >> Um it's time and then also some of the environmental. So the other side of this we look at and we did this in the wick uh the wildfire initiated community configuration the met in the regional area uh with all the fire departments in the region was what do we think the ceiling capacity is to fight fires. If you show up and you have water you still got to be able to get a fire stream on the fire. And if you get winds above 50 miles an hour that prohibits then effective firefighting. And now we're shifting from a fire control strategy and evacuation strategy to a life safety strategy. And now we're moving into alerting getting people moved out. fire departments defending in place structures that maybe can't get out, doing evacuation route protection and those sort of things. I'm getting kind of operational, but that that's the sort of stuff that that's happening at the

3:02:47discussion level about, you know, looking at these factors of the environment of risk that we're in. >> And I'll just just because it's piggybacking and then I'll be done. Given what we're looking to do with regards to fuel reduction, do we have a way of measuring the amount of time bought more or less to say, hey, if we mow this 30-foot strip under certain conditions, we just bought ourselves five minutes or if we to prescribe burn this area, we maybe gave ourselves an extra 15 minutes for those county resources to get in. We have a way of measuring how those efforts buy us that critical amount of time for resource implementation to meet or catch up. >> I would I would defer to a couple things here. One would be Paul around his modeling. Two would then be looking at Chief Oliver and Chief Calderzo because this is this is not something where the fire is just going to come right in without any effort. So there will be efforts west of the city pushing containing controlling and that will then create time or it will hopefully stop it there and we won't have to worry about that factor. Um I know working with the police department we did come up with evacuation modeling to help kind of answer that question around time

3:03:59which is what does it take to uh what we call you know clearance time for each polygon which is the area that we're evacuating. How long does it take to get them out? and we've done that level of assessment too. So to your point, I would have to defer to the fire experts on what they think that would look like and more importantly the fire modeling may be able to give us some criteria around that. >> Yeah. And I can jump in on there is is you know we we can get the number of the modeled rate of spread, right? Fuel fuel exists at this point. We do this treatment and now the fuel is at this point and you can model that out and say the fire will move x amount slower or burn with x amount less intensity. So, we can measure that up, but we're still working on building those measures, but we're we're going to get there.

3:04:40>> Okay, thanks so much. And it's 9:00, which we were going to be over, but we're not going to be. So, we have Taiisha and then Ryan. Aaron, is your hand still up for a reason? Oh, he took it down. And then we will think if we need to have a second round to answer question three or if this is good enough. So, let's start with Taiisha. >> Thank you. Um, this is exceptional as always and just really appreciate this in this incredible work. Um, three things. I think it's in connections to both questions one and two. Um, the first is around the geographic risk assessment. Um, I know that that assessment was a for informed by qualitative and quantitative analysis, but I was curious if it was in if there was a consideration of of our water supply scenarios. Um, if this is using the current trend um data or if you know which level of this is stressed and then just in general if there's opportunities to do kind of scenarios on you know okay this is the trend. If it's worse than this, this is what we can expect areas 1, 2, and three to look like. I would imagine if we have another dry and um warm year in 2027, 2028, 2029, um that is, you know, uncertainty. We

3:06:10know we can guarantee that there's going to be uncertainty. So, I was just curious about um about those levels. Uh that's my first question and recommendation is to get more scenario planning around that. Um the second is around mitigation and this is very focused on what we can do to prevent uh with the home hardening with the um other approaches that are critical and important. And Mike, you and I have talked extensively about the need to balance both the uh preventative with the evacuation and recovery. And I'm seeing a lot of focus on on how we're going to mitigate, but I'm not seeing a connection to the level of investments that we're making on and approaches and practices on evacuation and recovery and also possible relocation. And then my last is around if there had been considerations on a revol a revolving loan fund at 0% either working private private partnership or with our local banks. Um to to um council member Nicole's point on, you know, we know that these costs are going to be iterative. It's not just going to be a one-time cost. And so we'd really love to know if that's something you all had been considering or if there's been any conversations around that. So, those are my three comments slashquests. Thank you.

3:07:34>> I can speak to the evacuation part of that. Um, Monica Weber, uh, disaster management recorder, Mike Chard, director of disaster management for the record here. Sorry. Um we have set our northstar around that particular capability as three out of four households in IR1 and two by 2030 to attend uh and go through our evacuation protocol of alerting, preparing and evacuating and that would include the evacuation drill environment. Um >> are there annual milestones or metrics on that? uh it gets pretty detailed on it and I can definitely share that with you and Monica has been working hard to get that built so we can share if you're interested. >> The big thing it's predicated on uh community willing to engage and participate. So, so that's where we're doing further analysis on it. So, uh, as far as the recovery goes, uh, yeah, that is definitely on my, um, plate of getting into more detail of how that would work, uh, based around my experience in dealing with many fires I've had to deal with here in Boulder County over the last 18 years. So, uh, the plus side is we do have a lot of, uh, anecdotal experience of how that would go. Uh, we just need to get it based on a city Boulder model and planning.

3:08:45>> Definitely appreciate that. And again, it's also from that investment perspective. >> Absolutely. >> Um, >> Yep. And um anyone can answer that last one. I actually have a uh something that came up for me that I forgot to ask and and I've talked about this several times and I'm hopeful that uh this council and previous ones really have serious conversations on what is the trigger or pick a nonviolent term for that um for accessing our res uh reserves. Um, at what point do we need to I I really feel strongly we need to accelerate these efforts and I know that cost is going to continue to be a barrier. We're fiscally constrainted right now. We know the feds are touchand go. They're not great at recovery. haven't seen anybody go to to Georgia, I'm sorry, to Indiana or some of the other places that have had significant um issues and and so just really wanting to know, you know, from our again, this is more of a council conversation on what is the criteria. I was hopeful that the long-term strategic um strategies group was going to look into this, but just wanted to to make that comment as well. Um I think just the last thing is the um scenarios for the different um for the geographic uh areas if there had

3:10:01been if there is a a possibility to do scenario planning around that instead of just having one map. This is like you know best case worst case. >> I I came on camera here. Uh good evening council members. is Joe Teduchi, director of utilities. And when uh and thanks for that question, Council Member Adams, I think when you first asked the question, I was I was thinking of the uh other discussion we had today where I was talking about the different water supply scenarios that we modeled and we discussed with council during the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan. And so, um, I may have missed the intent of your question, but is if it is, do we have enough water to fight fires in in any of those scenarios? I can speak to that, but it's not something else.

3:10:56>> But I do love that one. But this one was I was just saying, you know, if there's a if if there is less water, then we know it's going to be drier, which means there's going to be an escalation to fire and fuel, which means those areas will be bigger. So, have we identified different thresholds based on scenarios that we can anticipate based on the information our climate community is given? I was just using your example, Joe, of how you did different scenarios and if there was a complimementaryary version of that for our wildfire response and a geographic risk assessment map. >> Miss the question that might be for Paul or someone else. >> Yeah, sorry about that. But but the water one you had was good, but but that wasn't mine. >> Council person Adams about the uh scenarios clarifying question. you're talking for the community or those scenarios used in the planning uh environment around the hazard or risk we're facing >> to identify the mapping and the different uh the different tiers and if so there's only one map but I'm but our climate community has been very clear that it's uncertain so there's a possibility that it could be even drier than we're anticipating and if so what would that map look like >> right

3:12:14>> and I would imagine Brian that that as uh we continue the work That map is based on data that is constantly looked at. So to your point, council member Adams, if we are having a year that is particularly dry, that may change the um the modeling effort and so we have to adapt accordingly. Um I know the frequency of that. So and maybe Brian was um going to jump in there. >> Okay, I appreciate that. But what I'm saying is we know it is going to be uncertain that the climate climatologists our Russ our climatologist our state clim climatologist I've seen his presentation several times and he's been very clear on the uncertainty and always gives kind of a different thresholds and so again I'm curious if we can use the existing data that shows different highs and lows and probability um to create different scenario mapping because again I think that would also impact our the level of investment the speed of the invest ment um that we need to make. Thank you.

3:13:20>> I think I can jump in and and try to clarify that a little bit. Again, sorry I didn't introduce myself last time. Brian Oliver, I'm the wildland fire division chief for fire rescue. Um and we we can do that like you said the uncertainty, but we measure that fuel moisture is one of the inputs. So, as you're saying, you know, things getting drier and and more drastic, we can measure that and add that into the model and create different scenarios based on what level of dryness we're seeing. We do that on a daily basis already within the wildland division as far as managing and measuring uh what those daily fuels are, light flashy fuels all the way to super heavy forested fuels and and base our response accordingly. Does that does that somewhat answer your question? Um it it it it sounds like in internally that is happening and my question is is if there are um additional maps that can be created based on let's say if we know the temperature is going to continue to escalate if it's more than 100 you know five or 10 100 degree days this is what you can anticipate versus right I think that's more so the direction that I'm moving in and I'm saying it because it helps us to do some of our budget

3:14:27planning thing as far as what the need is also, you know, that that the red is looking not too bad, but if it's, you know, if we get 100 day, you know, significantly more 100 degree days, then that red is going to expand. And I just want to kind of know what the gap is so that we can um kind of be be adaptive before it h you know, I know you're doing it every day, but you know, we have to plan two years, three years out and want to make sure we have the funds for that. Thank you. We good to proceed or Yes. >> No, I think my last question I didn't hear anybody on the reviving revolving loan fund. >> Um I I believe Oh, I'm sorry. Revolving loan fund, not reserves. I'll um leave it to staff to think if that is something that has been thought of as a strategy or not. Um as we move forward, there are a lot of financial needs and don't know if that had come up. I just know many in our community are are houser rich cash poor and these numbers are getting very big. I mean 8 to10 to 12,000 is hard to get out of pocket considering some of the other competing priorities for many in our community.

3:15:35>> And if they have not been thought of that's okay to say as well and it may be one of the um answers to question three about what other considerations you'd like us to continue to take a look at. Awesome. >> Sorry I went there at three but I won't have any questions for three. Thank you. I can answer that last one on behalf of the team which is simply to say as we're shifting the conversation in the team creative funding in general has come up at the executive team level looking at other parallel examples of creative funding opportunities for other purposes like electrification of homes and community and things like that. We're looking at those lessons learned and how we might apply those in the wildfire space. We don't yet have a specific direction to propose necessarily whether it's revolving loans or some other mechanism, but it's top of mind because we know that the diminishing availability of general tax funding for things um will continue and so we'll need to get creative about how to work together as a full community.

3:16:37>> Okay, we're going to move on to Ryan. Well, thank you um to the whole interdep departmental intergovernmental team here. This is a this is quite a body of work and um you you've come so far and thanks especially to Mike Chard and um Chief Colorado for being open to co-developing all of this including the list of costbenefit measures and priorities um prioritization and I think I just want to say this is this is meaningful both in terms of presenting new paths to new types of community protection but it's also clearly there's a new type of a partnership here that's emerging um where you have a council I think hearing a will of council and I I'm part of this that is um interested to both implement this work and then um figure out how to continue to compound it into more and eager for the next chapter too. So I don't mean to speak too much for others but I'm just sort of observing a little bit of what I've heard. So um we are um we're taking some really really important steps and um I thank everybody for their for their work on it. So I have just um oneish question and and I'd like to offer um one thought for feedback. So the question is on um a

3:17:55few council members have talked about um the sort of how you how do you go from from the resident having information about their de about their home situation? How do you go from that to to prompting action and investment like the workflow or the marketplace or whatever? Like how do we how do we really drive for that? And I wanted to ask about the renter situation. Um I I noticed in the home hardening hub there was a reference to um renter information for renters. So I guess there's two little questions. First question is what's what's the percentage of of of DHAs that are going to uh renter homes? just like roughly. >> Um, hi, I'm Danielle McNut. I'm with the fire department senior program manager. Um, thank you for having me on the call today. Uh, for renters, we do have an option for a renter to sign up if they put in their property. They'll just say they they're a long-term renter at that location. Generally, when we see that, we reach out to the the person who put the request in and let them know that we're going to need the homeowner's uh permission to go to the property, but they're welcome to be there or to receive the report. Um, normally the landlord then reaches out and then

3:19:13schedules the appointment. I'd say out of over the 1,000 um requests that we've had, we've only had less than a dozen renters request the assessment and very seldom are they following through with getting in contact again about their landlord. Um we do partner with some of the rental agencies. We have a good partnership with Boulder Housing Partners and so we've done assessments for almost 30 of their properties in the WOOI. So, we're trying to reach renters by engaging directly with the rental properties, but um so far it hasn't been a huge demand from the renters directly into our program. >> Okay. >> Can I qualoquate on that, Ryan? Thank you so much for asking as the only renter on our council right now. Um I would have never known that this was an option if I wasn't on council as a renter. This is the first of after living here for 14 years that this was even possible. and I've lived in the WOOI for five years. Um, so there's that. I'm curious for our rental agreements if there's anything explicit around requirements for um, homeowners that are interested or property owners that are interested in renting um, that they have these detailed home home risk assessment as a part of their rental agreement.

3:20:36Um maybe I can help you Danielle there. Um I uh we have um heard this question too as I think it's really super important. Um it is uh we do not currently have that because we don't control individual rental contracts. There has been uh >> I'm speaking specifically to the rental license. Don't they have a rental license? >> Yeah, absolutely. There has been some question on whether or not we can um compel some kind of action through the granting of a rental license. I don't believe that we have any um um that we have finalized any conclusion on that, but it is a conversation that has come up and it is something that um we're thinking and and considering as that moves forward. So, I appreciate >> Awesome. Thank you. Sorry, Ryan. Thank you. >> No, thank you. Okay. Yeah. And thank you Daniel. I may maybe that's it actually for my my question. So then um I'll just offer a thought is I'll try to do this succinctly but um it's on the just sort of building on some some things others have said around the um yeah just like the the user experience and how how do we sort of uh encourage action and investment uh by by residents after they've they've got the DHA. And um you know I remember

3:21:57earlier in the conversation there was discussion about how we're we're actually like pretty we're we're doing innovative work in the city like there's not a there's not a maybe a great roadmap for us to follow here. So I I will stipulate that we're um you know we're kind of we're kind of out in the out in the edges working on this and so that's that's the spirit that I'm going to offer a thought. Um, and I uh um uh I did get a home assessment if I don't know a month ago at our at our home and I know many council members have have done this. Um uh and I first I just want to say what a great experience it was. It was so easy to sign up for. Um I was you know I I chose my own time. They came they're you know prompt. It was you know less they said it was two hours. I think it took an hour. And the you know I was I was invited to walk around during the process if I wanted but I didn't have to. And there was sort of a short briefing at the end and then um a report came a short version, a long version, a portal online with clickable maps like my whole house was mapped with

3:22:54all I mean it was totally beat expectations as far as what the kind of information I was going to get and um it's just really impressive what what the team has been able to do. So that's that's the that's the good news. The bad news is um you know some people had pointed to um now I'm sort of left like okay what do I do? And I end up looking at the list and I'm thinking, okay, so there's bush removal. I could do some of that. Probably not all of it. There's some tree limming that's up high. I'm going to need help. Um, there's some siding. This is maybe on the technical side for me. You know, various, not a huge amount of money yet, like, you know, various siding that's going to need some help. There's some vents, including some on ladders. There's then there's like a bunch of debris removal.

3:23:33Anyway, this stuff is on its own pretty inexpensive, relatively. Um, and it's not super complicated, but this is going to live or die right now for me on whether or not I personally am going to find I'm you going to find those various I don't know if I'll use Task Rabbit or or what I'll do, but it just I I really um want to endorse some of the comments I heard about if if we if we were able to help create a marketplace where there was a um a a uh a person who does this work and it's not all six or seven of those, but it's like somebody who you maybe I would pay $500 or $1,000, I don't know. But to take the DHA and to and to to understand it, to know what it means and then, you know, they can contract and, you know, find find the help or however they do it. Um, it feels to me like you have a case here where there's you have you've got you got somebody who's ready to do this, spend their own money on it, but it's it's it's this um sort of friction of like, well, how I don't have the time.

3:24:30So, um, I don't want to use too much anecdot here and generalized boulder just just on my case, but I have talked to others who they've sort of said, "Oh, yeah, that that makes a lot of sense." And so, I just I really love the some of the ideas I heard about um like sort of taking this on and and figuring out how do you how do you define the scope of this, which is it's an interdisciplinary affair with these various contractors, but how do you put it into a single thing? How do we make sure that that then these service providers who are offering the implementation of the DHA to to you know make sure they understand the idea of it and there's some quality train training um maybe it's certification maybe not I don't know but there there's there's some level of giving them the the the the education and the the guidance and then somehow it's on a platform or somehow the city assists to create a marketplace such that we can um you know we know where to go to find those um those types of folks folks. And I would offer that if we somehow, just imagination, can create a lot of public funding for a program. If we don't have this figured out, I'm I'm

3:25:37pretty skeptical that that public money is going to be used, you know, in a in a at least the private residences in um in an effective way. Conversely, I don't know that I mean I I'm optimistic that if we could get this workflow figured out, you would have a lot of homeowners saying like let I'm happy to I'm happy to do this. So, I'm totally conjecturing here in the spirit that we we said earlier this is kind of new ground, but um if we could try this, I think we're talking about a way to create potential new new jobs or at least, you know, um add to entrepreneurship in the city. We're talking about a program where where ren sorry, we're talking about um residents are able to spend money that we're not asking the city to to get get at. And then finally, going back to the renter story, um it feels to me like there's things we could do to let the um owners, the landlords of of rental homes to get in on this. Um we have a tenant hand renter tenant handbook. Um that could at least include maybe there's some way you prioritize so that the renters maybe go to the front of the queue if they're, you know, if the landlord is going to do it. But it just

3:26:41strikes me that this this is not inherently something that homeowners or landlords don't want to do. And in fact, I think a lot of us do want to do it. But there's just there's a lot of friction in like how do you do it right? So anyway, thanks for letting letting me say all this. And I'll just conclude by by suggesting the the user experience and making this so that the um the the person who's receiving the DHA, if we can take ownership in in moving that to action and investment, um I think that's where some of the most exciting opportunity is. and we'll probably unlock or have the chance to unlock a lot of um a lot of exciting resources that we uh think we need. So So thanks again team and thanks for listening to all that.

3:27:20>> Okay. Well, I'm not I think I've reached the end of what I can do on a Thursday night. No, I'm kidding. I will just uh end with a very small question. I'm so tired, but let me think if I can remember it. Yes. Do you remember that map that showed the high and the very high staff people? Um that that map and it was brown and yellow. Remember it? >> I think we all know the map. Yep, we got it. Can you tell me in the hill area what are those streets that are very high so I can visualize >> because I couldn't see any streets. >> Yeah, Mayor Prom Winer, I do want to um before other staff might respond, those maps are draft and so you're going to be talking to a staff team who's really hesitant to start talking about street level details. Okay.

3:28:23>> Um until we finalize those. So, if you're willing to bear with us, um we do plan in at the end of October to bring back some of the background detail we've already heard that you're hoping for to really understand why certain areas are higher risk. >> No, that was a big question, but that's a good question. So, where I'm going is, and this has nothing to do with the subject matter tonight, but everybody else took so long, so I might as well just ask my thought. I'm not putting anybody down for taking so long. Nobody be insulted. Okay. Um, the Hill community is very worried about wildfire and density and so I particularly want to know how what streets they are because if that is the high highest of the high, then that makes a big difference as to some of our other policies. So Rob, I was hoping you could talk about this, but you didn't.

3:29:25So I'm going to cuz I only have this one question is right now we have wildfire then we have planning and develop I mean we have the different segments but planning or like how do I put this like when we discuss um zoning and such we don't and building and increasing housing we often don't touch on how that is going to affect We try to, but we don't do it that much. How that's going to affect the neighborhoods that are in the highest of the high. So, I'm very interested in bringing it all together and having some sort of a cohesive plan for the city where we decide we're not going to stuff more housing in the highest of the high unless we know that they could evacuate. So, I kind of want to bring this together and I was hoping, Rob, that you could add to it because it was your thought, not mine. I don't want to say it in the wrong way. So, can you >> um Yeah, I'm happy to. I mean, that was one of my my questions about involving um >> Oh, you did ask it and I was just not listening.

3:30:38>> Oh, no, no, no, no. I asked it in my hotline for planning and development services. >> Oh, yes, that's right. In your hotline. >> But in in fairness to that, I I mean, I think I know what you're talking about. We do have some investors that are coming in and buying homes, single family homes that also could be considered middle inome homes. And um there's a specific one that's like a thousand square feet on grant and they're tearing it down and they have a a duplex planned. And this is hearsay. I don't know that this is true. Um, but I've heard that um it has a total of 12 rooms, 12 bedrooms, um, six each side, which would be more student focused. Um, again, I can't verify that, but yeah, it's the amount of traffic on a small one-way street up against um, you know, zone, the high or very high risk of the WOOI and the consideration of the evacuation.

3:31:36I think that's what you're speaking to, right? >> Yes. You know, nobody has to answer ask answer this now or even discuss it now, but since we're talking about it again in October, I just thought I would throw it out there that I would love it if we could think about this whole situation with the high and the very high from all different standpoints. I I appreciate that uh Mayor Prom and I think what you're weaving into it and and council member Kaplan you had some of that in your hotline is this intersection between policy choices on density and growth and where that happens when they intersect with what we know is um a wooi area that has additional heightened um fire concerns. I I think that's a little bit beyond um what the team is presenting today, but I appreciate that we've been having the conversation about that. Um and then weigh in whether or not uh rental density is causing a concern. So, we take that note and I'm sure we're going to have uh future conversations not just with this team, but likely um with others as we move forward.

3:32:46>> Um yes, thank you. Um I was just bringing that up. Okay, so we didn't answer three, but probably a lot of us are tired. So, let me just say, does anybody else have something they absolutely must talk about right now in the council? All right, looks like Tina and Rob for your final answer. >> What >> are we answering third question? >> Well, I Well, I mean, it's 9:30 and we're supposed to be done. So, I only want people to answer the third question if they really have something important to say. Let's just say that. >> So, I'm I'm just fine. >> Tara, I I feel comfortable offering my feedback to number three in an email format. >> No, you don't have to. I mean, we're just we'll extend the meeting, but we can just be succinct and finish up with number three.

3:33:38>> Okay. >> Or you could or you could take people up on the offer to email. >> It's possible. or you can email. >> If you don't feel like the community needs to hear your story, you can email. >> Okay. Um, am I number one? >> There's five people. >> Okay. >> Let's do two one or two minutes a person. Go. >> All right. So, I just I think I already expressed a lot of my thoughts and I really appreciate the specificity of this um presentation. The one thing I'm interested in question number three is just we have so many active engaged community members. The extent that we can um lean on them and let them help elevate this issue in the community I think would be awesome. I also wanted to shout out your I used to be a juniper sign. That was adorable and I loved it. Thank you.

3:34:38Okay, that is fantastic. Now we're moving to Rob Kaplan for his one to two minute answer. >> It's just number three. Um >> yes, >> I'm just wondering um and you don't have to answer this now, but to bring it back obviously the uh $10.5 million, does that enable us to deliver on the 25 projects? And we've had a couple uh times where we've missed a $9.6 million and a $9.8 8 million grant that went to Jeffco and Larur County um that we didn't apply for and I am not pointing fingers. I can't imagine the stress load on the grant program analysis team right now with federal cuts. Um do they need help? That's my question. >> Is that your question for number three or would you would you like an answer to that? Um well in in the spirit of time I was y >> going to let it go.

3:35:40>> That'll work. >> Okay. >> So no no answer just move on >> just to bring it back in in October. >> Okay. Okay. Taisha >> uh very quickly um one thing I did not bring up and to Pam's point I understand that the the maps are drafts and some of the comments of the uh of the team. However, I did notice and was curious what the overlap is with area three. I noticed that there was a section of of yellow in one of it and then there's also high intensity in that area. So, I would love to just get more information about the um the area for you. Thank you. >> Great qu I love these questions that people can get back to us. They're my favorite. Okay, now we're going to go to Matt.

3:36:33>> All right, appreciate it. Um, I'm going to try to be succinct with setting up for next week. Um, I think one big thing that I'd like us to focus on is being prepared to not only price out um, what the enhanced model is. I mean, again, we're doing great work, but the community didn't rate this at 75% as a major priority if they thought the level of good work we're doing was still sufficient to meet their needs of feeling safe. So, I think that um I'm looking at that enhanced be clear and not just price it out. Please come to us with where in the budget those tradeoff conversations could occur. where does it make sense within the budget for us to look at financial trade-offs to fund that enhanced uh proposal. So, I think that would be really important for us and community to see on the 22nd. Brian Anicker said it was really clear that our main goal is centered around 2030 because that's when we're at that six-year update to our wildfire protection plan. So, I think I'd like us to to really set some clear goals. One of which is to say, why can't we say we're going to remove all junipers on city property by 2030? Let's just come out and say and do it. Let's lead by

3:37:38example. And then lastly, we have goals around the fuel reduction, which I think are really good. We have zero goals, it seems, around home hardening. So, why not do another 2030 goal for home hardening? Say 30 by 30. We're going to harden 30% of the homes in IR1 and two by 2030. Like, let's go ahead and do that. That's only 750 of the 2500 homes. So, let's set clear goals and let's measure our success and let's put the resources in that need to do that. So, I'd like to see us a little bit better on the goal front. Um, and and I think ultimately I think we have to set the stage for what a number of us are starting to talk about, which is mandatory home hardening. That will accelerate a lot of goals and bring a lot of buy in. Um, and and of course need more resources to meet that. So, I I think we can do a little better on goals and really center this so when we get out of the 22nd, we are we are laser focused with the finite resources we have to to get the job done. Um, >> Nicole, do you mind if I call on um Matt?

3:38:37Nicole didn't say anything so she doesn't mind. >> Go for it. >> Okay. Agreeing with Matt, but I have a question for staff. Is it possible for you to bring back to us because we have been kind of skirting around talking about um home hardening, mandatory home hardening. And the last time we talked about at our retreat, we did get a fair amount of push back because I think um Chief Calderzo, you said that we really didn't have the resources to um enforce which of course maybe people would do it anyway. And so I was hoping that we could have a discussion about that. Not a long one maybe, but because whoever is on council next with our priorities next, uh some of us were with bring forth priorities. Some of us were talking about, you know, when it would be good to um put forth mandatory home hardening on the high high woo, what do you call it? The ultra high scary part of the WOOI, I guess.

3:39:44Um, and so I wanted your input, I guess, and others input um, as to next steps with that. >> I mean, I want to do it, but if you say this is like the worst idea I ever heard, >> council member, >> and I assume you're talking about mandatory for retroactive. Um, >> yes, retroactive. Mandatory. Yeah, that's right. >> I would say this that um, the last time we spoke about it, and I believe you've also received um, a confidential legal memo about it, but the last time we spoke about it, there was not direction to move that forward. If council wants us to do that, then I think that's a different discussion. >> Okay. I mean, no, we did talk about it and uh at that time we decided not to as a team. So, okay, that sounds good. All right. Looks Nicole.

3:40:31>> Yeah, thank you. Um I just just want to thank you again for this work. I didn't get a chance to just fully commend uh the scope of it earlier. I this is just really impressive. I I really um is pretty extraordinary and and that you've done all this in about eight months. So, thank you for that. Um what I really want to do is just um plus one Ryan's point about helping to foster businesses um that could help property owners implement some of these detailed home assessment recommendations. It's just such a big part of what we're having to do within the city. I think any way we can facilitate that will probably help get it done faster. Um I wonder about our small business development center if there are any areas of overlap between some of our economic development work and facilitating these types of businesses.

3:41:14Um I can even see some models just in thinking about how we generate money for people who can't afford to pay somebody to do this work. um where you know we have some fees on the use of those types of services um that that would sort of help um supplement what lower income homeowners um to Taiisha's point uh and and points others have made um could could have available to help um pay for similar improvements. But I think that removing that obstacle for for folks for whom it's not necessarily the cost that's an issue, but the time and the coordination um could really help us move a lot faster um through hardening the city. So, just something to um I would love us to keep thinking about. Thank you. >> Well, okay. It is 9:37 and I thought that I would do something unusual and ask staff if they have any last words as opposed to us.

3:42:06Staff, anyone >> It's been a long day and I will say unless staff has something um super urgent to give out then then I'll say what we really do is appreciate the time and attention. you can tell this issue is not just community's first priority. We know it is a big priority for you and take into um account particularly your thoughts about how do we reduce barriers to both action and to those that perhaps can't afford it or don't have access to it like our renter community. So just appreciate it. Um and we will continue the work and uh plan a more wholesome discussion with you in October. >> Okay. Okay. Well, at 9:37 p.m., >> for a quick PSA real quick, almost peak lunar eclipse. So, when you're done with this meeting, go out and stare at the lunar eclipse. Look up, enjoy, and have fun.

3:42:54>> Thanks for that, Matt. Okay, we are closing this meeting at 9:38 p.m. Go run and look at the lunar eclipse. Good night, everyone. >> Night, everybody. Thanks, Terara.