Transcript

0:00:00All right, Commissioners, are you ready? Yes, we are. And we are recording. Good morning. Today is August 4th, 2026. This is a meeting of the Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County. We have all three commissioners present. And we will start our business meeting with two items to note for the record. The first is a resignation from the Community Action Program administering board of Maria Astudillo and Sadar Putin Sani, resigning. They were both private sector representatives. We also have a resignation from the Foothills Regional Emergency Trauma Advisory Council by Ryan Singer and Chris Duran. So those are just a note for the record. Then we will now sit as the Boulder County Housing Authority Board of Directors, and we have one item on our consent agenda. I have a motion. Move approval. Second. All in favor. Aye. Now we will resume sitting as the Board of County Commissioners, and we have consent agenda consisting of 6A through N. We have a motion. Move approval. Second.

0:01:15All in favor. Aye. That brings us to our discussion items to appointments. Good morning, Robin. Tell us about the foothills regional emergency trauma advisory council. Good morning, Madam Chair. Commissioners Robin Valdez with the Commissioner's Office. First, I like to express my gratitude to Commissioner Stolzman, who had an opportunity to review all the materials that was sent related to the Food Hills Regional Emergency Medical and Trauma Advisory Council and the Applicants therewith. So in relation to the resignations mentioned earlier, we have two new applicants. One is Cassandra Dickerson. Cassandra is the trauma program manager for Longmont United Hospital. And she will replace Chris Duran, and we'll be appointed as a hospital representative, or also known as regular member. And the other applicant is Cameron Moran, and he's a paramedic with the Boulder County Sheriff's Office. And he will replace Ryan Singer's position. It's an alternate member on this board for your consideration today. Okay, thank you, Robin. Any questions or discussion. I don't have any questions, but I'd love to hear Commissioner Stolzman if there was any input that you wanted to share with us. And you might've been going that direction already. There are two vacancies and two very qualified candidates. We have a registered nurse trauma program manager from Longmont United Hospital. As Robin said from the Sheriff's Office, Cameron, in emergency services as

0:03:04well. And so just really grateful that people would step up and serve, and these are qualified folks. Thank you. Good, okay. I have no questions. Thank you for taking the time to review those applications. So I think we're ready for a motion to make these appointments. Mrs. Approval. Second. All in favor. Aye. Thank you, Commissioner. And the second is appointing an interim county administrator, Ben Pearlman commencing August 11th at 4. 30 PM. Do we have anyone to make this presentation or present this item? Yeah, Natalie. Good morning, Commissioner. It's Natalie Spring. Act commissioners, Deputy, for the record. I'm here to bring forward that the Boulder County Commissioners will need to appoint an interim County Administrator upon Jana Peter's son's resignation, which will begin at the end of the business day on August 11th, 2026, and County Attorney Ben Pearlman is willing to accept this interim appointment while we move forward with a recruitment process. Great.

0:04:17So I guess I would invite any discussion that the Commissioners want to have at this time. I don't have any discussion. I'll just say I'm just very grateful that Ben is willing to take the position. The Commissioners were hoping to not have anyone that was interested in applying for the job. And Ben is going to return to being County Attorney once he's done with the interim post. So really appreciate of his service and willingness to help the community and this transition time. And we'll all miss Janna very much. And so just thank you both, and I would move approval of item 7B. Second. Second. To have a little discussion on my part as well. Um, I guess I also just want to express appreciation to our County Attorney for doing this. It's, uh, you know, we hope to do this permanent hiring process efficiently and expeditiously. But these things take time. And, um, and somebody needs to keep the wheels or the county functioning. And Ben, just given his, the various roles he's had here at Boulder County over his career at the county made him a very, uh, ideal choice in addition to the fact that he's not, uh, has indicated he's not going to seek this position. And we didn't want to, um, put a thumb on the scale on anybody's, um, behalf.

0:05:47Uh, we do want to have a full open search process. And so, you know, having been avan available to serve in this capacity really was ideal. So, uh, we do have a motion in a second and I will call for a vote, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. So we have made that appointment. Um, congratulations or condolences as the case may be. We are now ready to confirm executive session topics. Thank you, commissioners. Natalie Spring at Commissioners Deputy for the Record. On item eight, I'm here to confirm that the executive session topics that were noticed at the July 21st, 2026 regular business meeting of the board, we're discussed as scheduled. And this is simply a note for the record. So I'm happy to move a style nine. On item nine, I'm here to request authorization for the Board of County Commissioners to go into executive session on Wednesday, August 5th, 2026 at 1 p.

0:06:44m. pursuing to CRS 24 - 6 - 402 subsection 4B. Legal advice for the following topic, implementation of automated vehicle identification system known as Avis on County Rhodes and state highways. Approval. Second. All in favor. Okay. And that brings us now to a public hearing on an open space matter. Easement in favor of Excel energy. Tina, are you ready to go. I think so. I'm waiting for my presentation to pop up there. Okay. And you know, all right. Good. Looks like we're all ready. Great. Uh, good morning, Commissioners. I'm Tina Burckhartt Real Estate Division Manager Boulder. Boulder County Parks and OpenSpace. And I'm here to talk to you about the Lalie Roberts and Thompson Properties 2026 Excel takings. Um, sorry, I'm trying to advance this. Let's see. Properties that, um, are impacted. Hold on. My, my presentation's not advancing, but yours is. Let me just see. There we go. The three affected properties are located in southeast corner of the county. There should be a red circle that goes, but it's not. Oh, here comes Jar. Am I not in the right mode, Jeremy. Okay.

0:08:17Oh, okay. Something else. I thought he was going to rescue me. Okay. Um, in any way, oh, the red circle that should pop up, but it's the Southeast County, Southeast part of the county. Where these properties are located. Come on. Let's see. Sorry. I'm really just trying to get this to my album. Use your cursor, although I think we're familiar with that part of the county. I know. It's just not, um, like my slides aren't advancing. Oh, there can be. Oh, the circle. Okay. All right. So now you got that. All right. Um, let's see if we can get to the next one. There we go. Okay. So for a little bit of background, Boulder County Public Works Department in partnership with the City of Lafayette is reconstructing and widening 120th Street between overlooked drive and Dylan Road to accommodate two five foot paved shoulders with two foot painted buffers, um, separate shoulder users from vehicular traffic. The project will flatten some of the extreme grades of the area's hillsides to reduce energy use by the numerous large trucks in other vehicles that are currently using the road thereby reducing noise and fuel consumption. Let's see. Oh, this is interesting. So my, my slides don't move, but yours do. Okay. Let's see. There we go.

0:09:37Okay. Um, as a result of this project, this County Project, some of Excel's existing polls and overhead lines in the areas along the project will need to be relocated. So the map on the left there shows the affected open space properties outline in blue, which I mentioned are the Lily Roberts and Thompson Open Space Properties. The map on the right is zoomed in a bit, um, the black lines on either side of 120th indicate the areas to which the power lines will be, uh, located. And I'll zoom in a little more on the next maps. Maybe. Let's see. That's. Really laggy. I'm sorry. Maybe. Jeremy's coming now. Sorry you guys, just not advancing and I'm not, I'm not sure why. Oh. No. Am I. Not doing something right here? Here comes Jerragam. I know. Romemo doesn't have another slide. No. It's a PowerPoint. Yeah. Um. Try. Something else. Thank you. Um. Could we do. A not presenter mode. We can do any way you think of work. I know I have a lot. Of stuff open. Sorry. I know I have everything open. It's okay. You're like, what. The hell. Okay.

0:11:31It's up there. Right. Now. It's. That guy. Okay. And then I just need my notes. That's what I'm saying is that it would be a not impresenter mode. So. That. Won't work. Um. On the right. Five. Minute recess. Tina already send me your presentation. It's, it's a, let's hit presenter mode and see what happens. Okay. There's that. Let's see if it advances. Oh. Look at you go. Yeah. Okay. We got it. Thank you. I think we do. Right. I'll just do the way you were doing it, Jeremy. Thank you. Okay. Where were we. Okay. Now I'm zooming into the particular properties. Sorry about that. Um, this is the Lally property. And the two sections there in the white that will be, um, the easement areas where the lines will be relocated. This is the Roberts property. That white box is the easement area on that property. And again, these are all, um, along 120. Lastly, this is the Thompson property. And those two white boxes are the areas on that property and the total, um, area needed is 1.

0:13:10379 acres. So various governmental entities and certain private entities have the Authority to condemn private and public property. In general, public property can be condemned at the new use as consistent with the prior public use. In this instance, Excels use is to relocate existing overhead lines for which this project staff finds to be consistent with the existing use of the properties. Excel is one of those entities with the authority to condemn. Um, and parks and open prefers to cooperate informally with entities with condemnation authority in these instances to negotiate fear compensation for the county rather than to engage in condemnation action in the courts, which is more costly and time consuming for both parties. Excel is being cooperating meeting staff's request designed to protect and preserve the open space interests, minimize site disturbances and provide reclamation standards to the extent practicable. Excel is also required to provide just compensation for the easements and staff and Excel have a negotiated 19, 957 dollars for the easement areas and staff agrees this is a fair market value of the easements. I also want to address the question about undergrounding these lines when they are being relocated and Excel has noted that it's applicable service and construction standards did not require conversion of the existing overhead lines to underground. And that overhead replacement in kind isn't allowed and

0:14:44standard approach under installation and service rules. Um, nonetheless, Excel did evaluate an underground option and determine that site conditions terrain constraints and overall project timing would make underground construction challenging. In addition, underground installation at this location would have requires significant additional civil work, including trenching, crossings and coordination around existing buried utilities resulting at higher construction costs, greater potential for prolonged traffic and roadway impacts and an inability to meet the county's overall schedule for this road project. Um, lastly, according to Excel, this project area is a designated as wildfire tier two. We're underground is not required for this type of rebuild project under Excel's wildfire mitigation and construction criteria. The this rebuild design is there for consistent with both safety and regulatory expectations for this corridor. Um, the terms of the resolution creating the sales tax that was used to purchase the properties that are affected require specific procedures, um, be followed to dispose of these easements. In this instance, staff notified neighbors nearby property owners within 500 feet of the property. And notice of this hearing was published in the official newspapers of the area to meet legal publishing requirements for dispositions. The notices also included an invitation to attend and comment at this hearing.

0:16:08On May 28th, the parks and open - space advisory committee unanimously approved recommending this item to you today for approval. And if the permanent easements are approved by you today, there is a mandatory 60 - day waiting period prior to convince of those easements. Staff supports granting the requested easements to excel for the reasons I've just described. And I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about this. And there are several representatives online and hear from Excel if you happen to have any questions for them. Thanks. Good. Okay. Thank you, Tina. Board questions for Tina. And I would invite any of the Excel representatives to come off mute and answer their questions if Tina can't. That's great. Thank you. Thanks, Tina. Um, and no apologies on the tech. No, please don't because we all go through that. Um, we all have excitement with the tech. Um, I just, I think my question and you talked about it a little bit and it's in the memo in regards to, for me, I'm just thinking if there is going to be rebuild, I understand the, the legality of, um, this governmental entity can take, do a taking process. But if there's rebuild, I'd like to hear more about how, what was described as service and construction standards on Excel's part don't support underground. It just seems

0:17:37like in the rebuild would be the time to make that shift. Um, and it's hard for me to think if we think about all the significant fires that are happening right now in cities around the US, that it's, that it doesn't somehow apply. And it's not an opportunity. So that's the piece that I just had a question book. Yes. It's an excellent question. And I'm going to, I'm going to phone Excel friend here for some support. That's great. I appreciate it. Just a reminder to state your name when you do get to the microphone. Any mic. I bet the microphone will turn on for you in just a moment. And then you'll just want to get really close to it so that it can hear you. Hang on just a second. Yeah. Go ahead and pull the microphone so it's comfortable for you and you don't have to lean over. Thanks for that. I'm Jay Portias with XL Energy. Um, yeah, I mean, we looked at undergrounding, um, options out there on this site. The site was, was real hilly. And I mean, it doesn't look like it from those pictures, but it goes up and down real bad right there with drainage and everything else. To underground it would have taken several, several more months. Um, we were trying to get out of the

0:18:54way for Boulder County road project as quick as possible. And when we do projects for Boulder County like that, we do them as quick and as cheap as possible because we, I mean, if it's like for like, meaning overhead and we're relocating overhead, then it's, then we, we, we assume the cost for that. If it's. Not, and we go underground and it's a Boulder County project, then Boulder County would have to, um, ensue some of the cost of that. So we tried to do it as quick as safe as possible out there. So, um, on a tier two wildfire. We do not have to do, um, undergrounding is not a requirement. And this was, this did fall in a tier wildfire tier two zone. So this, that's where we were at with it. So, okay.

0:19:51I hear what you're saying. I think for me, what I heard you talk about was the quick and fast maybe. And I, I feel like we've got residents throughout Boulder County that would be interested in safety and those opportunities and the reconstruction. So that's, that was what my question was about. I appreciate that. Thank you. I also have a couple of questions on the undergrounding component. Um, were you able to provide the team a cost estimate of the delta on undergrounding? Like what that would be and was there any discussion about whether or not we would want to pursue that? We didn't even do a design for underground. We just, I mean, it would. Close to your mic. So we, we didn't do an underground analysis of the job. So we were just going to go overhead from the get - go. Okay. I mean, I understand what you're saying. It's just, I'm looking at the Colorado wildfire resiliency code map and it's identified as a hazard area on the map. So if someone were to build in the area, any type of structure, they would have to meet hardening requirements for it. And it's, it's a very windy area. Um, and, you know, the wind comes across perpendicular to those lines in that spot.

0:21:02So I do know residents, um, would be super interested in undergrounding. It's sort of tangentially related to the issue, I think in any case they'll be right away that's needed for burial or under either undergrounding or putting lines in, but I wonder what the process would be to continue the conversation to see what the costs would be and how a partnership might proceed on, um, figuring out if we could do a different, uh, treatment in the field there. Um, we can definitely look at costs. If that's, I mean, it would probably be next year by the time we could get it done, um, right now we're looking at, I mean, we got Boulder County's already out there. You know, doing dirt work. Um, and they're going around our poles. So our polls are kind of up in the air where they've been excavating. So. We do have another, uh, Excel person who's raised his hand and come off mute and has his camera on. So, um, let's go ahead and, and hear from Mr. Penya.

0:22:11And you're still muted. Maybe I don't. Know, we're not hearing you. Wonder if you need to switch to a different microphone. Jeremy Smith, Commissioner staff. If you want to go into your audio settings and make sure you've selected a microphone that's connected. How about. Now? There we go. Okay. Sorry about that. I was working earlier during the check. Uh, Adam Penya right away manager. Could you, oh, okay. You said it. Yeah. Thanks. Senior manager for right away in permits. And so maybe just Jay, I wanted to maybe talk about overhead standards too. Because I mean, just because we're not underground, it doesn't mean that we're not doing a hardening standard on the overhead lines. Right. So the overhead lines will be built to new wildfire standard as well. Um, so I just wanted to point that out, uh, Undergrounding is not the only way to harden for wildfire, if you will. Thank you. Um, that, that was a question I was going to have is, you know, I assume the polls are going to be upgraded and lines, um, themselves probably hardened as well. I had a Commissioner Soldman to do have some more questions.

0:23:34I had a question. I just have comments at this point. Okay. I just on this undergrounding thing. I also wondered Tina, maybe this is you. I'm not really sure. To put, uh, the area where we're working kind of in the larger context of these lines. And would, uh, where, how much of 120th are we doing this widening work on relative to where these lines are. Um, Tina Burt Real Estate Manager Parks in OpenSpace. This is a public works project, so I don't have a lot of knowledge. I actually thought somebody from public works was going to be here today. Um, to speak to that. But it's my understanding. It's, it's a pretty long stretch of 120th. And that, um, that the Excels lines are in the way. And the projects have started and as Jay had noted that it's, um. The County's working around those polls, existing polls. And I think the longer they have to do that public works has to do that the more it ends up costing for the overall project. But I don't, I don't have a lot of knowledge of the actual road project. Yeah. Maybe that's J or Adam as the right away manager just in terms of what else, you know, if you're working in 120th right away for the rest of it. And you're not needing to

0:24:59acquire additional right away. I think that's just that section or that I don't, I don't know the whole road that they're doing, but just that section is where we have to move our lines. Tina Burkhardt again. Um, yeah, my understanding is that I don't think those lines go all along the same side. I think they cross over. And so it's the sections at which the widening is hitting those line, not hitting those lines. But where those lines are in the way for the widening. And it just does, it doesn't happen to be all the entire alignment of the road. It's just those chunks that were on those maps that I showed you. Okay. I mean, so the rest of the line staying as is. Yeah. Thanks. I was wanting that perspective of, you know, we may have an opportunity perhaps to underground a small portion, but the more out there. Yes. Yes. There's a, there's a, the rest of that line, as I understand it, is staying above ground. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Any other questions here before, I believe we do need to have a public hearing on this because this is a, um, disposition. Okay. I will open the floor for anyone who has commissioner staff. I did want to check in my understanding was Excel had a presentation they wanted to give.

0:26:21Oh, okay. If that's the case, go right ahead. Who's driving that. I was told there was someone online. Nick was nice over Adam. Hey Nick, before you share your screen, I just need to make an announcement. The upcoming presentation shared through Zoom. Anyone participating in Zoom and needs or desires captions should turn on captions in the Zoom app at this time and leave them on until the presentation is over with that. If you want to share your screen, Nick, you're welcome to. All right. Nick. And then we'll ask that you state your name for the record before you proceed. Yes. Uh, Nicolas Cole Boulder area manager with Excel energy. Give me a second. Is it coming through on your guys? It's just about. Great. Again. Thank you commissioners for taking the time to listen to us today about this relocation project. Definitely understand the concerns when we were starting this and we did get feedback in June of, uh, June 8th about potentially stopping this project and, uh, considering going underground. I'm going to tee up my, uh, design group J Portiers. He's in a tennis there just to go over the project and some of the details that we did as a team to internally, um, look at this project and the steps that we took to make sure that relocating overhead

0:28:13was on the right and correct decision, um, to move forward to make sure that we were being good stories with the county to make sure that we were working within that timeline. And again, also making sure that we were doing right by our customers in the area to make sure that we were making sure that our lines were hardened when we did this over here. So with that. Uh, the my slide change. Great. Uh, Jay, if you would like to go over the, uh, the project timeline is all you. Think. Um, yeah, so June 12th Dan Delang with the Boulder County initiated application request for, for relocation of Excel Energy Facilities, um, and, and, and got the ball rolling there, uh, 2025, June 16th XL design, uh, designer barb temple initiated communication with him, uh, June 23rd 25 Excel Energy Boulder County representative, uh, discussed the project. And I mean, in September 3rd, you know, it goes all the way down. We, we got October, October 2nd, 2025, 120th Street working project, organized by Bill Schultz. Uh, Boulder County. Uh, attended is included Boulder County, uh, Aaron Clerk. We can see it. Can you see it? You can go to the next slide. That's great.

0:29:46Thanks. Yeah. Next slide, Nick. Yeah. So then I met out there January 21st, uh, with Dan Delaying. We came up with the fastest and most efficient way to get out of the way of the road project for Boulder County. Had it. Uh, going there January 28th, 120th Street safety improvements project meeting. We did talk about going, uh, underground. Um, April 28, 2026 field. Field walk with the, for the entire project with our right away agent, uh, Boulder County and everybody else, uh. We did get to cruise out there working, uh. I think it was June 6th. Is when they shut, they shut us down. We got shut down out there. So and now here we are. Talking with all you commissioners. Next slide, Nick. These are some of the pictures, um, that are out there along the road, um, the, the far right picture is where it jogs across the street. And we were going to, um, straighten that out.

0:31:20Um, and make it so it comes straight across the street. The top left picture is where, where it comes up from the south. And that is the only spot we're going to be trenching underground over to the new line that we're going to be building approximately 30 feet away from the existing line. Can you explain that a little more, please? So right there on the top left is the end of the overhead line from that point on into Lafayette. It's underground. So you're going to underground that section that we can see in the top left? Yes. Only about 50 feet of it though. The new line is going to be built over. And they're just going to, so we're going to dig down and splice that wire and underground it over to the new line, um, on the other side of the street. It's on the same side of the street there. So the new line will be going. To the right of the, if you're looking at that top left picture of the new line will be going 40 foot to the right of that pole. So you're saying after you cross the street, it'll cross the street 120th above ground. And then I think you're showing us a different segment here. Is that right? Yeah. So the top left pictures where it starts.

0:32:43And that's the most southern part of the project. And it goes underground across. To a switch right there, but we're just moving the overhead lines out of your way. The overhead poles are the ones that are in the way of the road project. So we're just. Splicing onto that wire that's going up that pole now. And then going over 40 feet and down the side of the road. Thanks so much. Should we take public comment on this today? Well, I wanted to find out whether they have any more presentation. Okay. Looks like we have a little bit more. They're just not an applicant. This is very strange to me what's happening. Was there more that you wanted to say about this? This looks like the, I don't know as Aaron on that she could speak to this, this, uh, clip. I mean, I think Adam, this is just our environmental requirements. I could probably just speak to this. I think this is just informational. Right.

0:33:55It's talking about the different stormwater permits. And, uh, kind of where we're at with the, uh, various permits that we have engaged with to be able to undertake this project. And so, uh, looks like our stormwater with Boulder County, um, gains approval once, uh, Boulder County inspects our control measures on site. So once we get approval here, we'll install our control measures and then Boulder County go through and do that final inspection, which will allow us to begin work again. Uh, state Colorado's construction stormwater discharge permit. No further steps. It's been approved. And, uh, you know, no further aquatic resources. They're potentially jurisdictional under army core sections, clean water act. And so I think that we've got most of our approvals except for the, uh, Boulder County stormwater quality discharge permit, which we will get once, uh, we've been approved here at the hearing to continue with our construction project. Okay. If you don't have any other presentation for context for us, then I would like to move on to public comment. Um, all right.

0:35:12We thank you as well. So, uh, we do need to take public comment on this and it looks like nobody has joined us to speak to this, um, potential disposition, either virtually or in person. So I will, um, close the public comment period, indicate that we've met that requirement. And, um, and then Commissioner, is any discussion, deliberation before we take action? If I may, I just had one question. Jay, I think for you, when you were talking about that timeline, you said they shut us down. In June. What does that mean and who's they? Um. Our, our right away team shut us down basically because we didn't have the correct permits to, to start the work, keep going with the world for the work that you were already doing. Yeah. Okay. That's how I understand it. Okay. That helps me understand. Thank you. And then that's correct, Jay. We just, we had, uh, notice that, uh, some of the permits hadn't been completed yet. So we went ahead and, uh, paused, if you will, uh, the work so that we can get back to this hearing and then get all of the, uh, required permitting employees. Thank you. Okay. So, uh, we have a request to grant an easement for the amount indicated 19, 957, 000 dollars. Yeah. Commissioner Stolt. I like to kick us

0:36:47off if that's okay. I really appreciate the presentation today and the information. Um, I think what it highlights for me is, you know, as we're working together, um, as Boulder County and his Excel in providing services to the Community that we need to have the appropriate conversations at the right time. And we've already got crews deployed and building a road on this section. And it's, um, it's too bad that we didn't have the conversation sooner about, uh, what we might want to contribute to underground the lines. They get these done. So I just would encourage for both parties. For us as the county and for Excel to work together better in the future to figure out if there are opportunities to collaborate, um, especially in this area where there's really high wildfire risks. This would have been a great opportunity to see if we would want to team up to get these undergrounded at this time. It doesn't seem like it will work with the timing of the project and how far things are deployed.

0:37:39Um, since we already have cruise on site and polls standing there out of the ground and things like that. But this segment from, um, where Lafayette sort of ends and it's unincorporated County and it's all in open space. And it's all straight right away. It's all County ownership. Like it was a real opportunity and a very high wind area and a very high fire risk area that's perpendicular to how the wind blows to underground. And so we'll have more of these. We have 93. We have 75th. We have 95th. We have lots of opportunities to work together. So I hope this is just the beginning of, um, like back on that timeline at the very start. Just understanding costs and what potential collaborations might exist. We have residents in HOAs that have offered to contribute funding to undergrounding, um, 95th. There's an HOA on, um, where 96 turns into 42. That's interested in it. So I just think we've got to be able to do this a little different in the future in this one.

0:38:32I'm supportive of moving forward with the easement to continue on with our process for the safety improvements on the roadway. Great. Thank you. I shared similar concerns. And you heard that in some of my questions. I think what I would just like some clarity because I heard you the way I interpreted Jay what you said about maybe we could look into that one in regards to the question about undergrounding. If it is not feasible at this point and we don't have public works team here to answer the same question, but if it's not visible, the clarity would be helpful to me because otherwise if I was sitting here watching this hearing as a resident, I would be calling Excel to talk to you about your standards of construction, et cetera, is it feasible at this point. To consider a partnership in regards to undergrounding for this particular easement. For this particular one, I think it's too late. Um, just because, I mean, this is, this is a Boulder County project. This, this really isn't an Excel energy project. This is a Boulder County project. And we were trying to get it done as quickly and as cheaply as, you know, for, for Boulder County and the residence as possible. Okay. Just, just to have that clarity so people aren't wondering, okay, now what can I

0:39:49do? Because sending a bunch of emails to somebody that where it's really not a feasible isn't going to be helpful to anybody either. So, um, I think for me, what would be helpful and I'm looking at you, Tina, cause you're the representative right now here. Um, that would be helpful to, um, to understand where the board could give specific direction and making sure that we are giving dextion in any, you know, any of this future opportunities. So just kind of as a takeaway, not something to respond to right now, um, but that would be helpful to me as well. So just in general, Board in regards to what's here in front of us, those are my concerns, but I'm also, and I saw on here, I post Zack also went through their process and gave a unanimous, um, recommendation. And I understand the legality that taking is a possibility. Um, so I'm supportive of what staff is recommending from process sampling. I don't think anything more needs to be said on my part. So hello, pardon me. This is Johnny sauce with the records team.

0:40:52I just wanted to inform the commissioners that dandeling from public works is available. Um, just as a, he did have his hand raised earlier. Um, so I just want to let you know that he has joined the meeting. I apologize. Dan for saying that we didn't have public works here because I didn't, I didn't realize you were on there. Um, if you want to respond to that question, if the chair would allow that, I think that's, that would be, I mean, if the commissioners feel we need more information about this, I don't want to cut anybody off from it. Did you want to hear from public works? Well, what I said was that if Polo Cork says here, I would also give them an opportunity to answer the question about feasibility of making any changes on underground. So that felt appropriate. But, but I also asked you as chair if that was, if you want to continue that portion. Yeah, Oh, dance, you're here. Why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about where public works is on this. Yeah. Um, we did start this process with Excel doing the locations for this project before the Marshall fire. So in 21. So the alignment was already discussed prior to that. Not the construction of hardening it. Or resistance of wildfires. And so

0:42:11J is correct. We're at a point kind of a word halfway halfway off the cliff now by building this already. The road is under construction to be significant delays. If we stopped road construction while it's closed to trench and underground this or more on undergrad. So, and he's, and he's like Jay said that would be next year at best. Um, and a significant cost to the public on this corridor. Um, but Jay is correct as well as this is a hardened system built to resist. Um. Damage from wind. So I'm not sure what the fire answered your question, but we are very deep into the construction process. And so stopping now we're delaying it would is a probably a very big impact to the traveling public. Thank you for that. Yeah. No, thanks for that.

0:43:08I mean, you know, the, I guess the only thing I would add at this point is that undergrounding is just not going to be feasible all throughout the county. You know, we don't have the issues that we have in the mountains with steep terrain and bedrock. But I do understand that, um, stronger polls coding what I don't know what the coating's called on the wires, you know, that can be done to prevent the sparking. You know, that those are all options. And, you know, I think we, I don't want to hold the project up for that. And I'm happy to hear that, that they are going to implement those other hardening measures. So thanks everybody for being here and helping us through this. I think we're ready for a motion. Move approval. Second. All in favor. Aye. Okay. Thank you Tina. Thank you Jay, Adam, everybody, Daniel for helping us, um, on this matter. We.

0:44:41Alright Commissioners, are you ready? Yes, thank you. And we are recording. All right, so we are back from recess, and I'll turn it over to our county administrator, Tiana Peterson to introduce the topic. Good morning, Commissioners. We're here today with the Community Services Department for continuation of your discussion about implementation of the mental and behavioral health tax that was approved by voters last fall. And with that brief introduction, I'm going to turn things over to Kelly Vite, who's with us on Zoom today, and we'll be kicking off the presentation. Great, thank you so much. Good morning, Commissioners. Again, Kelly Bite, I'm program manager here in Boulder County Community Services. I apologize, I'm not able to be there in person with you today, but I know we have team members in the room that are able to help with slide advancement. So I'm here to present our team's recommendation on use of an advisory structure to inform some of our continued elements of one B implementation.

0:45:49So with that said, a little bit of background that really just sort of helps frame how we got where we are today. And hence our recommendations for today. As we all know in November of 2025, voters approved a three - year sales and use tax to fund mental and behavioral health programming across Boulder County. There have been a number of key decisions around funding primarily that have already been made by the board. In April of this year, the Commissioners approved a hybrid funding model framework. So parts directed funding, part competitive funding. They also in that same meeting offered preliminary approval of an advisory committee concept, but did ask that we bring back some additional ideas on the scope types of conversation topics and really bodies of work that that board might tackle. Then in June, some of the board's decisions sort of shifted back to funding, and we had some initial fund allocations that were approved for direct funding, as well as an okay to open competitive funding in a June BOCC meeting. In July, that competitive round of funding did open, and now we are here today coming back with some of those additional ideas around use of an advisory structure in the related bylaws, primarily we're going to be talking today about how some of the timing has sort of shifted our needs,

0:47:14and we have both immediate needs for a body, a group to help us with some of our RFA application scoring, as well as some longer term needs for that same group to sort of pivot into more of a strategic planning mode. Help us with some of our future decisions around continued funding strategy, as well as some of the areas of funding that the Commissioner have asked for a little bit more information before proceeding. So next slide. So really at a glance, again, the BOCC has asked, what exactly would an advisory structure look like? What is the body of work that they might tackle? Um, the number of things that staffer really looking for. So it's important to note that even with our initial funding really in motion, there's more work to be done. I mean, we really see some of these critical decisions as things that would be best informed through a collaborative and inclusive process. Uh, some of the questions that we're looking to answer in the coming months and years have to do with how are we making impact? Are we seeing the changes that we had hoped to see in a set period of time? Are we really looking at corresponding Community indicators, as well as key performance indicators across our funded programs to see that we are, in fact, doing what

0:48:33we can, even in a short period of time to close the gap that we intend to close. Um, and if not, how can we course correct? We know that there will be an annual renewal process in our funding. Um, as well as annual budget approvals from the board. And so we have ideas of if we need to make tighter impact reporting requirements, um, and really draw forward that outcome emphasis that we've heard the board really, um, voice as a value that we have the opportunity to do a little bit of course correction along the way. Uh, also some visioning. Are we looking at realistic outcomes for a one year period of time, two years, three years, et cetera. Again, how can we refine our required outcomes as we move forward in our funding periods? And then finally, is our funding strategy and mechanism truly aligned with other funding mechanisms within the County and across our respective municipalities. Um, so one such example is our opioid abatement funding that the county also distributes here through Community Services. We have a number of overlapping strategic funding areas across treatment, recovery, prevention, uh, and so really need to apply a more strategic lens to ensure that we're actually integrating our approaches, um, potentially coming up with braided funding models or braided Community Investment plans. These are just ideas

0:49:54at this point, but wanted to offer by way of example, uh, to show what a community board would really help us inform as a broader strategy. So what we're proposing here today is a Community Impact Board. And we also propose that we would use the same recruitment process and pool of participants to seat a smaller technical advisory cohort that would then help us a little bit more with that immediate need that I mentioned around RFA scoring or request for application scoring. Uh, we're hoping I'll go into a little bit more detail about both those structures next, but we are hoping that these recommendations at their core, uh, sort of hold true the values that the BOCC have voiced as well as staff wanted to carry forward, which is, uh, increase sufficiency in our recruitment process, applying consistent selection criteria to both groups and the seating of both groups. Um, really to benefit, um, from roster overlap as well. To be that shared recruitment process. And then first and foremost really an avenue to illicit participation from Community Members and those who are most impacted by our behavioral health system locally. Next slide. So what this would look like, it's sort of one group with two distinct phases of work. The Community Impact Board again would be seated through a shared recruitment process. And then a

0:51:18smaller group of individuals would be carry would be, um, pulled forward for that first phase of work, which would really focus on the review of our applications and are currently open requests for Application Period. So they would be coming together for, um, training around, um, utilizing standardized evaluation criteria, uh, really the intent being to bring Community expertise and personal lived experience into the funding review process. And also to promote fairness, transparency and accountability in our funding recommendations to broaden the eyes that are making those recommendations. Um, once those award recommendations are made back to the BOCC for approval, the larger body would begin to convene and start its more strategic planning work, aiming for the end of this year, really sort of getting into it by early next year and beyond. That full community board again would really look at impact data identifying trends, assess our progress towards our desired outcomes with funded programs. Um, and areas or opportunities for improvement or course correction, um, such as refining funding outcomes or key performance measures. And then again, advancing those opportunities for alignment with other County investments, all of these elements, both of the work of the technical cohort as well as anything from the Community Impact Group, the larger body, um, would come forward to the BOCC as recommendation for approval. Uh, you've heard me

0:52:46mention a few times, but we are proposing a shared recruitment process and shared applied criteria for selection. Additionally, we are recommending that that recruitment process reflect a hybrid or mixed method partially done through direct outreach and partially done through an open application of participation or excuse me, Application of interest for members of the community. We really believe this shared recruitment process, uh, again, would really streamline the process, both for staff and also, uh, eliminate redundancies or outreach and engagement, um, burnout for community members or partners that might want to serve on one of these capacities. And we also think it will allow us to enable seating of the board ideal, as well as, uh, individuals across the care continuum of expertise and services. Our board selection criteria, we would be asking questions in both our direct outreach as well as in that application of interest that reflect collaborative mindset values, um, experience or desire around consensus building and additional training and information around that. Of course we also are looking for that subject matter expertise across the care continuum that is reflected on the entire ballot. And for those who would express interest in serving on that RFA review board or the technical advisory cohort, we would have additional questions around conflict of interest, ensuring that nobody who is connected to and applying agency in

0:54:20any way, um, would be looped into that review process. Also personal experience reflected there as well. A quick note about our outreach timeline. So we are working on a fairly aggressive timeline. Um, we are hoping to have these, these boards seated and especially the technical advisory cohort seated and done an initial training and onboarding to the evaluation process by the time our RFA period closes, which is already approaching on August 27th. Um, so this is just to put this out here for the BOCC's consideration. Should you want to express, um, anything such as an extended, um, application or outreach period. We just did want to name that trade - off, um, around timing are most immediate downstream timeline that may be impacted if we do have a more, um, prolonged outreach, uh, an application period is the awarding of those RFA applicants. Um, but you can see there that that could also result in a more transparent and representative process. So a timing trade off for the boards away. So our, our next slide just goes through our recommended membership roster. We are recommending a maximum board of 30 members. At this time, we don't anticipate a heavy amount of voting topics coming forward. We do, however, have in our bylaws quorum and membership and voting, um, items outlined, uh, so we believe 30 member

0:55:50Board is still manageable in size. We recommend six individuals with life experience and needs of treatment and behavioral health services. We recommend, uh, representation across our major municipal areas as well as our service providers. Uh, we also recommend representatives from law enforcement and the business community and business councils. We do recommend suggest that BOCC chair, one representative from faith - based group, um, and also, uh, one to two County Boulder County staff will be on the board and we have whole, we have held three to five additional spaces in that count, um, for additional identities or representation, um, accounted for. This is a summary slide of what I just went through. And I know I moved fairly quickly. So, um, you know, I won't be laborate and go through everything that I just sort of represented, but we did just think a side by side comparison visually. I'm a visual learner. I don't know about anybody else in the room, but just thought this would be a good representation to show, um, both the areas that would be shared across the community impact, board and its respective technical advisory cohort such as that shared application and selection process. Um, as well as the areas that they would differ, such as their unique purpose, their unique timeline, um, and a proposed, um, frequency that differs as

0:57:12well as the technical advisory cohort would be short term in nature and the community impact board would be longer term arc. Um, so that said, I will stop babbling on and let the BOCC weigh in here. Of course, um, specific areas VR seeking direction does the BOCC support the need and proposed role of a community impact board. And if so, um, thoughts on that phased approach so that we can seat essentially two groups at once for the short and long term needs, uh, and are there additional rules or values you'd like to CS reflected. Thank you for your time. Happy to answer questions. Thank you, Kelly. And we'll turn now to Commissioners for your discussion. Our tradition has been to rotate who starts the discussion. And Commissioner Lochimin, you are up first on this one.

0:58:05Um, and we'll take your comments and questions as the board CSP for for discussion. Thank you. Thanks to all for being here. And I appreciate the visual learner statement. Can you not hear us? Can you hear me? I can't hear you. Yes. Kelly, we can still hear you. Just a second. She can't hear us telling her that we can hear her. She might have captions. On. That's true. I can see from the closed cap shimming that you said you can hear me, but I can't hear you. So check your speaker settings. I can hear. No, that was on our end. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Um, yeah, so good morning, everybody. Thank you. Appreciate that. And I was just making comment of the visual learner. That's me. So when you see me talking to you and I'm looking up, it's because I'm visually like, I need to see and read. Without close cupching. Um, in lifetime in a conversation. So anyway, um, I, I have a couple of questions that you'll have done a lot of work. What's weighing on my mind right now is capacity.

0:59:15Like who is going to do this work at a staff level? Cause it's very, it feels that my interpretation is pretty intensely, um, involved. Um, my other question is. This is two kind of two committees, um, for lack of better terminology. And so. My other concern is when we ask Community. Ask Boulder County residents to come to join yet another board advisory board or commission, um. What is the power that we are giving them to inform the county or the Board of County Commissioners. And so I think what I had written down was just, it sounded like this would be a board that would be appointed by the Board of County Commissioners. And if so, then they would be giving recommendations to the board. But ultimately the Board of County Commissioners might change course. Is that true. Thank you, Commissioner Luchamine. Robin Bohannon Community Services Department. So, uh, your first question about capacity. We have an amazing team that's pushing this forward. And they have determined that they will be able to manage a community impact board as well as they have also heard, as you have from interested in Community members being part of the process. So we know there will be a lot of community engagement regardless of the structure and they're prepared for that. In terms of the board's role, that's really

1:00:52your decision, whether it's a commissioner appointed board, as well as their power or decision - making authority. Um, we believe that the decisions are made by the commissioners and this group is to advise and inform those decisions so that you're getting input from a broader view of experts than just staff. Does that answer your question? Uh, yes, I think so. Um. And I just, I just want, I appreciate clarity. And so I was me on, you know, watching this conversation, understanding what would be the role if I applied and took my resource time treasure to work on this committee. Technical advisory cohort or the other title I don't see on the screen. Would my opinion and my input be valued and how would I know that? Um, so that's, I just, I like to have clarity and understand that piece of it. I think, um, the only other question I had, and I do want to maybe go into a little bit about what I heard you say, Robin, because I agree that we have a great team of staff. And I also worry that what I keep hearing, um, murmurines about is the county is taking away right now based on budget recommendation. And there was a concern that I've heard from variety staff around the county that the expectation is we will do

1:02:30what was being done before, even though we've already had reductions. And so I'm not questioning that staff couldn't do a great job because the formation and a lot of thought put into this. And I just am not understanding how it wouldn't be an add - on to the work that's already being required. Am I misinterpreting. No, I appreciate your concern. And I think it's fair. Um, the team itself is not, um, facing any potential reductions. We have not recommended any. So they, they, um, they have viewed since the tax was approved. They have reviewed their work to be this broad area. In terms of managing the applications, bringing recommendations for working with community members alongside, even again, without a formal structure. So I, when Kelly and Marnie, you can speak for yourselves, but I, we've never talked about it as added work. We understood it to be part and parcel when the commissioners were considering the tax. In terms of the community members, you know, it's really one group. There'll be a subset of that group that will focus on reviewing the applications and scoring them. So similar to how we bring forth recommendations to you for worthy cause or the human services funding, those folks which have largely been internal staff. Review and make sure the applications fit what we've been asking for that

1:04:04they have applied appropriate appropriately and consistently, that that's the work that the Community members would join staff in doing. Um, and so that even if you didn't accept the recommendations, their voice is valued, uh, they brought input and they, they also brought their expertise to reviewing the application. So that's a really valuable role. And I would hope that Community members would experience that. Great. Um, I think this question I have right now, but I'm reserving my ability to have additional questions cause I'm trying to find them in my mind. Thank you. Thank you Commissioner. What'd you mean? Commissioner Lee. Thank you. Um, I guess I will start just with a thanks, um, to staff for, you know, really, I think very thoughtful work in putting this together. Uh, and let me just go back to the outline. Of this. And you're right. I mean, the Community from the very beginning of the concept of putting this on the ballot has said, you need to have Community Voices involved in this. And I think you've done a good job of, of trying to structure something that would bring that voice. One of the things I heard in a meeting with, uh, together Colorado and Boulder together, we're all together. Right. Um, is, uh, you know, is a role in looking at, are the expenditures effective?

1:05:55Are we, you know, if we are doing, especially if we're doing directed grants, are we getting what we really want and need out of those directed grants? You know, if we want to do multi - year grants, which, um, grant recipients, grantees appreciate, reduces the burden of application and provides that certainty so that they can scale up services accordingly. You know, we don't want that to mean that we don't even revisit that grant for a number of years. And I, you know, there was some discussion about that being, being, um, a role that an advisory council could play. My questions were really more about, um, you know, the numbers of people and the makeup, the proposed makeup, uh, of this committee. And I wasn't sure, maybe I missed it, but I didn't see the size you're proposing for the technical advisory group. Did you have a size for that group in mind. Yes. Robin Bohan.

1:07:06And again, Community Services. I'm Kelly. Can you speak to that? I think we talked about three to five of that larger group coming on the technical, um, advisory group. Yes. We did talk about three to five to assist an additional three to five staff. So it would be about 10 review about six to 10 reviewers. Um, largely we have not put a cap on that only because, uh, we also want to make sure that the, um, it's respondent to the size of the application, the number of applications that we get. So, um, if we are blown away by applications, obviously, uh, we aim to not have, um, folks begin and dated with hours and hours of review. So, um, we would adjust that group number a little bit higher, but that is really the only reason we haven't put it as concrete of a number on the review, um, cohort. Okay. Well, thank you for that. And I mean, that has implications for the recruitment and the timing because I, I appreciate the phased approach.

1:08:07Uh, I also wondered on your, um, proposed membership of the, of the larger board. The roster, um, the, I appreciate the emphasis on people with, uh, with life experience. And I think that's a very strong demand from the community. The proposal to have just three, what I'm going to generically call subject matter experts. You know, people, the service providers. I don't know, um, I mean, I think one of the big questions that's going to be an ongoing issue to understand as we really try to make sure we address the continuum of need and, you know, really the landscape and figure out where we can best plug these funds into what already exists is going to be the perspective of the providers on, uh, on what's missing. And so I wondered whether just having three is sufficient. And I get that, you know, we're going to run into conflict of interest issues. So that's the tension there. And so that's, that's just a, you know, kind of a thought of is that the right amount. I appreciate that faith - based groups have played a role in helping get this past. And they've been at the table. Um, I, you know, I guess I, I think you're trying to make room for those that have really been instrumental. And I wouldn't think that a faith -

1:09:59based group as faith taken apart from any sort of separate ministry or Community work or anything that different faith - based groups might do. I wouldn't see that a faith - based group in and of itself would belongs at the table. So I wonder if that might be maybe retooled to something, not sure what else it would be, but does that what I'm saying makes sense? Yeah, absolutely. Robin Bohannon Community Services. So we are really open to your input around these representative groups and the numbers. I appreciate your comment about the professional providers. And so we can certainly look at that. I think we could remove the faith - based specific representative and that person could apply in those other areas lived experience. I think we know that a lot of faith communities are supporting mental health needs of their parishioners. Um, so they have that lived experience. Um, and so I think we could easily adjust that. Um, I know that many, you've heard from many people as we have two, you know, over the course of dealing with mental illness, even lay people become professionals. And they know the system and they know the gaps. So I think they, they would bring that voice to the table. But it's different when you're inside a company or institution or nonprofit that's doing that work.

1:11:42So we're happy to adjust those numbers, Commissioner Levy. Okay. Well, and we'll hear what the other commissioners think. And I mean, there is also the three to five quote other that's available. And then I was also looking, there was, there was language in the narrative about voices of people who have been underserved by the existing system. And I didn't know what category of membership that might fall under. I believe that would be the people with lived experience. The lived experience. So we would want to diversity of people within that category. Exactly. Um, yeah, and I mean, I think we can sort of adjust these numbers a little bit here. Make sure we have the right. Balance. Um, if I may, I think, um, similarly to the technical advisory number related to the number of applications based on who applies to be a part of this larger roster may also inform. Those categories, right? Or the adjustment of those categories. So I don't think we need to strictly adhere, um, and we could come back to the commissioners once we see the breadth of applications and see what makes sense in terms of those representative seeds.

1:13:07Okay. I think I just have two more. Questions. Uh, on the frequency of meetings on the Community Impact Board, you've got monthly. You know, we've seen this on the opioid advisory Council, you Robin and Kelly know this very well, that we haven't, initially we met, we had a very full agenda every month. And we haven't needed to meet monthly now that we've got everything in place. So just wondering whether that frequency of meeting is really required. And, you know, and that's another thing that I'm sure can be adjusted. Absolutely. I think a monthly meeting to start with in terms of just developing connection and relationship might be important. And then we could certainly phase them out. Yeah, that's great. And then the other thing was just the choice of the name of this group being a community impact board. And I just was wondering why you chose that name. Well, I can defer to Kelly and Marni. My own thoughts are, um, again, back to Marta's original comment. We want the Community to feel like they are making an impact. And we find them very impactful in this work. But, um, Kelly Marnie, would you like to comment on the name of the group. Sure.

1:14:39And so a couple of things. So yes to, to what Robin just said, I think also, um, you know, this is the intention is to call forward the Community Aspect and the Community Voice aspect. So I think, um, sort of advisory committee and some of the earlier terms we were working for. So I did a little bit more generic to that point of inclusion that were really aiming for. The impact piece also, you know, really encapsulates what we're trying to achieve with this group, both in that short term, you know, looking at the funded programs and scene, are they making literally that impact that we're, we're looking to reflect. And also the broader impact around the strategic planning element, um, largely that piece around integration with other funding strategies and sources at the County to make sure that all of our funding at the county is making as large of an impact for Community members as possible. So it just sort of, it resonated for us, um, in a number of ways. I think I heard, um, yeah, I mean, most strongly for me, what resonates is are we having the impact? Are these funds producing the impact? And so, you know, one of the strongest, I guess, advisory roles. They can play is to tell us, is it working. Yeah. And I get that

1:16:04we have a lot of things that are called advisory Councils and advisory boards and advisory advisory advisory. And it feels like, oh, is this just another one? So yeah, I just wondered whether that title was deliberate. So those, I think those are, those are the questions. I have, I think in terms of the numbered questions at the end of the memo, does the board support the need and proposed role. I wonder, you know, and you've proposed some bylaws, which I haven't gone through in detail. But is there. Would it feel good for both the members and for us to have this board, whatever. Community impact board may be. Also have a role in, um, shaping what they think they can best do. I mean, we would have to approve it. We don't, we don't want to completely like seed CEDE, you know, our decision making authority, our budgeting authority, but they may, you know, they may believe that there are other things that they can be very effective at, that, that we haven't thought about here. And so, so I guess I'd like to understand whether there's some way, you know, that we could not have this so tightly drawn that we pick people and say, this is, this is what you, this is what you get to do. And you don't get to do

1:17:47anything else, you know? And so just, just that, that came up for me in the need and the proposed role. I mean, the need, I think is definitely their, um, I do support the FAZE approach. I think that makes sense so that we can continue with the RFP process and get these funds out into the community. And additional roles and guardrails. Maybe you didn't want all these me to go to these questions right now. I know, Jana, you had, you had an order, um, so I think I want to think a little bit more about the roles values guardrails. Thank you. Um, but I'm hearing your initial support for the advisory concept as proposed in the name. You can all discuss. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Commissioner Solzman turning to you. Thank you very much. Um, my first question is just around the, so we've looked a lot at different efficiencies over the year and centralized some grants on one webpage and looked at standardization and grants. And I just wondered about what conversation happened around that with this. Because it seems like a non - standard process, like another new process that gets created. We have not entertained that. Um, I know that question was brought up. And when, when we talked about the social services efficiency assessment and we would gladly, um, use this

1:19:10process to engage in that examination. But no, we have not, uh, taken that path at this time. Thank you. And one question that came up for me is there are, um, so this was sort of born out of gaps that existed in a system. And we have many groups that have identified some of the gaps tangentially. So like, for example, opioid council touches on this or CJMB touches on this. And like nobody is squarely aligned with what we're trying to do here, but these different groups certainly have an interest and would have input with their consideration of having a rep from our other boards serve to make up a different board. So like the housing regional housing group having a rep on this, uh, opioid and others as well. Was there consideration for that? No, but we would be completely open to it. It's a great idea to have that liaison because we find that sometimes boards work in a vacuum. And therefore it's less efficient in duplicative. So I appreciate that. Um, and I don't have an exhaustive list in my notes of all of them to think about, but it just seemed like that this came to be because they're missing pieces that these other groups have identified. So maybe each different one would have something to offer. Um, aging. I mean, I

1:20:27can't think of them all off the top of my head, but there are a lot of them that seem like they would intersect. So the moving to the technical advisory group, um, and just kind of thinking back to the efficiencies question. I wonder why we wouldn't use the advisory committee to give input about setting goals that the board would then adopt or use the advisory committee to, you know, get feedback, but then have the professional staff in your department do the technical scoring instead of having these groups that put, I just don't see how we're going to avoid conflicts of interest. I heard you saying that we would, but I think we have all these people that we've listed out that we want to include. And I don't see how they won't have conflicts of interest. Thank you, Commissioner Stolzman. I think that's fair. And again, we are happy to adjust. And, um, I think we were looking for. Again, trying to address feedback about, well, you didn't talk to the business community. Are you, you know, this group didn't have a voice or the script in the head of voice. There's a sweet spot in there. That's challenging, but I think that's what, why we reflected this option, is to get buy - in and sort of community ownership. Okay. I mean, I just,

1:21:52like, I think, um, if we get into a situation, which we've seen in some grant programs and places around the country where people are scoring their projects, it also hurts the credibility of the program. So I just can see it really wanting to get input and everybody in the community has interest on this. I think that's why you have 30 people listed. It's like the, you know, everybody has an interest in one way or another. And so I'm, I guess I'd be more leaning toward having the community make recommendations to the board to adopt about goals and criteria and then have staff. Look at applications and score them. Just the professional staff that do that and know how funding goes and don't have conflicts of interest. Um, so I also struggled a little bit. There are six people who lived experience that have experienced either mental or behavioral health or some combination therein issues. And I wonder about increasing the number of people who has lived to experience success successfully treating people with mental and behavioral disorders. It's sort of what Commissioner Levy was asking about the practitioners. It just, if I had, if I needed knee surgery, I would want someone who had done thousands and thousands and thousands of knee surgeries, not someone who had had a broken knee. So I just, I

1:23:05feel like there could be an increase in the number of people that have experience, um, in treatment. So like the commute, Boulder Community Hospital clinica Centennial Peaks, Longmont United Therapists, psychiatrists, things like that. It seemed like there was a missing piece with professionals on the board. That's just a comment, I suppose. I had two questions around a couple of the categories. One was the business community. And one was the faith - based community about what, um, because if you have these other people on the group, they'll be part of the business community. They'll be part of faith - based communities. And so I wondered what having a specific seat called out for those categories achieves. Well, Robin Bohann Community Services, I'll speak to the business. We know that business engagement around the tax has been huge and they have strong opinions. Um, sometimes if you call out a represented seat, again, they feel like we're listening and we want their specific experience. But again, it's your prerogative. The Commissioner's prerogative to remove the representative seats.

1:24:22And we can review the applications and see who represents the kind of expertise that we're looking for. Okay. And then my last one was just, um, sort of a curiosity around a 30 member board seeming large to me versus doing statistically valid surveys of populations that were trying to make sure they feel heard and then can be more representative. So like, if you had one business member, you would get one business person's perspective. But if you were to do a statistically valid survey of businesses in the county, then we would have a better handle on the business perspective. So I wonder if there was thought about that collecting data from the community on their perspective to use that to inform the board and then have fewer board members versus having a large board. We did not analyze that. That, that does speak to the capacity issue as well. Jeremy Smith Commissioner staff. Director Bohanna, can you pull your microphone closer, please? Sorry. Um, Robin Bohann Community Services, we did not look at that specifically. And, um, that would require another tranche of work. And resources, either internally or externally in order to do those surveys.

1:25:42Thank you. Those are my questions. So Commissioners, I'd like to turn back to the three of you just for discussion and deliberation amongst yourselves. I'm hearing at least two commissioners, um, expressing some concerns about the composition and sort of proposed seats to the board and would love to hear the three of you give us some guidance around what that can look like. Um, only one commissioner firmly came out and said, yes, we should have a board. So if, if, um, Commissioner Stolzman and Commissioner Omean could be very clear about, um, whether you support the concept of a board and maybe it depends on what the board is and what they're assigned to do. I understand that. And then, um, uh, just a very specific question about it for the, if you decide this phased approach with the technical, um, committee is preferred, then some guidance to staff on this issue around conflict of interest and what type of training or preparation you would want those community to have if they are to participate in evaluating the applications. So those are, those are sort of the things that I would love to hear. You talk about.

1:26:49And if you want to just talk amongst yourselves, we'll take some notes. Um, and if you have questions for staff, then please direct them to staff. I wonder if I may and I apologize. I was trying to find the questions that I had put in where, and I found them in the one note from. So that's why I didn't finish with my questions earlier, but I found them. I'm looking at them, um, so if, if I may just ask questions, may I just say one thing just at 1130, I have to leave to another meeting. Please carry on. I just, if I stand up and leave, I didn't want you to wonder what was going on. Okay. Great. Thank you. Um, so I, there's a couple pieces and some of it's connected to the conversation as well, but, um, I was just curious. And I asked this about every potential board and even the boards that we have is this mandate. Like what is this about? How are we using this information employee, et cetera?

1:27:37So just so y'all thinking about stuff specifically, these are very typical questions from me. But, um, is there not another community board that's focused on mental behavioral health that could play a role for us as the county in regards to the specific tax. Thank you. Robin Bohan and Community Services. There is not a specific board. Certainly as we talked about through the inception of the tax, mental health touches everybody's lives. And there are issues that come up for CGMB for aging for housing where people with mental illness engage in those structures and programs. So it's not that those other boards don't talk about it, but they're not specific around, um, the mental health system, what services and gaps and what can be funded. We learned this when we were doing the roadmap and the feedback that we got from the community is there is not one specific group that's just focused on this. So I hope that answers the question. Yeah, that's helpful. And what you just said about the roadmap and the focus areas that we saw a while back, that was my second question about that. Um, about how this work is potentially or not connected to that roadmap and all the work that was done previously. So that addresses that one. The other question I have is I've heard us talking about

1:29:11this morning again a little bit about how are we going to know if those funds were used the way we want them to be used is kind of just my perception. And I get very worried about the quantitative flavor of that because my belief is still that we may not know. Like we may not know what life we saved through these programs who our partners were on the ground doing that connection, creating opportunity for something. And so I think some of the work could be maybe quantitative, but I am worried about the other piece of that. Um, so I don't know how y'all capture that. And if it's in there somewhere, let me know, but that's just, it's a very, it's a concern for me, especially because one of the slides, the language of red about if this was a pilot, um, and that this work might. Identify how we would do further work in this space as a county and certainly as taxpayers, um, with this tax. And so I just, are you, is there a way that you all are thinking about capturing what is not quantitative now for these members to start evaluating and giving feedback back to the board. That's our best hope that that's what would happen in these conversations and input, um, when we did the roadmap, we did

1:30:38have Community Town Halls, um, and what we heard from people is we need this space in order to have these very conversations collectively as opposed to one group coming forward with their perspective and other coming with their perspective. So we hope that that's sort of the, the organic thing that will happen as a result of pulling this community together. Okay. Oh, go ahead. I'm going to be formally. Um, Marty Hoffman Green, Arba Mentalhan Social Resilience Program Manager. Nice to see all three of you. Back to your question, Commissioner Luke. It's always been on goal of mine to see if I can have a Brene Brown quote in a commissioner meeting. And I think I have it, which is, you know, Brene says, what if stories are just data with the soul. And so Commissioner Loom, and I really appreciate our commitment is qualitative and quantitative.

1:31:28We need to figure out a way to demonstrate outcomes, um, that speak to, uh, the stories that, uh, go on for our community, but I'll show that we're data informed and we're being efficient in good governance. So I think I got my brene brown quote of the day. But I really appreciate that comic, Commissioner Luchaman. Thank you. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. And so, I mean, my note was just what questions will we ask? Like how will we know what might we, how do we put that, what you just said into the process because my fear is that we will divert as a government organization back to quantitative and evidence and data that speaks to some folks. Um, okay. So that's what the rest of the questions that I had. So I appreciate that. For me, I think you would ask, Jenna, if we wanted to talk about the board piece, I'm looking at the time too. So Commissioner Salzman, if the invite you just based on time too. Oh, go ahead, come surely be.

1:32:29Well, thank you. Um, I actually did want to have some dialogue with Commissioner Stolzman before she leaves. So I just wanted that on the table as well. Do you want to go ahead and do that just so we don't get crammed in time? Um, yeah. Well, I did want to Commissioner Stolzman here a little bit more about what you were saying on having the technical advisory committee do more of just of input versus scoring, kind of flesh that out a little bit more for me. That might be something that would resonate with me, but I needed to understand it a little bit more. I think what I was asking about was just maybe not having the Community Group B, the technical advisor regroup that the Community Group would set goals. And, you know, give their input on how the things should be looked at. But then the staff would do the technical work that I think that was previously envisioned in this memo as having the technical advisory group do the actual review and scoring.

1:33:30The review and scoring would be done by the staff of the county. And I wrote something down when you were talking that I don't know if you actually said, but, um, but I think that makes some sense because we do end up with conflict of interest issues. And it'll take some time to like train people on our scoring instruments and things like that. But I do think looking at the criteria, uh, forest scoring and how much weight to put on different things might be a good role for, for that kind of input. Yeah. So I think that the group, let the larger group, which I'm not a hundred percent. Like that's still up in the air for me. But that the larger group would make recommendations to the Boarda County Commissioners about goals and weights and things like that that we would adopt that could be scored against. So like for example, curlyne brings us like worthy cause and there are criteria. And she's, you know, we talk about are these the right areas or these, you know, the things you want to focus on.

1:34:33And then the staff go do the work of really analyzing the score and things like that against them. I would think a smaller group to do those, um, you know, the criteria and the weight on different things. I, I worry about it becoming cumbersome and slowing the process down. So, um, I guess, I mean, we're sort of blurring a little bit the different processes, but I take Commissioner Stolzman's point about, you know, wanting, wanting more maybe to bring in more of the professional perspective and, you know, understanding the landscape of services that are available on the gaps without, when we put more of those people on, then we're going to have more potential for conflict of interest. But if it's more of just advisory and not actual, you know, scoring of applications that might help with that issue. Robin Bohann Community Services. So the R phase already has the criteria and the waiting. All of that is already baked into that. Okay. So that wouldn't change. Um, and certainly we could think of a role for the committee, um, once the staff have done the scoring to hear their reflections. Um, but again, it's up to you all about how you'd like us to manage that. Well, that was the thing I guess I wanted to explore a little bit more, I think with Commissioner

1:36:14Stolzman, um, and just to reflect on, you know, what's the role of a business seat. And I'm, I'm going to be inconsistent here on that one versus the face based. In that. I mean, I think the business community feels, you said this, Robin, and you may have said it as well, Jana, you know, they feel very invested in this. And, you know, this is sort of a political thing that we run into trouble if they're not involved. However, I will just say this and this will be on the record forevermore. Um, you know, I think they come to this with a particular issue in lens. And it's around the welcoming of the downtown Boulder area to visitors and people who are going to spend money here and businesses that are going to set up here and the concern about, um, people with, uh, with behavioral health problems that are, God forbid, out in public, um, and so I, I appreciate for me, I know just as a political matter, they have to be at the table, uh, and I think it's just important. This is just part of how advisory boards work, where you know that they have a particular perspective and it needs to be balanced against all the other people that might be serving and not let one particular concern in need overshadow.

1:37:57So I think, you know, I can be, I can, I can live with that and make my peace with that. So period, I guess. Um, see if I could prompt you to, um, at least illuminate for us before your departure. Under what, um, circumstances you might be interested in a community board or if there are specific, I mean, I heard you talk about size a little bit. So if you could just give us that before you're departure, that would be helpful. Yeah. So I think having a board that weighs in on goals and, you know, looks at effectiveness and provides feedback to the Board of County Commissioners about those things is useful. I would prefer the staff to do the scoring of the grants, um, to keep it to eliminate conflicts of interest and keep them consistent and professionalized so that there's a real like year - to - year consistent approach. And if we change things, it can be intentional and then modified. So I think that the committee could inform the board that can then set the policies for the staff to do that scoring. So I would prefer to go in that direction and have the group give recommendations about weights and things like that and like give recommendations about, maybe we don't have enough focus in

1:39:18youth. Or maybe we don't have enough focus and treatment. They could give us those types of recommendations so we could change the size of the pool of the different funds over time. Um, and reflect on how it's working. I do think it would be good to have liaisons from some of these other groups. So like how you utilize your group comes to mind. Just we have all these groups. And as Robin said, none of it squarely fits what we're trying to do here. But I think if we don't get liaisons from the other group sitting on this board, then there will naturally be criticism that this board's not effective because people won't know what's going on. They won't be engaged. They won't have raised what their issues are that are not being met or even understand how maybe they are being met. So I think that's important. And then I can be flexible on some of the seats. I do think everybody has an interest.

1:40:11So when you start making a seat for everyone, it's like, okay, like a woman from Southeast County, uh, like everybody has an interest. So like, then we're going to have 330, 000 people. Um, so I can be flexible on some of them, but I do think increasing the number of providers, like the hospital Delicava Centennial Peaks, psychiatrists, um, just when I talk to some of the community members about some of the really extreme situations that are happening where there's no system, I think we need to have some of the people that provide treatment for, um, severely mentally ill. And people significant behavioral health issues. So I think that's important. So that's where I would lean. I don't have a fixed firm number. I understand as we try to accommodate everyone's once on the board, it starts to grow and grow and grow. And so that is where it gets very tricky. I think if it's too big. Is a little funky. Could I just quickly speak to that CJMB and how utilizers? I think I take, I think that's really important. However, the, I mean, high utilizers is kind of, um, uh, on hiatus in a way. I mean, and I think having law enforcement, um, involved, I mean, there who's when I think about who's at the table, uh, it's the, it's the, um,

1:41:39municipal court judge. It's the, um, city attorney who prosecutes the cases. It's Michael Doherty. It's, you know, all the city staff that address, you know, who's at the table there. And I think there are by and large seats for those people here. I don't want this to look law enforcement heavy, but we might have another seat, but specify, you know, what it is. And I, I mean, I think the perspective of, um, the, uh, Jeff Khan, the municipal court judge has been really important. So I don't know whether, whether we might without actually designating like liaison from all these different existing entities, which then explodes the numbers, whether we might just look at how are those groups constituted. And, you know, and what are we missing? Like CGMB, maybe we maybe we have the chief judge or the chief judges designee or, or that hetero probation or something like that. Thank you. Um, Robin Bohannon Community Services, another option might be to be more intentional about our liaison role back to those groups. So we could ask the chair of those groups to have a standing agenda item. Where we could bring the work of our group to that board to inform what's happening, get their input in that way. So just, just a thought and we can certainly explore other options to get at

1:43:25this point, which is about connection and communication and engagement. Yeah. I'm just going to add one thing. Commissioner Stolz and before you leave Marnie Hugman Green, I really appreciate when you're talking about the different, so I was just thinking early advisory, early childhood advisory council is shared by Gen Leos from clinica. And we can do a much more thorough evaluation of all of the Councils that are already seated around how we could feed as many birds with one hand to be more efficient across the board. And I also just want to comment, Commissioner Salzman. I really appreciated when you had the comment around. If you had surgery, you want to see someone who's done a thousand surgeries that it sparked my idea around also these days everyone's looking at Yelp reviews. And so, um, when we have this board around having all the perspectives of those folks that have done a thousand surgeries and then also the ones that are giving five stars or three stars. So just appreciated your comment. I feel like right now we're looking at, I had a comment about the criteria. Um, and so maybe I'll ask that, but then also address looking at the membership roster list potential list here. I was thinking that the criteria had already been chosen by the board. And so that was just my

1:44:44interpretation. So I would, they would be helpful to understand from staff if you all took kind of those three focus areas that we had worked on for months. And is that part of criteria anyway? Or, and I'm, it's really a response to some of the conversation that's been had at the dais about what that committee would do. Can you clarify what you mean by criteria? Criteria for board membership or criteria in the RFA process? Thank you. I guess what I was understanding is there was a question around what would this committee do not the tech group, but the committee, the community impact board. And so I don't, what I heard was maybe that group could work on goals or criteria or an I thought we had already set up some of those. But if we haven't. And I've also was under the impression that the RFA has already gone out. So there's already criteria in there about what somebody would have to be able to do to be able to get funding. So I just want to make sure I'm understanding that for me, some of that work has already been done and is already out there. Yes, Commissioner, you're correct. I think what I would say is the concept that's being proposed today is that, um, the advisory committee would inform whether adjustments need

1:46:03to be made. I'm remembering Kelly's slide that she had up there about, are we really making that impact that the board had described in your prior conversations and coming back to you with any recommendations to, um, course correct if needs be. Okay. And that's what I was, that's, I'm in agreement with that second piece, what you just said for me, I just want to clarify because I thought some of the criteria was built around what the board had said we wanted to focus on these funds understanding that the mental behavioral health tax couldn't do all things. So, okay. That helps me. I was, um. Having some thoughts. That's and feelings on the roster. I do think, and this feels like fauna friend, but I wonder, I bet Robin Valdez could give us a good idea of how many, like what's an average amount of folks on a board. I'm thinking about CREAC board as I'm looking at the board. Like we had some concerns about 34 members. I think it was 34 members at one point, 32 members. And so for me, I'm just like, if we're consistent, um, could we agree to maybe limit this to my guess is maybe 15. I've sat on boards that were up to 13. And it is a little, um, complicated to get everybody's voice at all times

1:47:21for all, um, conversations. Um, so that would be my thought is to change that to like maybe 15 as a max. I do get curious around if the Boulder County resident, um, requirement and I didn't, I didn't look again through the bylaws. It might be in there. I saw the second bullet point representatives and municipal areas just as an example in there. I was really curious around who's going to speak for youth because I don't see youth on this list or you thought organizations. I'm thinking of like Longmond's. Oh gosh. Let me like it. Elliot in Lafayette or the Longmonts Youth Center. There's I think a full name for that. And then also educators because we really talked about. And when I think about educators, I'm tech and thinking about groups like, um, sober AF at who does work at all of our college campuses around the country, but also do work here in Boulder County. I'm thinking about, um, like all ages and all stages. Partners with Thone Range Community College, et cetera. So that was a curiosity. But to do that, of course, we would have to give up some other reps on here. I am thinking that the business Community slash Council maybe slash chamber and thinking of Northwest Chamberlance who represents a bunch of chambers versus just one chamber. Um, and

1:48:52to me, some of this could be one person representing if we were to do a smaller. Advisory board or impact board with the idea that, um. Elect what you said, Robin, about trying to figure out how do those folks get information out to their memberships and things like that, which I think just in general is a general practice is something we should encourage. Thank you. Um, Commissioner Robin Bohann Community Services. The other practice when pulling groups together, common practices do a grid to see who's representing what. And we all have so many different roles in our lives. It might be that we will see we have youth representation. We have education representation. So we can keep a keen eye out for that to ensure, similarly as geographic representation. That's not a specific seat, but we would, we would make sure we pay attention to those as applications come in. Thank you. Just a weigh in on the size. And I think Commissioner Stolzman is about to get up and walk out. Um, but I mean, 30 seems large and unwieldy, but I think we're not going to get the breadth of input that we're looking for if we try to make it smaller. And I know, you know, when we, when we, when we have very small boards, like the opioid advisory council is one,

1:50:20that's pretty small. And then two people have a conflict. And then we don't have a quorum. I mean, those are numbers. They're not the right numbers. But problems with quorums. And this is work. So, uh, I think 30 doesn't really concern me. I don't think we're going to have 30 people at every meeting. And I do think we want to make sure we're, we're hearing from all these voices that we really know are wanting to be at the table. I'm looking at Commissioner Stolzman for any parting thoughts before you have to skedaddle to your next appointment. I have no other thoughts. Okay. Um, turning back to our other two commissioners. I didn't want a short change any of our conversation. If the you would like to talk about what I will summarize so far is I'm hearing three commissioners have an interest in this advisory committee concept. I am appreciating, um, alignment among two commissioners for not having, uh, technical committee review applications with the staff, but having the staff do that. Um, and would like to get to some closure on that specific component of this because the phase approach we would want those folks on board quickly. And so it sounds like maybe two commissioners are saying, let's not do that. I think so. I'm hesitating because I'm not sure I completely understand

1:52:01the other things that the tack is that's proposed for the tact to do aside from that scoring. Is that really it? That's their main goal is to the review that RFAs. Yeah. I'm just reflecting back on some Community Conversations and a desire to have a representative group of people that would look at the efficacy of the funding, um, decisions. And I think, I mean, I think that is like the foremost thing that people are wanting. And so I think if we've preserved that in some other way, like, you know, I know we've again, going back to the opioid council, like, did we pick the right areas, not, you know, respecting that we identified the priority populations, but even within those areas, the places to focus. So I think, I think that's the main thing that folks are going to be looking for. And Commissioner Loch, I mean, I didn't hear you specifically weigh in on that technical group. If there was anything else that you wanted to say about that. I'm sorry. I was distracted.

1:53:21Um, I. Let's see here, the technical advisor. I mean, what feels aligned to me thinking about the other tax funds that I've been able to be a part of in the last five years. That that piece of the work is really like staff experts looking at everything. So I feel really confident about leaning on staff in that way and whether it's through the grants work or if it's through this team or, you know, whoever might not be here. Like I would be in support of that. I do feel like having, um, the question on the Community Impact Board, the title, it sounded to me like there might still be a little bit of question and conversation around that. But I think to have that group do that initial work still is responsive based on what we've talked about, um, to what the community members who've been involved in this mental and behavioral health work, like over several years is asking for. So I feel like we could do that with that group. Um, but then have staff be the staff experts in regards to reviewing the RFA. Thank you. That's helpful. Thank you, Commissioner Stolzman.

1:54:37Other, uh, comments or advisement. If you want to talk about the name Community Impact Board, um, I wasn't hearing any alternate proposals. So staff would move forward with that name unless you. That's fine. The title of the bylaws, you know, this is only one of the one B ballot measures. We have a 1B seems like every other year. So I, I think it, I think we want to say the mental and behavioral health tax community impact board. Thank you. Um, yeah. I. Don't know. I mean, I still don't love impact. Board. Man, I'll throw something on. Just listening to what you just suggested on a mental behavioral health. Community. Advisory board. Impact Board is what's on the table and open to your, well, I think we're talking about, we've been talking about implementation. Could it be the MBH tax implementation advisory? I know we say advisory and awful lot, but if it's implementation advisory, does that help. I just, I don't know why impacts not sitting well. I'm just thinking about implementation because of what I thought I heard was that. I'm just trying to figure out if it works.

1:56:16Cause what I thought I heard was part of the work was to advise on a future tax. Like to me, that's part of like what this is about. And so what implementation. Capture that. Um, I think that wouldn't be off the table. I mean, I think this is, this is the bylaws and all that's going to be fleshed out. And I do think, I mean, I think that. Well, well, I think we have to decide do we want this. Board to flesh out what a continuation tax would look like. And. So, yeah, I think, I think that would be very helpful. Um, I think that's, I think that's encompassed within implementation. Um, I don't know. I mean, I think we're, I think we're getting maybe a little too semantic about, about it. Um, you know, I mean, one option commissioners is just to call it the mental and behavioral health tax board. And take out a descriptor if that is helpful and leaves open quite a bit of purview for you to ask for their advisement on a variety of topics. If I'm just making a suggestion in case it's helpful, your faces are telling me maybe not. No, actually my face. I'm just, I'm still in a lot of physical pain. My medical leave yesterday. So my face is

1:57:54nothing to do with anyone who's sitting in front of me. Um, I, I was actually going to suggest something similar based on the emergency services tax fund that I got to work on. We didn't, we didn't give a descriptor in that group and that group does a lot of really great work. So I was thinking similarly. I think I go back. I don't think a tax board, it looks like they're going to tax. Um, I think I go back to the advisory Council. Um, I know you wanted something a little more descriptive. But, but they're going to advise on a lot of things. And they may advise on what this should look like going forward. They're going to advise on should we shift focuses? Are we, they're going to advise us on a lot of things. And I think we flesh that, flesh that stuff out in the bylaws. I just wondered if you could, and I'm looking at the top of that bylaw. So that's why I'm looking, that's what I'm looking at when I'm talking to. Would you say then what, what your proposed title is. Cause we've heard a lot of different names. Yeah. Boulder County. Mental and behavioral health is a mouthful, but I, but mental and behavioral health tax. Advisory.

1:59:17Council. Well, the reason I'm asking that is. Well. I mean, I'm also hungry. So I, I'm like, I can be fine with it, but I also think in my mind the vision of this group. Is not just about the tax. Like it's about all these partnerships and it's about the work and it's about bringing the roadmap together. So that's, that's where my mind was of just what would it be like Boulder County mental behavioral health advice report because that doesn't exist right now. And to me, it's like it's more than just the tax when we talk in my mind. I'm not worried about my focus is not how do we get the money out the door. My focus is how do we change lives for those who are experiencing mental behavioral health or at risk?

2:00:04So I'm just thinking bigger. No, I appreciate that thought. The reason I put tax in there is I think we are really specifically looking for advice on implementing this tax and not, I worry that if it's not really limited to that, then we're, we're really going back to the roadmap, you know, and I think they're going to have the latitude to look at the system and who's being served and who's not being served and all of that. But we can really only do these things within the funds that are provided by this tax. And so I'm, I'm wanting it to have the appropriate people to have the right expectations for what this group can do. Okay. Sounds good. Hunger concentrates the mind. And then just in terms of the composition, um, I think from staff perspective, what Robin had proposed earlier as an approach might make some sense. Let's get out there. Let's do some recruitment for this new advisory. Council. Making sure I'm using the correct name and create a table that would show the different perspectives that the applicants would bring to the table. And that could inform your decision then on, on who you would want to see to that advisory Council.

2:01:33Does that make sense? That makes sense to me. Thank you. It does. It does. I do think it's helpful to have some targets though. But that, yeah, I think we heard from two of you was, um, generally speaking. That were presented by staff today with some additional providers might resonate. For the, for the board when you're looking at applications, that resonates, and I think for me also, you know, as we were talking about the, um, opioid council and the high utilizer group, that maybe not to say we want more law enforcement, but maybe we want, we, I think it's helpful to get the perspective of, of the bench on, you know, we want, we need some options here. We're not getting here. So maybe, maybe, maybe not call it law enforcement, but maybe it's, it's members of the judiciary. And probation is under judicial, um, I think probation could be really helpful. Here. So that's, that's the other area that I thought, uh, could be expanded a little bit. And maybe, maybe we shrink the other category. I think for me, what I'm trying to understand, and y'all have a better handle on it as experts in this. But my focus will still be about navigation and prevention. And so I don't, I don't want to make assumptions that these folks are also those folks,

2:03:23but I'm not interested in having additional law enforcement. Added to this committee because I feel like it's one perspective. And we've talked about continuum and we've talked about all of these different pieces of if we stay within that focus criteria, that wouldn't be where I would add representatives. Okay. Any final comments, commissioners. Um, I'm going to thank you all for the work that you're doing and the work that is yet to come in getting this off the ground and facilitating these meetings. Uh, you know, you, you all do a really, really excellent job on that, uh, from, from the meetings that I'm lucky enough to sit in with Robin and Kelly and not so much Marnie. But, um, but really you're, you know, your preparation and facilitation is spot on and you do a great job of, you know, creating agendas and focusing and making sure the conversation gets the outcomes it needs. So I'm, I'm excited to see this go forward. We're excited too.

2:04:29Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you all for your work for being here. We appreciate it. So I will, our business commissioners. Thank you. Yeah. My, my, um, uh, chair role of putting us in recess until 130 when we will come back and have another work session. All right. Thank you. We are still the Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County and we're back from our recess for our afternoon work session to look at our budget and recommendations for efficiencies. So I will just turn it right over to our County Administrator Jana Peterson and our chief financial officer to make a presentation. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Yes, our work session this afternoon is on the challenging situation with the general fund deficit. Our purpose today is to propose to commissioners general fund reductions to address that deficit, which is estimated at 13. 2 million dollars It is also really to honor the commitment that we made to Community members and staff who provided feedback last year about the budget reduction process, and that commitment was to increase transparency about what is and what is not under consideration for reductions in the general fund. And so in that spirit, commissioners will be asking you today to have a fulsome discussion of your perspectives on budget proposals so that staff can proceed accordingly in developing a recommended budget for 2027. We're

2:06:31holding this meeting in early August because we did hear concerns last year from employees and Community members that last year's reduction process came in several phases and some of it happened in December, which is the very end of your budget development process. And so to respond to those concerns, leadership teams in all of your reporting departments have worked hard to really develop reduction proposals within the Priority - based budgeting framework. In order for us to be able to present them to you today, of course we are not mind readers. And so we're prepared to hear guidance from the board in whatever format works best for you. Our responsiveness to request for additional transparency also brings with it some lack of detail. After hearing your direction today. Details on how to implement specific reductions are likely to need some additional analysis, planning, change management and communications to employs into the public. For that reason, the proposals presented today would not go into effect until your next budget cycle, which is 2027. We believe most of this change management could happen by January of 2027, but some recommendations may need a little bit more time and I'll try to note those as we're going through. I want to acknowledge that well - transparency has been requested and can be helpful. It can also contribute to uncertainty. Living

2:08:10with that uncertainty can be stressful. Both for Community members who are participants in the programs under discussion and for the staff who are directly impacted by reduction discussions. I want to just say that the proposals before you today don't in any way reflect on the value of the Community members who use those services on the value of the staff who provide those programs or on the effectiveness of those programs. This is really about simple reality that there is not enough ongoing funding in the general fund for Boulder County to continue to do everything that it does today. Ongoing cuts are unfortunate. They are difficult and they are necessary. Um, sort of table setting is that we are talking today about the general fund only, as well as some funds that are directly connected either by Mill Levy or, so an example there for commissioners is the Capitol Equipment Fund that you're familiar with where that Mil Levy is set in connection to the general fund or by transfers from the general fund to support other funds. The reductions also come only from the departments and offices reporting to the Board of County Commissioners, not the other elected offices. You will hear those proposals at a later date. And we're also not discussing the part of your budget instructions where you gave guidance around any one

2:09:57- time request for new funding or capital request for 2027 over the course of the next three months. Those, that budget information and request for direction will come at you at different work sessions. Um, including the recommended budget presentation on October 1st, a public hearing on October 22nd and final direction from the commissioners at a public meeting that is scheduled for November 5th. A little bit of history of how we got here. I want to start off by saying the general fund deficit is no one's fault. Um, it's a long - term issue caused by factors like an unstable economy, new county services, state and federal decisions that are beyond anyone's local control. It's really a constellation of financial events that are all happening at the same time. Property tax revenues are limited through action of the state legislature. The state has also experiencing a one billion dollar. Budget deficit that the state is addressing.

2:11:07We have a lot of uncertainty around the stability of our federal funding programs. And at the same time, Boulder County is launching some long - awaited criminal justice reform efforts that are funded through the general fund, including the recent opening of the Joe Pelly Center alternate sentencing facility. And so, uh, it's a situation that this Board of County Commissioners unfortunately finds yourselves in. And this timeline on the screen is just a reminder of what Boulder County already has done to work to address the general fund deficit and what the organization has accomplished together. Um, there's a little nod here at the end of what is left to come. But this is an important moment to say that preparing the 2026 budget process was challenging. For everyone involved. Departments and offices had to make tough choices.

2:12:02Commissioners gave, uh, direction and made difficult decisions, including cutting programs and reducing staff. And, um, we're going to talk in a little bit about some of the direction that you gave us in December to pursue a couple of specific projects that are featured in today's proposals. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to our Mondo. Expenditures outpacing, reoccurring revenues. And if no action has taken, it would definitely put us in a deficit. That is why today's discussion focuses on identifying another 13. 2 million ongoing structural reductions for 2027. Rather than reviewing all the budget instructions, I simply want to remind everyone on the direction the board provided during the March budget retreat. The Board Directed staff to develop 13. 2 million of ongoing general fund reductions for fiscal year 2027. Supported by Priority Based Budgeting Framework and Processes. The Board also established the Planning Target of approximately 70 percent operation, recognizing that department should first evaluate vacancies. Organizational alignment, operational efficiencies and historically operational underspending before recommending Service Reductions. Today's recommendations have been developed using this policy direction. Another important component of the board's direction was that these recommendations should be developed should not be developed through across the Board Cuts. Instead, departments and elected offices participated in priority - based budgeting, framework and processes that evaluated programs based on their relative importance,

2:14:58allowing us to focus on lower priority opportunities before considering reductions to high priority services. The recommendations will review today are the results of that work. Our goal is to walk you through these recommendations. Explain the rationale and the triage process behind them and receive your feedback and direction on how you would like us to proceed. Finally, decisions will be remained directly from the board as we continue developing this fiscal 2027 recommended budget. I'd pass this presentation on to Jam so we can begin looking at these proposals. So Commissioners, my intention is to present these proposals to you in sections. And I will welcome your feedback on whether it's helpful to pause at the end of each section for your questions or whether you want us to continue and take questions at the end. So we're going to begin with the efficiencies project proposals. Just as a reminder, in December, the Commissioners directed a project to evaluate efficiencies and service enhancements to be gained by centralizing some county functions. This included direction to centralize all department racial equity positions into the county's Office of Racial Equity and all disaster recovery positions into the Office of County Administrator before July 1. In addition to this directed centralization of two relatively small teams, the efficiencies project assessment occurred in the first half of this year.

2:16:38The purpose of the project was to enhance and provide more efficient internal service delivery, better coverage, shared learning opportunities, and greater career growth opportunities and paths for staff. The analysis focused on the following administrative functions, communications, contracting, data analysis, business analysis, policy analysis and lobbying, training and workforce development, Computing support and service desk. In anticipation of proposals from this analysis, the Commissioner's directed a temporary hiring freeze for any vacant positions in the job classifications being considered for centralization or undervaluation. With limited exceptions, the hiring freeze resulted in these positions remaining unfilled since December. Also on December 9th, you directed the continuation of collaborative work across the department's services community services, housing, and public health. They were tasked to work together to explore programmatic and administrative efficiencies. With changes in state and federal revenues continuing. This work has been more important than ever. Named the Social Services Assessment Project. These departments evaluated opportunities for efficiencies in programs with similar mission and scope, including administrative support functions.

2:18:09And you'll hear recommended proposals from both of these projects today. Starting with the proposals from the efficiencies project work, the phase one of this project was the centralization of those two functions that you directed on December 9th. With a growing focus on the program's evolution, centralization of the Office of Racial Equity was intended to enhance capacity to provide training, internal consultation, and evaluation of the County's Collective work to advance policy 1. 06, fully inclusive anti - racist and multicultural organization. Similarly, the county had several managers in different departments who were responsible for facets of disaster recovery and resilience. You directed staff to centralize this work in the Office of County Administrator to enhance cross - departmental coordination reporting and general readiness following disasters impacting the community. Share Learning and Expertise within these roles has already served us following floods, fires, and the recent pandemic. I'm certain that climate change will continue to bring future disasters. For this team. Centralization is intended to speed recovery, foster and inclusive approach, and leverage the combined experience with federal, state, and local partners to bounce back smarter and better when faced with Often Dynamic and very long recovery periods following disasters. Because the centralization is very new.

2:19:49Both teams haven't had the opportunity yet to capture what the impacts of the centralization will be. I want to acknowledge that the staff who participated in centralization did leave behind important tasks in their former departments. I have a personal appreciation to individuals in those departments who stepped up to take on those tasks that remained with the departments while the centralization efforts took place. Both centralized teams will benefit from their managers department connections and overall knowledge. And both teams have been asked to report back to you next year in 2027 on the impact of these centralization efforts. Neither of these two efforts had a direct impact on general fund, but I do want to acknowledge a savings of 170, 000 dollars in the social services fund 112, which is another property tax fund that, as you know, is facing challenges with its budget.

2:21:00For the administrative functions where you directed an evaluation, there were some overall findings that I wanted to cover. And then we will walk through some budget - related proposals with a total estimated general fund savings of 2, 805, 000 dollars. The project team consulted with impacted staff and department in Office Leadership throughout the project. They also looked to other government organizations of our size at both centralized and decentralized models for these types of services. The work of this team was to understand the job duties, potential, internal service impacts, efficiencies, and the risks of inefficiencies associated with internal functions. To what extent they are coordinated already across County Operations. To research internal administrative services promising practices within and between departments and also in those peer government organizations. To consult with the employees, Department heads, elected officials, and supervisors in those functional areas. To evaluate and recommend some technology or other tools that might be helpful for program success. This included the drafting first drafts of racial equity impact assessment tools. And then for any approved proposals, this team would move forward with implementation. I want to acknowledge that each of these functions really helps Boulder can anticipate, prepare for and respond to the needs of both staff and the community while they may feel internal in nature. They have a direct impact on our Community Facing

2:22:58Services. I'm very thankful for all who participated in this process. And want to reiterate that if any of these proposals are approved, the work isn't done. The implementation would need to take place between now and January to ensure thoughtful planning, change management, and continuation of important internal relationships. In three of the functional areas, no changes are recommended. So these are the functions of data analysts. Policy analysts and training and development. And I want to emphasize no recommendations are coming to you from the efficiencies project for these teams. You may hear recommendations later in the presentation. In proposing no changes to the current reporting structure of these teams, the efficiencies project considered what problems we are trying to solve through centralization. This included a lack of governance across the organization. Inconsistent coverage with where some departments have these staff and others do not. A lack of standardized approaches, tools, and trainings from the staff in different departments. The key finding is that a centralized team would not effectively improve service delivery, because the roles these staff play are reliant on the business processes and knowledge in the departments where they currently sit. Use of common tools and shared governance across departments is proposed as a better remedy than centralization. And just to use data analysts as an example, the problem statement for this work identified a

2:24:57lack of data governance across the organization, inconsistent coverage where some departments have data analysts and others do not. And a lack of standardization on data reporting, ownership and tools. The key finding is that a centralized team would not effectively address these problems because IT, if data analysts were to be centralized there, is too distant from the data needs of departments and offices. Who are the true owners of the data that their programs create. Office leadership, program and project managers are most familiar with their data? What reports would be helpful for effective use of data and what action should be taken in response to data. Over the coming years, as technology and training on data reporting advance in the organization, these department leaders, project and program managers, would be better able to take on data reporting themselves, including query and analysis as part of their routine work. Similar to how many of them learned how to use other tools, such as spreadsheets or project management software, these tools are technical in nature and require some familiarity in order to operate. Power BI is the county's identified data processing software solution. But until everyone is trained up on that software, the need for data analysis currently exists in the organization and no change is recommended to reporting structures. The case for continuation of policy, analyst rules in

2:26:41their current reporting structures is similar. Most positions analyze already sit within the commissioner's office for those outside the office, the connection to the business of the department drives the bulk of their work and work plans. In addition, lobbying efforts under the current structure have a cost benefit to the county because they've resulted in significant changes to state legislation in particular to benefit county residents as well as the county's financials. And then finally, the small number of staff that were under evaluation in the training and development function are also not recommended for centralization because they already work very closely together in the departments of human resources, information technology, and the Office of Racial Equity. Instead of centralization, the proposal is to create a shared government structure for training to prevent unnecessary duplication and to work towards a shared transcript for employees who take training. Now we'll move on to the area's evaluated and the efficiencies project where centralization or partial centralization is recommended. So the first group proposed for partial centralization is business analysts. Which would be consolidated in the IT department through the transfer of four positions. The county could benefit from adding business analysis capacity to the IT department. The increasing capacity would help serve countywide needs related to technology project intake and implementation change management, process improvement, technology product evaluation. Business requirements gathering.

2:28:29Assessment of project and solution outcomes. Assessment of technology risks and technical debt, and other skills and duties that are particular to the role of business analysis. There are currently 17 positions Countywide in Business Analyst Roles. The project team also proposes that at least five of these current positions and FTE in those positions should be reviewed to ensure that they are classified properly. There may be some opportunity for reclassification of those roles with the assurance that no employee would experience a reduction in pay with that. Reclassification analysis. Broadder Consolidation Options within the Business Analyst series are limited because some employees work within very specialized context and some elected offices resisted inclusion of their team members in this conversation because of the ability for elected officials to direct their staff's work. Next up is another technical team, Computing Support or within our organization more commonly known as service desk. The recommendation here is also to partially centralize this team by transferring two positions to the current IT service desk. Some level of consolidation and service desk roles has already occurred in association with a 2026. General fund reductions. There was a retirement of one position each in public health and community services at the end of 2025. And these two service desk roles were not rehired, but the workloads that they covered was already transferred to

2:30:28the IT services team. A net increase of one FTE is what's proposed with these two transfers. Because one vacancy on the service test team that's been part of the hiring freeze would not be refilled. Again, broader consolidation options are limited because some employees work within very specialized context rather than providing general support to their department or office and some elected officials were not interested in participating and consolidation. I realized on the last slide I didn't say what I should have said, which is the general fund savings in consolidation of business and analysts is similar in that a frozen vacancy on the IT team would be the reduction associated with business analysts. The next proposal is to centralize the communications team into one centrally managed team. The concept here is that team would be positioned centrally in the organization, but would we responsible for, uh, would be organized and be responsible for what we're calling pods, which are departments and offices with similar functions. An example might be perks in public works.

2:32:03Services like Human Resources, information technology, the Office of Financial Management, and that the staff would be structured within teams to respond to those needs. The specific reporting structure would be identified during the implementation phase, including where the centralized team would be located. There are some opportunity for savings here with through reduction of the number of social media accounts, web pages, and department specific reports over time. This proposal could result in layoffs. We anticipate a reduction of up to 10 of about 30 staff. Who are currently in positions that were under review. There are some vacancies because of the hiring freeze that would be in play in the discussion if you decide to accept this proposal. And those would be considered in the implementation phase. The problem statement or the problem that this centralization is intended to address is inefficient and inconsistent processes for the creation, review, generation, and approval of communications content. Inconsistent coverage across departments, programs, and initiatives, where some departments have dedicated communications resources and some, including those with some high - profile programs, do not. There is a lack of backup. If there is only one dedicated communications research in a department.

2:33:46There's also a challenge of strategy and standardization across departments so that we can have similar tone, voice, messaging, coordinated timing and consideration of audiences for these communications activities. If you accept this proposal, it will necessarily result in changes in how communications are delivered and a change management plan would be needed. I believe I forgot the contract slide on here. My apologies, um. Commissioners. Oh, it's in there. Did I skip a slide. I'm so sorry, Commissioners. It's. On 15. Yeah, I'm sorry. It just got out of order here. So we're going to pop ahead. There it is. Um. The fourth proposal coming out of the efficiency's project is to create a centralized team for contracting. The concept here is similar to what we just discussed with communications where there would be one centrally managed team structures and pods to serve departments with similar work. The specific reporting structure, if you accept this proposal, would be determined during the implementation phase, including where this team would be centralized. There's an opportunity to focus on standardization of templates and approval routings, especially what we learned is that many departments have their own routings within their department before the centralized routing occurs. We believe the leverage agreements across departments to simplify work, find better rates, um, from our vendors and build stronger vendor relationships and management ongoing. The problem statement for

2:35:58contract centralization was to address inefficient processes. We learn that process is very widely between departments. Many have too many steps to get a contract assigned. Some have missing steps to get a contract signed. There's also inconsistent coverage where some departments have a dedicated contract administrator and some do not. This creates situations where there's a lack of backup, um, for contract administrators who take time off, as well as a lack of standardization and templates, approval routings and decision making. We also believe there's a significant opportunity in duplication of contracts and efforts where we are not leveraging those, uh, agreements that are similar among the departments. And then finally, we hear from our vendors that they have a different experience, depending on which department our office that they are contracting with. I want to pause here, Commissioners.

2:37:02Before we move on to the Social Services Assessment to see if you want to have questions now related to the efficiencies project. Or if you prefer to keep moving through all of the recommendations, what's your preference? I think we should pause and take these in groups. And then when we're done with the efficiencies project and the Human Services, um, Community Services, et cetera, we may just want to go one by one when we get into the PBB. Sounds good. Yeah. That's great. And thank you. I'll start us off. Appreciate all the work that's been put into the different sections of this. Document and all the proposals. And I just want to acknowledge to staff that are here in the room and that are listening. Um, that are online that this is by far the most challenging situation. I personally have been put in. And we have confronted COVID and Martial Fire and a whole lot of other things here at Boulder County. And the world right now. So I just want to say that out loud before I start, I do have a couple of questions on, um, just on the presentation and the information.

2:38:16I wondered, um, if you could take a look at, let me see, where's my notes? There was a slide of notes in a document in my previous notes and my notebook. So, um, thanks for the grace. The slide that talked about. I think it was proposal four. No, I'm so sorry. Proposal one. Just the way I interpreted what was on the slide. And then I think what you said, Jana, maybe clarified it. But for me, it'll be helpful because I'm a very literal person. So on the third bullet point there, it talks about anticipated reduction of one FTE, but then the last one talks about no layoffs. And so I just want to be really clear on that for me. That is a vacancy. And if you would like more detail on that, um, IT Director Paul Jana Pores here and can speak to that if you need more details. I think just, I mean, if you'd like to polyure here, absolutely. And what I heard is the way that it's saying one reduction of one FTE is just currently a vacant position. So it wouldn't result in a layout. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Paul Jane, upper IT director. That particular one is a retirement that we have pending in IT. So it's a pending vacancy.

2:39:34And we're just trying to plan that into what we can do in this proposal here. Okay. Thank you. And then maybe stay there for a moment because it's the same section on the proposal one. I heard you, Janice talk about five FTB FTE to be reviewed. And on the document that I've got that was, I think it's the most recent version is four of 17 business analysis. So is it the four plus that other vacancy that makes it five. Yeah. Thanks for that clarification. Four positions would be centralized into IT. Separately. Five positions. The team proposes to look at the classification of those positions because in this evaluation, their work may be a bit different from what the business analyst job description actually says. And I want to emphasize that there would be no reduction in pay with that reclassification, but just to making sure that people have a job description that matches their actual job duties. Okay. Thank you. Um, and then I was going to go into proposal three and four. Thank you.

2:40:44And just what would be helpful for me because we've had, we've had some, um, just going to information that we've received in regards to since what December, um, and efficiency projects and what this is looking like and some of the recommendations. It would be helpful, I think for staff to understand what other information that folks that we're working in these different teams had in regards to. And I'm looking at proposal three and four. To understand Boulder County government. And I think where you started as Jana of like, we try and do, I believe we do above and beyond. And certainly over what we are mandated by the state to do. And in comparison with other local governments, it seemed like that was one of the factors that was being looked at. And I just didn't hear that spoken to. So I'm going to turn to, uh, your deputy who was the project sponsor for the communications work. Good morning. Uh, good afternoon, commissioners Natalie Spring at Commissioners Deputy for the record as it relates to proposal three. Um, we did do benchmarking with some neighboring counties in the Colorado area of similar size to Boulder County. Um, it was a little difficult because no one's centralized communications department is quite what we would call apples to apples where they have web and graphics or they

2:42:13include elected offices or don't include elected offices. Um, but with the proposal that we're bringing forward today, um, we would still be slight have about two to three more FTE. Um, then the next closest similarly sized County in the area. Um, and so that was a piece of the recommendation in addition to looking at the size and structure of both how much, how many departments and how many elected offices we have here in Boulder County, um, and the needs to ensure that there's a communication specialist to support each one of those offices and departments. Thank you. And then I'll turn to Armando for contracts. Mondo, what do you let you finance officer? Very same, um, information or discovery we also found for contracts. We did go out to our neighboring, uh, County's. We also looked at other governments and we also did some, uh, benchmarking within the nation, um, and some geofa benchmarking on contracts, uh, we found the same, um, not everybody does it very or does it similar very different, but we did do the benchmarking. We do have the data. There's actually one county in the state that actually is doing the centralized, but otherwise everybody else is very decentralized. Um, and so we took all that information in drafting this recommendation.

2:43:43Thank you. Those are the questions I had right now. Commissioners Stolzman. I don't have questions. Thank you. I had a couple of questions. First, I mean, I want to thank you for your work and thank everybody who contributed to this. And also just acknowledge that this is a very, very difficult place that we're in. And, uh, and a lot of work was done between the 2026 budget, which we're in right now. And the work, um, that led to our budget instructions for 2027 to try to make sure that we are not overstating the need to make these, uh, reductions. And I think that, um, I appreciate the work of, uh, Armando and his whole team, uh, Jillian, who's here with us in helping us get as accurate. A picture as possible of where we are.

2:44:52And Jana, I appreciate you saying that, you know, we're not here because of anybody's fault or bad management or bad judgment. There were many circumstances that came together. And I know, you know, Commissioner Locuman and I have in the longest tenure on this board where coming out of the pandemic, um, we had, um, we needed to address, um, the compensation we were offering people who had been working during very, very difficult times in a period when inflation, um, ramped up for a period of time and wanting to make sure we were sensitive to, to the impact that was having on people's budgets. And, um, so, you know, just this is not an easy conversation to be having. And some of these, well, I think I can say, you know, for the input that I'll be providing here, that with respect to efficiencies, you know, the goal of the project was not how do we reduce FTE? The goal of the project was how do we actually work better and more efficiency and get synergies from people with similar professional background working together, you know, on some of the centralization within IT, what was identified was an opportunity for further professional development by being able to work with a group of people that, uh, from whom you can learn, uh, that would allow opportunities for both

2:46:35lateral change and upward change. And, you know, to just deliver County Services, um, efficiently and effectively. Um, I had some questions about. Um, about the centrally managed communications team. And I think for me, the tension is between having better coordination. And, you know, a group of communications professionals working together under the supervision of a communications professional. And wanting to maintain the subject matter expertise that they have by being embedded in their department, the proximity to the work that's being done. And, um, and, you know, just the knowledge, you know, just to use open spaces an example of, you know, they have a, they have an audience that for communications out of open space that is very, very different than the audience that may come out of Community Services or Human Services. And for me, that's, that has been the source of my hesitation about this consolidation. And, um, you know, and some areas have a lot more sort of technical communications, you know, where you want to be very, very specific about the terminology that you use and sensitivity to different, you know, just different populations. Then others. And so this is, this is where I've just had ongoing concerns about, about consolidation. And so I, you know, I get the value of, of that.

2:48:39And, you know, the opportunity for coverage or to provide communications to departments that don't have dedicated communications. I'm going to need some assurance that we're not going to lose the ability to effectively convey a message with all the nuances that are included within that. When, you know, when it calls for the, you know, the knowledge and information of that. Department. Thank you Commissioner Levy for that. Um, observation. The pod structure is really what is aimed at mitigating that concern by having folks work in teams with the same departments with an S. So it wouldn't be subject matter expertise exclusive to one department, but across departments that have some similarity to them is, is the approach that is proposed. Um, subject to your guidance and direction. If that doesn't seem like an approach that, that, um, you believe will work effectively in county government. The concept there would be again, just what you said, you know, professional communications. People working together and having coverage across those pods. Um, while still being able to have familiarity with the business of the departments where they would be assigned.

2:50:05So they would in terms of a reporting structure. I think, I mean, the memo says this specific reporting structure for each team would be determined during implementation. Um, you know, I, again, I'm thinking that, you know, if you're communicating about a new human services program or a change, you know, going back to when, when we made the decision not to do foster care placements in - house, for instance. And that we were going to use contract with some nonprofit placement agencies. How that was communicated, all the nuance of that, the assurances of the affected communities and all those things required really close collaboration with Susan Kasky and her team. That's what I don't want to lose. So that's, I guess I'm just raising that flag as we implement this. I'm going to want to make sure that we still have that. Thank you. So, and it's not about, I mean, I understand from, you know, what the information we got in our PMIs and the Natalie just shared that, you know, we, we may be overstaffed in these areas. And so, um, you know, we, we do want to be mindful of that. But I, you know, I just don't want the quality and the sensitivity of our communications to be lost. Um, I know that staying on communications, these aren't like definite, um, pods

2:51:43that have been identified and formed, um, this is all conceptual at this point. But another concern I had raised was whether public health ought to stay in public health. And I don't see them mentioned here. And is that just because this is conceptual or because they're not going to be consolidated. In the number of 30 FTs that does include public health. And again, subject to your, um, guidance on this proposal, the implementation plan could, um, include or not include public health based on, um, the guidance that you provide to staff. Okay. And, and there, I mean, I think so for me, one of the implications here that we need to have some further conversations about is, um, I have always taken pain to refer to public health as a separate entity. They're governed by statute.

2:52:45They have a, they have a Board of Health that, you know, hires and supervisors, the director and the directors, you know, et cetera supervises the FTE. And for me, maintaining that separation has been very, very important to respecting the non - political role that public health should have in our society. And I don't want, um, I want to make sure that if we're consolidating these services that we do that in a way that, um, that respects and maintains that separation. And if we're, and I know we consolidate IT and HR and, you know, County Attorney provides legal services. And I believe those are generally done through MOUs or IgAs of some sort. But, you know, that we do it in a way that, first of all, understands and respects the very specialized technical knowledge and also, um, does not blur that separation. Um, I, um, Oh, on the contracts, um, centralization, um. Does that include, we do all kinds of inner governmental agreements for all all kinds of purposes. Is that encompassed within contracts? Yes.

2:54:12It actually includes all monetary and non - monetary contracts. So every contract that runs through the county would be included in this contract centralization. Okay. That's one where I think it's for me, it's going to depend on the nature of the IgA. I mean, some of them are very like the, um, the IgAs that implement, um, comprehensive development plans that we may develop with municipalities on, you know, to manage annexation and growth. You know, they're so specific to negotiations that entails Community Planning and permitting and the county attorney's office that, you know, it just may not really be the kind of function that needs to be consolidated into, uh, into OFM, if that's where it's going to go. So I think, you know, I think for me on that, Germany be sort of a case by case aspect to that. So just keep in mind, I just want to remind, we're not taking the business decision or the expertise out of the department's. We're centralizing the process and making sure that we have expertise that are the contract administrators that work directly with the departments.

2:55:24So we're not taking the expertise out. It's definitely important for them to make sure that the process is followed through. That's where the efficiency comes in. We're looking at the whole process itself, even if it's non - monetary or monetary, I think really what we really want to look at is the lack of oversight on those that actually have no monetary. We have a lot of contracts that actually go through with no oversight. And so this, this group would actually incorporate all contracts, decentralized group. Okay. Well, I hear what you say. Um, I still think, you know, the actual development of these and the, and the language, they don't really lend themselves to standardization. Um, you know, they're, they're one - offs. And so, um, I mean, I think there's going to have to be some room for flexibility. Absolutely. Um, I think that was, um, that was all I had on the efficiencies aspect.

2:56:23Oh. Yeah, thanks. Thank you commissioners. And then just a question, would you prefer to give guidance on efficiencies at this point in the presentation before we move on or would you like to move to the social services assessment? Section of the presentation. I feel like I gave the guidance I wanted to give. I think we should give guidance this week out. Yeah. I think so too. Yeah. So, um, I'll just ask very specifically about the four proposals in front of you. Is it your guidance to, um, continue to work through these centralization efforts and incorporate that into the recommended budget that will come back to you on October 1st. With the savings identified here as a target. And just in this work session, do you want to call on us, Jana, or do you want us to just take turns? That's the pleasure of the group. I just don't want to speak over each other.

2:57:18Um, Commissioner Stolzman, why don't you go first? Great. Um, thank you so much. So just, um, just high level couple comments. My colleagues have already made a few, but just to say, um, you know, we've set a target of 13. 2 in the hopes to not have to have repeat reduction efforts because it's, you know, traumatizing for folks and it takes a lot of energy, um, away from focusing on providing great services from the community. Um, but I will say that that is a compromised number, um, because there are a lot of things in the base budget that we're not funding that are really critical. So by way of example, the district attorney came to the Boarda County Commissioners previously. And identified that we know their sex trafficking happening in the county that we can't investigate and prosecute, that we don't have enough capacity, um, by way of prosecutors and investigators to do it. And the County Commissioner said we were not going to fund that. And so, you know, there were some big things like that that are missing from the base budget that are critical components and functions of government that we're not doing today. And so, um, you know, I echo my colleagues'comments that it is, um, our job and it's our responsibility to evaluate these trade - offs and to do

2:58:29it very seriously. And that, you know, it's not necessarily pleasant. And I appreciate the county administrators points that, you know, it doesn't mean anyone's doing a bad job. There are trade - offs and there are choices that have to be made. So those are just some high level comments that I'll make. I do think it's our responsibility as county commissioners and a county to really look at our processes, particularly administrative processes and ensure that we're doing them efficiently. And so for things, um, that are not customer focused or Community focused outwardly facing like, um, business analysis. It's a critical function, but we want to make sure we're doing it efficiently and effectively. So I'm supportive of the general direction that you have here. There are a lot of details to work out. Of course, um, on how it works and how it's implemented and processes that need to be done to understand who would impact most and how we mitigate those consequences. But broad brush speaking, I'm supportive of the centralization efforts. What I heard from the deputy is that we have over a dozen more folks than the next comparable county in the area in the communications department. And so while I really value the Communication effort that everyone's doing, I do think we have to take some, um, some work there and get

2:59:49more in line with comparable counties and similarly sized. So those are my general thoughts. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner, what you mean. Thanks. I'm happy to just weigh in on this section. I think for me the, it was a good, good point that I do think we need to talk about today, Board in regards to the elected officials offices. My understanding is that we won't have today. I don't remember how it was described. But, um, didn't offer any recommendations or some similar language in the memo that we saw. It's timing. It's a timing issue. It's a timing issue, but I do think that's going to be really important. And if we don't, if we're not able to get any recommendations by our elected official colleagues, we are going to have to, I believe, talk again, uh, for 2027 budget about, um, reduction to budgets so that we can, um. Look at all of the different options versus just our department's here under the Board of County Commissioner. So I just want to say that your comments about the DA's ideas brought that up for me about where are the other recommendations from elected official offices. But in regards to this specific slide, I just want to acknowledge again, the work that was put into the ask from, from last year. And I feel, I feel like

3:01:06we are in a situation where you've got to reduce some of these pieces specifically in the communication centralization, um, and the, and the contracts. And I will just say Commissioner Lee, I think, I think all of our teams could probably argue about wanting to be in the departments and not centralize. And I just feel like we've started that process. And so to do it in one area, not doing another area where there's going to shared services and the opportunity to continue to work on not duplicating services, et cetera, or duplicating work is where we're at right now. Thank you. And then Commissioner Lee, be, I noted your comments on communications and contracts. But wondered if you had anything else on the other two proposals that you wanted to share. No, I didn't. And so, you know, I'm a, I'm a thumbs up sort of provisional on, you know, what it looks like when we implement it on this. Thank you.

3:02:20The next project that you directed back in December was the social services assessment. Which reviewed program inventories, uh, facilitated work sessions with staff and leadership and analyzed overlap across programs specifically serving older adults. Juveniles and children. The review of these programs necessarily included exploring programs serving families, individuals with disabilities, housing insecure households, justice involved youth, veterans, and other high needs populations. The problem statement was to evaluate whether there were duplication of programs and find any efficiencies that could be gained in program delivery. And the proposal is coming before you today are the result of that work. Overall, the assessment determined that, um, there is no widespread duplication in direct services. Programs generally are not doing the same work. Instead, the greatest overlap exists in the infrastructures surrounding how these services are provided. Across the system, many programs served the same households through different entry points while independently performing similar intake, navigation, referral coordination, outreach, grant administration, and case coordination functions.

3:03:55Applicants often have to repeat their information, complete similar assessments, and navigate disconnected systems with limited visibility between the teams that are providing these services. Staff experience the same fragmentation through duplicated workflows. Repeated coordination efforts and separate administrative processes. The assessment supports moving Boulder County toward more shared infrastructure and specialized services. This means aligning common functions. We're doing so improves efficiency and customer experience while preserving specialized expertise. Legal requirements, evidence - based models, and program authority. The proposals in front of you today have been prioritized and sequenced based on three considerations. First, whether the proposal is ready for near - term decision - making. Second, whether it can produce measurable, operational or administrative improvements. And third, whether it creates a foundation that is needed for later system changes where there is the potential for significant service enhancements to the community. Overall, these proposals are intended to improve efficiency, reduce administrative duplication, simplify access to services, improve coordination across programs, preserve specialized expertise and legally required functions and strengthen the long - term operational sustainability of these direct supports. The overall direction is not large - scale elimination of services. With some exceptions, decisions about program reductions or eliminations are better addressed through the county's priority - based budgeting process. And you'll hear about some of those later. This assessment instead focused on improving how residents navigate

3:05:46services, how staff coordinates across systems, and how the county organizes shared infrastructure to meet current community needs. And because of this, the timing of the proposals that we're talking about today may need a little more time beyond January to implement. And so when you see the ongoing savings numbers, those are annualized and not specific to the savings that would be achieved in 2027 because of timing. The phase one proposals are most ready. To immediately operationalize and could be accomplished during 2027. They build on existing systems, identified partnerships and work that is already underway. They can also produce earlier operational administrative or customer experience improvements without requiring major technology or organizational restructuring, which is very challenging for these departments given the pressures that they are experiencing because of HR1 and other implementation challenges. The total estimated savings of these, um, reductions is 500, 000 dollars in the general fund. And I'm going to walk through each of them in a little bit more detail. Proposal number five, which is coming from the social services assessment is to reduce the juvenile assessment center operations. We call it the Jack. So if I say the jack, that's dance for juvenile assessment center. Um, the Jack and Impact Partnership have been successful in reducing youth detention while increasing diversion, stabilization and community - based responses for justice -

3:07:36involved youth. Policy changes sentencing reforms and evidence - based practices have reduced the number of youth entering or remaining in secure detention. As a result, the Jack's current 20 - bed 24 - hour secure operating model is no longer aligned with utilization or the broader direction of Boulder County and Colorado's youth justice system. This team is a product of their own programmatic success. The current structure maintains underused secure detention capacity while youth and families continue to need coordinated assessment, stabilization, diversion, navigation, and service connections. Boulder County will still need an after - hours juvenile response system. Youth arrests, family crises, detention screening, crisis consultation, human services involvement, behavioral health response and short - term placement decisions all happen outside of regular operating hours. If jack operations are reduced without a clear transition plan, those responsibilities will shift to law enforcement. Or other, um, Community providers, the courts, or other partners. Boulder County, this proposal is for Boulder County to transition the Jack from a primarily secure detention operation to an intake assessment stabilization and diversion center. The Jack would continue serving justice - involved youth and youth at high risk of system involvement, operations would shift from the 24 - hour model to approximately 5 a. m. to 10 p. m., including removal of the overnight shift. This would better align staffing and costs with

3:09:23utilization while maintaining the ability to address limited short - term secure holding needs. The proposal is for the impact executive board to convene a formal partner work group before permanent operational changes are implemented. The work group should include courts, law enforcement, behavioral health, use serving agencies, human services, juvenile probation, and other partners. It's charge should be to redesign the long - term operating model. Clarify after hours responsibilities. Protect public safety. Preserve effective diversion and assessment functions, and develop a sustainability plan. This proposal is prioritized in the assessment because it presents the clearest near - term opportunity to align operations with actual utilization and achieve measurable savings while preserving a reliable juvenile response system. A reduced operating model may allow for reduction of about three FTE. From a total annual operating cost of 400, 000 dollars.

3:10:29Savings would occur in 27 with ongoing savings in 2028. The next proposal is to create a common application and administration for grants to nonprofits. Commissioners, you are familiar with the grant making that Boulder County does to our local nonprofit organizations. We currently require Community Organizations to Complete Multiple Applications with similar information while County staff manage separate reviews, reporting, monitoring and administrative workflows. This proposal is to develop a common grant application and align basic administrative processes across Community Partnership Grants, Human Services Funds, the Intellectual in Developmental Disabilities Mille Levy. The Area Agency on Aging. Housing - related grants, and other aligned funding streams were appropriate. The Application would create shared core questions, align timelines where feasible, standardized basic workflows, coordinate reporting expectations, reduced duplicative review work, and improve clarity for Community Organizations. The funding Authority and Programmer Decisions would remain with the respective departments and subject matter experts within those departments. But the administration of the grant applications would be through this common application. There's an expected reduction of one administrative FTE as a result of this work, and an estimated general fund savings of about 100, 000 dollars.

3:12:23The assessment also proposes to convene a multidisciplinary team for complex cases. The assessment repeatedly identified households involved in multiple county systems with overlapping case plans, disconnected referrals, repeated assessments, and fragmented coordination. This multidisciplinary team would be modeled after collaborative approaches such as impact. The team would review complex cases, improve shared understanding of household risks and needs. Coordinate service plans and referrals, and use the county's HS Connect system and other tools to improve visibility, to identify recurring system barriers. The proposal would include participation standards, confidentiality protocols, case selection criteria, decision - making expectations, and measures of weather coordination improves outcomes or reduces duplicated work. Priority populations would be multi - system families. Older adults with complex needs. Housing insecure households. Or those screened out through child protective services or adult protections services, as well as people with disabilities. This proposal is expected to be cost neutral in the near term, but the value is more likely to appear over time as reduced duplication of case coordination, pure disconnected referrals, improved visibility across programs, better alignment for high - need households, and better outcomes for those community members. This proposal would track staff time. Case is reviewed, duplicative referrals, outcomes, and barriers, um, for measurement over time.

3:14:18The next proposal is to coordinate outreach across the departments through the County's equitable community engaging framework. Not surprisingly, the assessment identified that outreach, Community Education, multilingual communication, and engagement occur across many programs and departments. The programs often attend the same events, create separate materials, engage, overlapping communities without consistent coordination. Rather than creating a separate outreach structure, Boulder County could use the equitable Community Engagement Framework as the common foundation for coordinating Social Services Outreach across these departments. The work should apply the framework consistently, coordinate outreach planning, create a shared calendar, identify when joint engagement is appropriate, aligned service navigation, and align messaging. Again, this proposal is expected to be cost neutral. In the near term, but, um, bare benefits over time and reduce duplication of event participation, outreach materials, multilingual communication, and repeated engagement with the same communities. And then I will just briefly touch on future phase recommendations that you can expect to see in the timeline of 2028 to 2029. But the purpose here is to create share and intake as a high impact proposal. It is also very complex to do. Shared intake depends on decisions about governance, data access, privacy, releases of information, workflow ownership, and use of the HSConnect system. Lessons learned from the multidisciplinary team proposal in 2027, grant alignment, and the coordinated community engagement work would inform the design

3:16:14of this re - envision system infrastructure. And is not something that is proposed to take on in 2027 because of the impact of HR1 implementation on these exact teams. HR1 needs to be the priority for 2027. I'll just wrap up by saying the sequencing does not mean that these later proposals are less important. It recognizes that Boulder County is more likely to achieve sustainable change by beginning with decisions and improvements that are ready to roll out now, building the supporting infrastructure, and then using that infrastructure to redesign areas with significant cross - program overlap. And I will pause here, Commissioners, for your discussion. Thank you. I think my question, just starting on the Jack is in the memo, and you set it to, Janet, the, I don't know the page of the list. I'd like to try and get pages, but I don't have page number on here. Uh, Boulder County will still need an after hours, juvenile response system. And then in one of the slides, there was an item on there that was like after hours hold something. And what I'm curious about is if we were to say today, yes, take a look at this further. My question is, what are the unintended consequences and where were these. Youth be held. And will it not create a situation where. If we were

3:18:01to remove this night shift, that then the county's going to be requested in 12 months or 18 months funding to be able to take care of a need that we are creating. And so would the team that's working on this particular item need to go and talk with impact on others to try and find a solution before we could say yes or no. Exactly. And I might invite Robin Bohannon to chime in on this as well. But that is why the recommendation is to engage the impact partnership to understand what would happen between those hours, likely an on - call situation or something like that would be under discussion and turn over to Ron. Thank you, Robin Bohan and Community Services Department. Um, that's exactly right. This proposal needs a lot more analysis and engagement because there are so many stakeholders, even outside of the specific impact partnership and the impact executive board. So, um, we will hear plenty about these concerns about mitigating unintended consequences. Um, and so, um, we're greatly and gravely aware of this Marta, which is why we are looking for an extended period of time for the analysis that we wouldn't, um, cut this program at the end of this year. Okay. And I think the reason why like we're looking part of what's in front of us is this

3:19:32number that has been talked about and we're working with. And I look at this under proposal five and it says, you know, general fund savings of 400, 000. Um, with an impact of potential layoff. The way it's written in here. And so I think for me, what you're talking about, the analysis is really important because I just don't see. How the county wouldn't end up funding something or the ask will come back to the county most likely, even if it's in a partnership. And so the number that's in front of me at 400, 000, I don't know that that's really a general fund. It's not a net general fund savings outside of the piece that we've got juveniles. Who are looking to us right now, are there families or the guardians, et cetera, to support this particular need. And I'm worried about just some previous conversations around kids sleeping in facilities through child welfare and other needs that exist here also at the county. And so I'm worried about what that impact is going to be. Thank you. I think, um, Commissioner, I'm noting your caution on this one in particular. What I want, um, Robin to talk about a little bit is for mostly the benefit of the community is how, how does it work right now with juveniles who are spending the night

3:21:03at the juvenile assessment center, um, because that has changed significantly over time because of the fine work of, of this team. So the impact partnership addresses sort of upstream issues. Once kids are in the system. And so that has reduced the need for stay. I think we're still seeing considerable. Concerning situations with kids and engaged in the criminal justice system. It's not like that has lessened. Um, the severity of cases continue and the need for our system, including the Jack Continue. I think, however, because our level of stay has decreased so significantly, um, it's worth the question about what do we do with this expensive capital asset? And what does our current environment need? So this analysis is not just about those three cuts. It's more about what does a Boulder County need in terms of, um, supporting, uh, kids in our community who are caught up in the criminal justice system. So that's an opportunity. Our staff previous to this recommendation had already begun looking at that and recognizing there are a lot of kids who need support, who may not, uh, be an impact kid, um, and so how do we use our resources again to do that prevention work? So I see that as part of the ongoing analysis. I'm not sure if you are Armando want to talk about, you know,

3:22:43do we count this 400, 000 dollars or not given that the analysis will need to land on a final recommendation. Yeah, I think that's absolutely fair question. His pending guidance from Commissioners today about whether you want to make this part of a recommended budget for 2027 or if you have an interest in seeing further analysis before moving forward. At your pleasure, Commissioners. Thank you. So for me, I would need to see some further analysis on that. The Jack item and then the second one was just in regards to admin grants. The question on is the mental behavioral health tax being considered for this grant application process. I get that the standardization I feel like that's a theme song at the county. Just like what door who, why is it so cumbersome? Like we know there's partners in Boulder County that don't want to work with Boulder County. Don't want to apply because we hear that consistently have and it's and staff has done a lot of work to train overcome that. And so I see the concept of what you're sharing as something that could be very beneficial. And what about the mental behavioral whole taxes that the most recent text that we're working on in regards to grants. Sure. We could certainly roll that in to the further work. That's going to be, um,

3:24:10looked at, uh, in terms of sharing that grant application, uh, we're not going to wait for the grant applications that are out there right now, of course. But yeah, I absolutely see that could be part of the whole picture. Those are my questions. Commissioner Levy. Yeah. Thank you. Um, I mean, I was just musing to myself that I've been around and working on these kind of public policy issues for long enough that I remember when juvenile assessment centers were that the hot new thing. And, um, and it is a tribute, a testament to the work of impact partnership in particular that, um, you know, that we don't need the level of FTE that we have for that anymore. Um, but I think I have exactly the same concerns that Commissioner Loch Human expressed. You know, we are still going to have kids that are going to come in that are going to need overnight detention.

3:25:11And, and how are we going to serve those kids? And for me, it's really important that we not, you know, just pull in some person, you know, to, you know, to cover this, you know, the, the point of juvenile assessment centers was to recognize that kids have different needs than adults. And it requires people that are appropriately trained. And so I, you know, I'm not sure we're ready to, I mean, maybe 400, 000 is the right number. I don't know. It sounds like we're overstaffed given our population numbers, but I do want to make sure that we don't lose that. Um, you know, that approach, that very high touch approach that impact has provided and the people with a high degree of professionalism in the whole juvenile justice system are providing particularly here in Boulder County. So, um, that, you know, further study. And, you know, just to the point of, well, can we count 400, 000 or is it some lesser number. I'll just say this in general for this process. Um, I, I don't feel at the end of the time we have.

3:26:35And I think we're going to need to speed up. Um, that we need to have found 13. 2 million all today and all through this process. We have a long way to go before we have, um, finish building our budget. And we may find additional reductions and efficiencies. Um, and so I think, um, we'll see what we can do today with where we are so far and as has been noted, we don't have, uh, very much participation and input from the, um, other elected officials. So, uh, you know, we will, we'll be having, I mean, I think we need to look across all the, uh, all the elected offices and departments in the county. So I'm not super concerned if, you know, if some of these numbers don't end up being the final numbers that go into the budget. And I don't have any concerns about the common grant application. I'm sure, um, the, the grantees would welcome that. Um, I guess I'll say again on this similar to my comments on the centralized contracting that I think, you know, some, some kinds of grants and sources of funding foregrants. Just may not fit one single grant application process. Um, you know, we put grants out to more community - based organizations in some instances.

3:28:05We put grants out for very specialized services in others. I mean, when we develop our whole list of eligible organizations for Ottawa Home Placement for kids, you know, that doesn't lend itself. I mean, those aren't grants per se, but, uh, I want to make sure we don't lose the kind of nuance and specificity we're looking for in cohort of grantees by trying to be over centralized. Thank you. Commissioner Stolzman. Thank you. Just again, reiterate that there are a number of things that are critical community services that we're not even, including in our budget, like for example the C - CAP freeze is tremendous and reflecting kiddos in the community directly every day. And so there are a lot of things that we've accepted that we're not doing. So for my perspective, looking at the Jack and the success that the team has had in getting the facility empty is fantastic. And when we have things like that that change, we have to evaluate our practices.

3:29:08And so looking at how we can staff it with on call staffing, do things a little differently to reduce, um, people in a facility that's not being used the way it was designed is a good thing to be looking at and doing. So broad brush speaking, I'm supportive of these approaches. Thank you. All right. Commissioners, um, there are a few countywide strategies that I'm hoping we can get through pretty quickly here. Um, these I developed in collaboration with, uh, OFM. Just to acknowledge that we're looking under every rock, um, to try to address the 13. 2 million. We have found, um, two opportunities for you to, uh, recognize additional revenues. The first is to adjust your property tax collection to match, um, proceeds that you receive historically from the tax lien sale. And the second is to recognize the extended producer responsibility, um, receipts that are coming to public works through your zero waste initiatives.

3:30:12The total amount on that is 754, those revenues. I support the plan. Yeah. No questions. Thanks for bringing this forward. I'm in agreement. And then similarly, we identified two opportunities for budget corrections where the personnel budget was mistakenly over appropriated. One is in the stipends and the other was correcting a term position extension error. The total on those is 415, 864 dollars. And I was speaking to both items on this slide. So purposel seven and eight is what I refer to. And I said both of those. Thank you. I wanted to, so these are fine. Of course, of course, we want to incorporate them. Um, I think we are going to have to distinguish between those that will affect the structural deficit, i. e. aren't going to suffer from the compounding that is getting us into that situation and those that really are just the one - time things that, that actually don't help us with the structural deficit. And I don't have an opinion on whether these do or don't, but they kind of jump out at me as well as well. They may not really help. All four should be ongoing. Commissioner Stolzman, I heard you say support the plan on the first one. I support the plan on this slide. Thank you.

3:31:45There are also some personnel budget adjustments that are proposed here for your discussion. One proposal is similar to last year where we identified thanks to our friends in OFM. We identified one vacancy that is more than one year old, um, would be subject to your guidance to, um, eliminate the vacancy. The estimated general fund savings is 195, 000 dollars. The second proposal here is to budget all general fund vacancies at entryle, which is a change from our current practice of budgeting them at midpoint. Under this proposal, departments would absorb that first year cost through turnover savings. And then especially for the smaller departments where they just don't have a large salary budget, they could ask the Office of Financial Management or the CFO for funding to support payroll in the fourth quarter if they're not able to meet payroll. And that would come out of your designated four percent pool that you're familiar with. HR performed an analysis of this proposed change. And just for example, in 2025, we hired 114, uh, FT positions in the general fund. Of all of these positions, the average was 12 percent above entry while funding at midpoint is 22 percent above entry. So these, uh, these vacancies were overappropriated by 10 percent. All of the hiring departments, um, except for one, I believe, also returned personnel savings to

3:33:25the general fund at the end of the year, indicating all of the departments could have afforded the above entry hires. Because we'll always have turnover. On average, by the time of vacancy is filled in a large department, another one opens up. And that's what the turnover savings, uh, potentially is. A riskier proposal that HR and OFM could analyze if, uh, desire would be to fund all vacancies only from turnover savings or the four percent pool The long - term sustainability of this approach would need a deeper dive than we were able to perform for today, but it would generate some additional ongoing savings. Proposal 11 is to pool your hourly budgets of all the general fund in the department's reporting to the commissioners. There is an average turn back of about 100, 000 dollars based on historic use. And by pooling these, um, budgets together, we anticipate that could be an ongoing savings. Through our NeoGov system under this proposal, those hourly postings from department's participating in the pool would require an additional attachment to justify the request to demonstrate how it's similar to past usage of the hourly budget and to prevent any scope creeper overutilization. And then finally, I'm proposing consideration of fiscally constrained salary increases for 2027. It's been a practice of Boulder County to look at CPI as

3:35:20an indicator of inflationary pressures in the marketplace for salaries. And what I would say is this is a really high inflationary time. If you look at CPI for the Denver area, if you were to follow our past practice, um, that would be a considerable salary increase for employees. My proposal here is to make a more modest salary increase, but to still increase salaries for all staff. My belief is in this inflationary economy. It's really unwise to consider an overall salary freeze. Even though this might bend your deficit curve to more closely match revenues for the short term. I believe the county would need to then turn around and address market pressures in the future by offering larger raises in order to maintain workforce and reasonable amount of turnover. This proposal is a mod has changed from your current market - based practice to acknowledge the current revenue shortfall while still assuring raises for county staff.

3:36:34Of course, salaries are subject to negotiations with your unions. Um, and those negotiations are happening right now. The county is committed to bargaining in good faith with both unions. So it's too soon to say today how those negotiations would go. You have provided negotiation strategy in confidential sessions with your negotiators. Um, and so I'm not asking you to give us, uh, your guidance on this particular reduction today. But I did want to put it on the table because it is a significant number and worth noting in your deficit situation. I believe all of these proposals, again, subject to negotiation with our bargaining units could happen with little or no impact, um, to county services or staff. Well, yeah, maybe we could take terms asking the first question here. On the, um. Oh, now you've changed. The budget vacancies at entry - level salary, that one. Yes. Uh, at 1. 1 million. The data you presented said that the average above entry hiring salary was 12 percent of entry. I guess why wouldn't we budget it at that if that's what we've generally actually done, as opposed to entry? That is an option for you to consider. I think what, um, what the HR analysis showed is those departments still had a turn back of general fund because they had other turnover. So once they hired a position,

3:38:21somebody else left the organization and that turnover generated additional salary savings. So, uh, one approach could be to take it down to, um, by 10 percent right now, the midpoint is about 22 percent above entry. 12 is in between. Yeah. No, and well, and that's what you said the data actually showed that that's what the average above entry hiring salary was. Yeah. And the data also showed there was sufficient turn back. To cover that at that 12 percent Exactly. Okay. In part because not everyone's hired in January. Yeah. No, I read the metmo and I saw that in there and I understand that. So yeah, I just, you know, I'm looking at these of, you know, we can, we can, I don't want these to be just pay perceivings. Exactly. You know, in theory, we're going to hire everybody at entry. And then we don't.

3:39:12And then we're making budget adjustments. So if the turn backs and the mid - year hirings and whatnot are sufficient, then that's fine. Um, I think Commissioner Levy, let me clarify something because I think it's really important for hiring supervisors to hear, which is, um, this doesn't propose changing our current practice of allowing hiring supervisors to hire above entry and consultation with HR. It's just a different way to recognize that savings instead of it coming from the position being budgeted at midpoint. Um, it would be achieved through turnover. Okay. Understand. I think we also another thing we were trying to achieve with our budgeting so that we, the amount of reduction was the actual amount we really have to reduce was that we were going to, uh, we were going to build our budget based on actuals and not budgeted amounts. And so if we've taken the turn backs out, then to build our future budget, then we don't actually have that money to play with anymore. So yeah, this proposal is, um, doesn't quite get at what you're saying. Because if turnover happens mid - year, the budget has already been approved. And so this is beginning of year savings. Yeah. Just don't want to count the same money twice. I understand. Yeah. Okay.

3:40:37I don't have any other questions. Thank you. I just had a question on proposal 11. And maybe I'm looking to the folks that are listed in here as far as OCA HR and OFM. Like conceptually that makes sense. I'm just thinking about like, what could the consequence be of that. Meaning is it like first comes the first serve and what's going to happen if somebody needs pulling hours in there. There's none left because you're sharing just curious if you all had some conversation about that because it's a hundred thousand dollars. So just how might affect the business that these teams that were working on. Thank you. I think the primary effect would be a different, um, documentation that would have to be attached to those hourly requisitions just to explain how this is consistent with past practice. Um, any request to increase or add hourly positions would have to come back to the commissioners, um, for additional funding for that pool. Um, and as so long as, um, hiring supervisors are being consistent with past practices this savings is achievable. Thank you. One proposal, Ted, does that include all the elected offices. Let me look.

3:41:56I believe it does, but let me clarify. Yes. And with what, so in last year's budget, we took 500, 000 dollars out of the district attorney and the Sheriff's bringing them closer to their actual number. Do we think that that then undoes that? Like, is this a duplication of that? Because we basically looked at their vacancy savings and took it out last year, to some extent. There was still some left. I believe there within their budget that wouldn't affect it. Um, based on the analysis, but obviously definitely looking at additional analysis as we continue going through 26. We're still halfway within the year, but even the numbers show within 26 that we would still have enough. Okay, great. And just, you know, as we're putting this together, we have the public hearing on this later in the year. And we have many, many more meetings.

3:42:42So just a little bit more of a spreadsheet around that piece would be helpful to just see that the space there on that. Thanks. All right, commissioners, any other questions or guidance on these proposals before we move forward. Thank you. Now we're going to get into our proposed department reductions that are coming to you through the priority - based budgeting process. I've got all of the department heads available to answer questions about any specific proposal. I want to make some, um, sort of grounding comments here at the beginning. Um, priority based budgeting identifies potential budget reductions in a very structured manner using, uh, scoring process. And evaluating both the nature of a programmer service, whether it's mandated, whether it hits a commissioner strategic priority and whether there's an opportunity to, um, reduce a program to just a mandated level because we often provide enhanced services here in Boulder County. OFM and OCA have reviewed each of these department proposals to validate the fiscal impacts, assess operational feasibility, identify overlap between these and some of the, um, County - Wide Efficiency Initiatives and understand the service implications. These proposals were refined through discussions with each department director and executive leadership on their teams to ensure they reflect your priorities and understand the challenge that we are facing for the upcoming, um, budget year. While the programmatic

3:44:31scoring that departments undertook was very helpful in understanding the relative priority of programs and spending in the general fund is not intended to be an exact formula. So the way these proposals are presented to you today are essentially in rank order of what departments think can be accomplished. But they aren't necessarily in the order of priority based on PBB scoring. Um, so they're informed by PBB. But they don't always directly relate. I'm going to speak to the first one in particular because it's a great example of this. So if you were to score utilities as a function at Boulder County government, it's going to score very high in our PBB system. In fact, one of the highest scores you possibly could get would be for basic utility that lots of people rely on every single day for daily life. Um, this proposal is opportunistic because as you know, the El Dorado Springs Community formed a public improvement district this year. And the administrative staffing costs that have historically been born by County government to operate that utility can now be paid for through the PID.

3:45:50So the very first proposal on this list is anticipated general fund savings in the range of 35, 000 dollars. Even though it's a high scoring PVV item. Just want to use that as a for example. I think the last thing that I will say is that we're going to take each of these individually. And so I'm going to pause after each one in case you have questions. So let's start off with this Eldorado Springs staffing proposal. I don't have any questions on this one. I don't have any questions. I have a question. This should have been an easy one. Um, we talked about this, very topic, uh, when the IgA came to us and the memo that we received, uh, pegged it at about 85, 000 or 83, 000 dollars a year. And this is proposing 35. So I'm going to ask Steve Durian, who is online. If you could come off mute and help to address that. I was teacher and I'm the public works director. Um, I don't know, uh, if this includes all the savings or just savings from the public works department itself, uh, I didn't go back and check that on that. Okay. The memo, it was a Kate Burke memo and it said public works is about 35 percent of an FTE three percent of OFM attorney's office and

3:47:30the approximate cost was 83, 000 dollars a year. Um, I mean, it's fine to just pick, say, you know, we're going to, we're going to, you know, they'll have to pay for 35, 000. You know, it doesn't have to be the exact amount. I think my, this is a very small amount of money. And savings to our budget. And I think we ought to treat PIDs, um, similarly. And I don't know that we do that across all the PIDs. Um, like the Netherland, uh, Ecopaths improvement district or whatever the formal name for that is. They had additional funding that was being generated by that taxing district. And so they said we can pay staff. My worry about this one is it's very, very small savings to Boulder County. I mean, these are coins on the Couch Cushion. But to spread this among the rate pairs within the district, could be a significant burden to them.

3:48:38So I'm, I'm a little hesitant on this one simply because, you know, it's not going to make a big difference in our budget. Whereas it could be quite a significant burden to somebody within the district. Thank you Commissioner Levy. Other comments on this one. Okay. We'll move on to, um, this proposal, which is actually three proposals, but they were so similar in nature and scored so similarly that we have rolled them into one for discussion purposes. This proposal would reduce your outgoing grant awards that, uh, our administered through the Office of County Administrator, Parks and Open Space and the Commissioner's office. Um, the specific programs here are your economic vitality grant awards. The award to the Boulder County Fair and the multicultural awards that our administered through your office. Questions. I don't have any. I'm happy to just, just so that there's no surprises in that review of all of these different proposals with the board. This one caught my attention on in regards to that piece of what we do provide. Um, specifically I was thinking about the economic vitality awards that we've been able to support these different comity partners. We don't hear in Boulder County, but other counties do have economic development offices. And so this to me is a very small way for us to address what I believe

3:50:21is one of our values. It's Community Wellbeing and for small businesses, um, who are also partners thinking about COVID and a lot of the activity that the Latino Chamber of Commerce provided for everyone in regards to information, regulations, all the different pieces and some of the state legislation. Right now I'm thinking about that was just past the expansion of the Cottage Food Act and what does that mean for, um, our partners, not just a public health and health and safety, but also the business side of understanding how do I get my registration, my license registration and things like that to be able to participate is a, I feel like that's where the county becomes, we become the implementers of, um, in that one example of state legislation. So that piece. And then the other one that this, um, I can't remember like this discretionary fund that the commissioner's office historically has had is the one that you were talking about. I believe as a multicultural fund or awards fund, uh, in the Commissioner's office, one of the pieces has been very concerning to me when we talk about, and I agreed with the previous statement about, um, HR one is a priority. The space is in places where Communities of Color and folks who are working in racial equity, the Community Level, um, is decreased

3:51:35everywhere. Um, the funding has gone away because we are living in a country where the federal administration is trying to kill black and brown bodies. Uh, and so given that my understanding from my experience and where I sit and the folks that I'm hearing from a lot, including our staff that is asking for spaces that will allow us. And I say us as the woman of color here at the dais today to be able to convene to be able to work together to be able to build coalition to be able to work with our allies in all the different places and spaces. So it concerns me. And this is one. So I just wanted to make sure the board knew this was one that I'm going to be looking for us to look at some of our elected official partners. Um, at the County to consider what they might be able to, um, bring to the table in regards to meeting the reduction requirement that we're at right now. I support including proposal 14 and 15 in the budget. Thank you. Did you want to address 15? It is a similar theme in that it's another event. I mean, so 14 and 15 do concern events. Yeah. If it's helpful to talk about them together, I didn't have concerns about 14. And I'm not going

3:52:51to go on at length about that, um, but I'm happy to, if folks want to hear it 15, I actually, I don't support, uh, again, it's, um, it's a small amount of money. And I think these kinds of, um, opportunities to, to gather and celebrate, um, employees that have been with us for a long time and have contributed so much to the county by that longevity and their experience and just the amount of heart they show that we hear about every year when we, when we do, um, the circle of honor presentations, um, I think makes everybody feel good. And I think that we shouldn't sacrifice employee recognition here. Went for 70, 000 dollars. So I would support that. And I'm going to ask Mr. Lochamin to weigh in on this one. Um, proposal 15.

3:53:44Sure. Thank you. I think for me what I would be interested in, um, what was importance to me is that first of all at point there that talks about retaining staff bonuses, which is I think is one important way that we can acknowledge the work that's given here at the county. I would be interested to know if there's something that's less than 70, 000 because that seems like a lot of money, but I'm not looking at the calculation. I don't know what that includes. If it's simply a meal, that's an expensive meal. I think we could all agree on that. Um, the acknowledgement and recognition is important. And like if it's going to become which it will 10, 000 dollar here at some point I would be more willing to give up the celebration, understanding we're retaining the staff bonuses if it comes to that later. Thank you. All right. Commissioners moving on proposal 16 is after several months of operations there appears to be an opportunity to have some, um, adjustment to the line items for Operation of the Joe Pelly Center where they will be, um, underspent. And that looks like it would be an ongoing savings. My only, we've only been running the center for about six months and we're not at capacity currently and we're not a city state. So I'm

3:55:10fine with including it in the budget, but I'm not confident that this will be a long - term savings. We just don't have enough information about the full cost of operating the full staffing that we need to operate the facility. So I think this will be, I'm fine with including it in the process, but I imagine we'll revisit this next year in the budget and probably in third quarter with a budget amendment or fourth quarter, just because it is such a new facility. Thank you. I mean, that was exactly what I was going to say. I don't think we have enough experience and we're not at full capacity. So let's see. Commissioner Occibine. I'm fine with accepting this proposal. Proposal 17 is a reduction in the Countywide software licensing budget. Our information technology department has been working with other departments. I said 17 is. And then I talked about 18. My apologies. Commissioners proposal 17 is to reduce the parks and open space operations budget similar analysis. But for longer term functions in parks and open space that there are some areas of historic underspender year after year that could accomplish a 39, 950 dollar savings. I don't, I'm going to take, I don't want to take time on 40, 000 dollars, but I am going to take time on 40,

3:56:36000 dollars. You know, the thing, you know, our restrooms cleaned and well stocked our You know all those things where the public interacts are what matters. And I you know it refers to underspend Maybe it'd be better if we if we fully spent these budgets. So I'm not sure this is savings that I really want to go after. I want to, you know, we've been talking now for a couple of years about the need to make sure that we're putting enough resources into maintenance. So, um, I wouldn't take the 40, 000. I would say spend it. Thank you Commissioner Levy. So looking at that this is general fund savings, my assumption is that the properties that are managed with the Open Space tax and managed by the Parks and Open Space Department with those funds are not being proposed to be reduced at this time that this is really looking at the facilities that don't qualify for open - space tax revenue. Such as fairgrounds such as the fairgrounds, right, because it's not anellible expenditure of open - space tax. And so this is just recognizing that there is a turn back in that and that the general fund could recover the funds. I support including this. Commission. Thank you. Um, now I'll talk about proposal 18, which is a project that, um, information technology

3:58:10department has been undertaking to look at our software licensing Countywide and identify opportunities for savings on some of our larger contracts such as Microsoft, where the type of work that employs are doing is not, um, does not reflect the type of licensing that they currently have for their positions. They estimated saving series 250, 000 dollars. I'm good with that. Thumbs up from Commissioner Levy. I'm fine with proposal 18. I just wonder, um, if there's an approach where we could stay higher level and broad brush except things moving forward and not talk about everyone, I just wonder if that's an approach that we could consider. Yeah, it's really what whatever works for the commissioners would be helpful if I just put up a slide and then you talk about all of the proposals on that slide.

3:59:08In the interest of time. That's fine. Yeah. We can do that. So the Office of County Administrator hourly budget reduction is an actual reduction in the hourly budget, not part of the pool. I did have a question and proposal 19. I just wanted to understand what potential impacts that could have on our American Indian Native American tribal relations work. And I will ask Deputy County Administrator at Bowden to come forward. Good afternoon, Commissioners. You've had Bowden. At this point we would evaluate that. It does not negate the need to continue this important work. The Board has given prior direction on priorities. And we would look there. We actually have two hourlies in OCA. So there is a way that we could balance and look at making sure that we're properly accommodating all of the work that OCA has in this area. And you will recall that last year, the full - time position move to hourly. Um, so this is also funding operations wise for the budget that was associated with that work. We have not spent in that area so far other than travel.

4:00:17Okay. Thank you. We would keep that hourly position. Okay. Yeah. I mean, just on the record, that's my concern as we move from FTE to an hourly. And as we're doing reductions, the worst case scenario would be that Boulder County made a commitment to move from land acknowledgement to meaningful action. And then we have budget our way out of being able to do that work in a meaningful way. Understood. Including the things on the slide. Yeah, no concerns. So I'll just put up proposals 20 through 23. Invite questions or comments from the board on these four proposals. I. Have a question on, you know, the 450, 000 dollars in savings with the hub. Let's see what that's. 21. What notes did I have on that. Um. Operations maintenance. So I thought we had already accounted for this savings. When we were looking at what our future needs were going to be. So that's, that's just, I don't have a, I don't have a note on it that I can point to, but I know we've looked at that. Maybe, maybe we were just saying, well, that's a good reason to do the hub. But, um, but I also wonder, are we on target to actually move over to the hub. So I'll take your first question, Commissioner Levy, which is yes, we have talked about it. This

4:02:07would actually put it in the appropriate year when those savings would be realized. Um, and then I will turn it over to public works director, Steve Durian. If you haven't update on that timing of opening of the 28th Street facility. We do have, uh, one delay that we are trying to address to stay on schedule and that has to do with rooftop units. Uh, these are very specialized units that we would have to find a substitute for, uh, with standard delay, but we are trying to work through that right now. Other than that, we are on schedule and on budget. Okay. I had one question on proposal 23. And I just wanted to understand in the memo, it's the second sentence has the reduction will be managed by offering fewer training opportunities for staff. So just to have an understanding, I've gotten an opportunity to continue racial equity work over 130 staff members who've been trained in the most recent relic program. And I was, and I'm looking at Carrie because now I just thought my interpretation was that a lot of that training has been similar to a trained the trainer so that, so I was under the impression that we had folks trained and able to do CC car and, and work with Garrett and do some of the other programming. So I

4:03:32just, I read that and I was thinking my impression was different. So it would be helpful to hear. Thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners. Carryosta, Officer Racial Equity. And thank you, Martura, for that question. Um, this would impact the rate at which we are transitioning to internal capacity on these contracts. So, so you are correct and your understanding that we are working to build our internal capacity to deliver all of this programming. And it would increase the rate of that basically. Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Other questions on these four proposals. Commissioners, um, looking to see if you have interest in taking any of them off the table or if they should continue to move forward in your recommended budget. I think for me, I'm okay with the first three proposals. My concern on proposal 23. And I don't know if it's, I can't say here's the information I would need right now is the problem, but I can think about it a little bit more. My concern is because as a board, um, one of our strategic priorities for our upcoming strategic priority document because we are at the end of that is good governance and racial equity. And so it just feels in conflict, like how else are we going to, um, ensure that over 2, 500 employees have all

4:04:58the opportunities to understand what impact race has in the United States American, all the work that we do and all the divisions and departments. So, um, so I think I would, I would need a little bit more to be able to say yes on the timing of that reduction. Thank you. Anything else on this slide? I support including these proposals. Yeah, no concerns about any of these. Thank you. Moving on, three proposals on these slides, or the slide, they all relate to parks and open space. I have questions about the youth core teams. We, I believe we reduced the number of teams coming out of COVID already. And I'm going to invite our own space director. This will test your preparation since you weren't here then. Jason Soak Parks and Open Space Director. To that question, I'll have to follow up. But I believe you're correct. I believe that we used to have a larger, uh, amount. I can speak more to this particular proposal if you'd like. Right. I so I do have some concern and hesitancy about further reducing our youth core teams.

4:06:25They, you know, they do, they do good work. It's really good team building for them. Um, and, you know, and they get so much out of it here in doing that work. I'm trying to remember where I encountered some youth core recently. That I think it's a really memorable experience for them. Plus we get to work. So that's, that's one I would not support. I think I also have questions about, um, about the reduction at the fairground in the hourly staffing hosting fewer Community events and future years. I don't know what, you know, I can't put this in scale, like how, how much of a reduction? You know, I think I'm anticipating we're going to get in the capital expenditure fund, a significant request for like roof improvements and other improvements at the fairground. And, you know, I'm worried we're going to make a lot of improvements in a, in a building that is not going to be utilized. And the purpose of having a fairgrounds is to utilize it and have events. And, you know, all the great things that happen there. So I don't know how to, I don't know how to gauge what, uh, 100, 000 dollar reduction in staffing and budget on events means relative to the rest of it. So would it help if, um, staff comes back with some

4:07:54quantification of that for you? Here's how many events we have right now. And with reducing this impact or with reducing the budget, it might have this impact on the number of events. Is that helpful? Yeah. That would be helpful. I mean, this is why do we have a fairground. You know, it's to, it's to support all these organizations to do stuff. They are. And so I just want to, you know, are we, are we not going to fulfill the purpose of it? And we may as well just not have a fairground. Commissioner, I can speak to if you'd like. So I think this proposal will propose a reduction in hourly staff. A smaller duction in operating budget. That would very likely affect maybe 20 to 30 small events. Um, but this is all kind of in conjunction with, you know, what will be, you know, what is the future of the fairgrounds? And some analysis and look to, um, what is the future hold there?

4:08:51Um, you know, what can Boulder County do? So I think, you know, there's some opportunity to think about new ways, new revenue sources and other things to kind of, um, you know, consider cuts at the same time. We explore new opportunities and new avenues in the future. Okay. Well, that's helpful. And it's the 20 to 30 small events relative to how many do we, how many are there overall. So, you know, some, some additional analysis on that. There's about 800 events, Commissioner. Okay. So very small. I will jump in. I am also on proposal 24. For me, the youth corps is actually unopportunity for us to parts and open space and get, um, young people exposed to what the outdoor means, what the careers could be. We're in a state where the wildfire issues, all the different things. So for me, um, I'm going to continue. I think I said this. I don't know where it was yesterday at the direst or something. Uh, and I wasn't here yesterday, but it was in a row.

4:10:01In a relatively recent conversation, I'm going to continue to advocate for youth and, and young people, not opportunity. So that one certainly caught my attention. Um, and I wouldn't be supportive of 24 understanding. We're going to have to find 60, 500 dollars from, from somewhere else. I'm happy to support just the asking on 25 about additional information. If there was still pending questions outside of what was just discussed, the question I have on proposal 26, um, we have hundreds of emails from folks advocating on this one. And it would be great if everybody who was in a position of potential layoff also had hundreds of people advocating for them and the work that they're doing. And what I'm curious about this bullet point where it says eliminate four of 13 staff positions would be, could we do, you know, could we have someone do a little of analysis to talk with these partners to find out similar to the one that was previously and I don't remember the proposal number, but around the jack and impact, I interpreted that as impact could be that partner that might help us understand some of the solutions. To do some of that analysis. And I don't want to ask stuff to do any work if the commissioner who might be interested in that. But it seems like from

4:11:19the emails, there are people that want to be the partners to make sure that these, all these different programs don't go away. And the capacity that they are. So I just wonder if that might be an opportunity. Thank you, Commissioner. Um, I don't understand on proposal 24, um, whether or not that expenditures eligible for open space tax funding. I think that's something that we can get back to on. Okay. I mean, I'm interested in understanding if it's eligible for open space tax funding. I know that we moved a number of expenditures over the last several years, but this one's just not clear to me. Um, so that's just a question I have. Um, but I'm interested in including the general fund savings proposals on the slide in the budget. I do think it would be interesting, um, some of the Colorado state university employees solicited Community Feedback. Um, I would like them to solicit feedback from CSU about increasing their funding to the programs. Um, just in light of the state cuts that have been made, um, disproportionately to counties and not to hire end in the same way. And some of the different grants that they've received, particularly with 250 million dollars they got to build the spur in the idea that there would be more opportunities for youth and for, um, master gardener

4:12:33and things like that. Um, and none of that really has made its way into Boulder County. So just trying to understand how CSU could increase funding perhaps for programs. But I'm supportive of including the general fund savings in these proposal 24, 25, and 26. I also had a question about 26 again, testing my memory here that we, we reduced some of the staffing and programs that we do through extension in this year's budget. Is that correct. Okay. Um, do you happen to remember the magnitude of that reduction. I know we looked at some of the specific programs and said we don't want to do, you know, as more program by program. But I, um, I think I heard Commissioner Lucian asking if the commissioner that's interested in looking at whether there might be partnership opportunities to preserve these programs. Um, I felt like we went through the various things that we did and we looked at, well, does anybody else do these things? Are we duplicative or do people really look to extension for this or do they look to other things? It's like the pest identification. And I don't want to simplify things too much. But you know, everybody has an app now that tells them exactly what critter is eating their tomato leaves.

4:13:57Um, I know it's more complicated than that. But I think I've already expressed my opposition to 24 questions about 25 just to get back at, you know, what kinds of events are we talking about eliminating, not being able to support. And same with 26. Like I think I just want to know whether we've really looked at how, how we could, uh, maybe change the share of funding we get from CSU, for instance, on this or other organizations that could help preserve these programs. So I'm hearing all three commissioners express some interest in further exploration of partnerships on 26 just to directly answer your question. Our friends at OFM were able to put their hands on the reduction last year for extension. It was an 89, 000 dollar reduction in 0. 75 FTE 4 2026. Okay.

4:14:52Thanks. Any further discussion on this slide? I just continue to be interested in seeing a proposal from staff on, um, fairgrounds. I know there was a master plan, but it really wasn't fiscally constrained. And it's really not a helpful document. So I think understanding what the opportunities for partnerships are, Larimer County has a public - private partnership that funds their fairgrounds and the Community Activities there. It doesn't rely on general fund. Other counties also have public - private partnerships. Um, so I just continue to be interested in fiscally constrained analysis of what we might do at the fairgrounds. Thank you. All right. Commissioners, putting our next four proposals up for questions or discussion. Who would like to start on this one. I'm happy to talk about the things on this slide. Um, just with regard to lobbying, when you compare the amount of funds that Boulder County spends on lobbying, the state legislature to other communities we spend quite a lot more money, um, and so I do think reduction in the policy team size is appropriate. The permitting team, I wonder, um, about the costs of fees that we're charging in the appropriateness of that, um, outside of those two comments, I just generally, um, broad brush support including these things in the budget proposal. So. I think

4:16:33on proposal 27, for me, it's going to depend on what. We can, I consistently, I won't say we. I consistently get really good feedback on the impact that our policy staff have at the legislature on our behalf. And, um, and they're very, you know, they have great depth of knowledge. And there are some areas in particular where, you know, we have consistently shown up and we've consistently gotten good results. And so I think I'm going to want to know a little, I think I'm, I'm not ready to say yes that we can reduce one position. I think I want to look at maybe opportunities in the future, you know, with retirements and, you know, hiring it at lower levels and things like that. Um, and really look much more closely at how those would decrease our capacity.

4:17:39I mean, I think our staff, um, they don't just lobby. They help us develop. Legislation. They, they help staff other things. And, you know, do, do regulatory work when the legislature is in session. So I know that the great deal of work. And I think they, they do have a great deal of impact. So I'm not on board with 27. Um, I, um. Uh, 28 looks like it's, it's just some good streamlining. And efficiency. So that looks fine to me. It's great that we don't need, um, outside plans examiners, uh, because we're seeing reduced turnovers. So I don't have a concern about 29. On 30. This is one where I, I don't know whether these things are cyclical at all. You know, whether, whether we're just going to need to hire all over again, if, you know, are we in a recession and people aren't bringing proposals to us, have our, um, site plan review changes, you know, change the volume of requests we're getting.

4:18:57And so this is something we can count on. I don't want to, I don't want to reduce the team by a seasoned FTE only to have to hire again. Um, you know, with somebody that needs to be trained, it looks like Dale is, well, it looked like you were about to get up. I'm not calling on you. But I have concerns about. Two things I heard Commissioner Stolzman asking about fees as well. And then this question about cyclical nature of workloads based on the economy. Yeah. Thank you for the question. Stale case with Communion Planning and permitting on the permitting team and fees piece of this, uh, we are really working to propose something that would not impact the fee collection. What we're trying to do here is implement the new solar permitting technologies that's come out. Uh, that will be utilizing which saves a lot of time and effort for our plan Rivia staff and inspection staff. And those permits are already capped by the state. So we don't currently recoup all our costs.

4:20:12So we'll come closer on that. And so that's, we've tried to make that adjustment without impacting in the fee collection and our ability to process permits. Um, on number 30, uh, Commissioner Levy, you are correct. The cyclical nature of what we do is, is, um, is something we're always concerned with and we don't, we always want to be aware of what's coming forward, um, when we looked at the numbers, um, you know, we've seen a decline over the last three years in reviews that have come in when you compare it to sort of around 10 year average. And that review is down about 10 to 12 to 14 percent depending on how you want to use your base to calculate that. So, uh, or more comfortable putting this forward because we've seen that reduction, the changes that we have made in the regulations to, you know, try to really right size the regulations to the impacts of the development have lessened the review time. Um, I think we've had one site plan review since the regulations have passed that has come to a full hearing before the county commissioners. You'll see further regulations on creating and limited impact, which would probably further reduce if you adopt those. The number of hearings that you'd have, which reduces the amount of staff time that's necessary. So I

4:21:30think all those things in combination, um, are more comfortable. But yes, it takes away our, our suspenders and our belt a little bit. So, okay. And we know you only need a belt or a suspender. And not both. And the if volumes return increased weight time, Dale don't go away. Do you, I mean, so one of the complaints we got so consistently, you know, a couple of years ago was how long it takes to get through the process. And we've been working hard. And I know that has really speeded up. And what, what are we talking about in terms of potential number of days added to the process? So we are trying to make proposals that would not impact the review times. So this is being done looking at the workflows, looking at the changes and regulations that have occurred. And so our, our goal is that this would not increase the amount of time.

4:22:36Um, and we've tried to try to be careful and not proposing more than we think we can do. Um, but again, things come at us. And so when we hit a, if the fluctuation starts going up quite a bit or gets back to where it was four or five years ago, we're going to have to figure out how to deal with that. And that's going to be an issue. Okay. I was responding to what it says in the narrative about, uh, if volume returns applicants would experience longer wait times. Um, it doesn't say that on screen. Yeah. I mean, that, that's it. If it goes back up, we'd have to understand a way to accommodate that and try to get through things. But again, I think we'll continue to look at our regulations as well and make those changes that help make things efficient or doing some process mapping and things like that as well.

4:23:27So really working to figure out ways to gain efficiencies. Okay. Thank you. You've answered my questions. I don't have concerns about 30. I do need additional information about, um, proposal 24. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to, I think for me and what you just said, Dale, is just, I think what we're going to be coming up against in regards to the additional wait times when we have to reduce staff, um, and so I'm unfortunately, I think we're going to see that in a lot of different areas. And partly because we've had the ability to have, uh, a lot of staff, um, and so I think that's a piece that we're going to see. I also think we need to be really careful about with the reductions, ensuring that teams aren't expected, feel like they're expected or have the interpretation that they need to continue doing the same amount of work when there are reductions.

4:24:25And I think that's something that we're going to have to really work together as an organization on and about. I think for me, the permitting piece, 28 maybe, team 30, uh, maybe 29 on outside contractors. I'm, I'm okay seeing those. I still have some questions on proposal 27. And part of it's because the time based on the timing, I don't know what the elected official or elected offices are proposing. Um, so the few of them that I've talked about that I'm looking at in regards to, um, what that might mean for county, uh, commissioners departments versus, um, the entire organization. I do have a question on 27. I think it's just something that the board's going to have to kind of think about because there may be this, um, ballot measure in regards to a change of three to five commissioners that would add to, um, the general fund overhead to add more executives to this organization. And it makes me curious about if then unintended consequence would be adding more staff in the commissioner's office where we're reducing staff in all of the frontline basic needs. And otherwise. So this one just as we're talking, I'm thinking, would this also be one that if we were just, um, move forward on proposal 27 during the budget process, if that ballot measure was to pass

4:25:53wood with the county be in a situation where then they would have to add some more stuff or those policy team or stuff to the commissioner's office, just something on my mind on that slide. Thank you commissioners. Just make a comment that if the ballot measure passes, it'll have no effect in 2027. I appreciate that. I'm thinking that we're working on a long - term budget. So in my mind, it would have an impact after 27. Thank you for that clarification. Moving on to your next three proposals. These are in the public works department. Open to questions, comments, guidance. 32, a reduction an hour at the hazardous materials management facility. This is the household hazardous waste facility. Correct. Yes. Um, this is one I, I get request from the public to increase availability. And every time I've been, um, there have been people coming in and out with their stuff. And, um, I, I would hate to see us, um, reduce those hours. So I think I'm wanting to know, you know, what that would actually look like in exchange for 84, 000 dollars and savings. I just think it's very well used. And it's a very valuable facility and it has helped us keep gallons and gallons of paint and thinners. And God knows what other ick, you

4:27:42know, out of the landfill. I'm commissioner Levy before we move on. Do you have interest in 31 and 33 or any guidance around those two. I have a little concern about 33. Um, you know, in, you know, reducing our capacity and delaying projects. This is another one where I believe we maybe lost somebody. I mean, it was attrition or VSAP or something where we said, okay, we're already reducing our capacity to review these projects. So, you know, I, I think I, uh, I do, I'm concerned that things will slow down. They'll get more expensive. Um, so I think I need more on exactly what this would look like. And nothing in the stormwater one. I'm hearing. No. Okay. Thank you. I'm okay. Proposal 31 and 32. I think for me just an additional information on 33, I feel like we've talked to the board about like getting some things done. And so that was the one. So further on in this process, just to understand what that impact would be to the commitments that the board's already stated. And I just want to understand that better. Thank you. Yeah. I also oppose proposal 33. I don't think it should be included. And the proposed budget when we budget for capital projects, there's some funding that's put into the capital project side for the staffing piece.

4:29:14And then we also have the staffing. So if we need to look at how we're budgeting it, I'm fine with that, but we need to get these projects done. And right now we're carrying forward capital project funds and not completing them. So I don't support 33 the way it's proposed. Um, I'm interested in on 32 to understand if the EPR funding, um, would increase or decrease with this change in hours. Like if that has any effect on the revenue because we would, I mean, we presumably get funding based on quantities of paint that we collect. So I just want to understand if that actually is, um, not as effective as we think it is. I'm noticing Steve coming off of on camera. EPR. I'll just add quickly. This is Steve Durian, public works director. Uh, EPR would not, uh, provide funding for the household hazardous waste. That's only for recycling and recycling pickup and activities related to recycling. I think that there's some funding in the legislation. And maybe I'm using the wrong term, but about paint. And so that's why a lot of the paint stores now also take paint. So like, you'll see Home Depot and Ace Hardware and the other hardware stores are also collecting paint alongside our HMMF. So I don't know enough about the revenue side of that from the

4:30:27state, but I do know that it's changed in the last few years. Okay. We'll look into that. Thank you. Thanks. Um, excuse me, Commissioner, did you weigh in on proposals 31. I support including proposal 31. Thank you. Moving. On. We have four proposals on this slide for your questions and discussion. Who would like to start. I'm happy to start. I wondered on the proposal 34, is that a 400, 000 dollar cost? Was it half a million? I can't remember. I'm going to turn to your commissioner's deputy for that. Natalie Spring, Commissioners Deputy for the record. The total project is ending up to be roughly around 400, 000 dollars a year. So we would still retain the 100, 000 dollars a year and do what we would consider a limited print to hold within County Buildings or local libraries. And then, uh, primarily use an online version of Community Connections. Okay. And that's helpful. And I feel like I brought this up for the 26 to just about how do we reduce such a high expenditure.

4:31:46And for me, getting that information, which is great publication and somebody in the show, I'm sure. And one of the stories, the services that we provide, um, are really important to get to, for me, folks who aren't connected with County Buildings. That's my priority, my target. And so I would like, like that would be something that I would suggest if we were going to choose where that was going to be, um, where the Community Connections printed version that would be limited would be. But I'm fine with including proposal 34. On 35. Yes. I'm fine with that one moving forward. And proposal 36. The question I had on proposal 37 on this one where I was reading the narrative is. Eliminating the ability for us to do the MWB work to the way that we've agreed to do it. And I just want to acknowledge the lot of staff around the County through the racial equity work that did a lot of work in 2025 to come up with these Countywide goals together. And so I just share that with the board because I know I don't know, um, to what degree everybody is involved in those pieces. But, um, it feels like that again is one of the major commitments that a whole lot of departments have been working on. And so to reduce the

4:33:17ability to do that, um, and slow that down, I think is, um, contrary to what we've been working on. So that one I wouldn't be supportive of moving forward. Um, I don't support proposal 34. Uh, I know that's a, that's a lot of savings, but, um, I think the point of the community connections publication that it's a reference. And I think people, you know, if everything's online, like, you know, people don't. The point is you get it in front of people and they find out things that they didn't even know the county did. And if they don't know the county does it, they're not going to think to go online and see Oda's the County do this thing that might help me. Um, I just find, you know, it stays on people's counters, countertops. And they leave through it. And then they go, Oh, I had no idea. Anyway, I don't support eliminating that. I think it's a really valuable publication and really shares just so much about all the things that County does to help people. Um, 35, I'm fine with, um, I'm fine with, um, 36. Although having done that, we're going to get a disaster. Um, yeah, knock on artificial surfaces. For me, on 37, I think my, my question on that is, is what is left of the program if we,

4:34:50if we, um, eliminate of this vacant position, I don't know it's a vacant position. What was this person doing. So originally it's a framework. We put, we actually put this position forward on the prior debase budgeting. Uh, we believe that we can do some of the work. Um, we're evaluating. We're also evaluating where's our partners at Denver that do provide this service to see if there's a way we can partner or provide some type of contracting with them or an IgA. But we believe that we still want to provide the service. Um, or the work. Um, as, as, uh, Commissioner Lochman said it is a priority. So we want to make sure that we provide it. We have to reevaluate the C at what level and, you know, how are we going to provide this?

4:35:35But we still believe that we're, we can still provide some of the services. So this wouldn't totally eliminate. The program. Correct. Okay. Um, okay. Well, with that additional explanation, I'm okay with 37. I also don't support proposal 34. I think this is the only way that we can connect with Community members in the County. Many people. This is the only connection they get from the county to have any idea about what we do. Um, so I think we can improve it. I think, you know, continue some improvement is a good thing. I think there are opportunities if we, if we come down to it and we're not as a number, we could change it to black and white printing. Um, we could change the paper. There are some opportunities for savings there. But I think it's really important to physically mail something to people. We could reduce other printing. Um, I think some of that will be realized through the centralization. If we do that, uh, so that we are more, um, strategic with what we're printing and who we give it to and where we have physical media. But I do think it's important for us to reach people some way so that they at least understand what services there are in the community.

4:36:46Um, I'm supportive of including 35 and 36 on 37, um, I feel like it is probably time for an update to the board about where this is. I've just heard through the grapevine some different complications enrolling out the program. And I don't think we've gotten an update for a long time. So if my understanding is right where the original program with some of the hope to use some things from Denver might not be working and some other things might not be working. I think if I understood it all better, I probably would understand this proposal and where it's coming from. But I just don't have the latest and greatest updates. So for now I would say, um, include this in the budget, but continue the conversation so we can understand what this means for the program. Thank you, Commissioners. I did hear two of you not interested in proposal 34. And I just want to note for the record, the typo on the slide. Um, the total estimated general fund savings is 200, 000, not 300, 000. And based on your guidance today, that will not be moving forward. Just the memo also said 300, 000. Oh, okay. It's a typo. Oh, okay. Uh, and commissioners, it's because there was an additional 300, 000 dollar proposal in reductions at a tier three. So that's where

4:38:04the confusion came in. I grabbed the wrong column. My mistake. Okay. Moving on to the next three proposals. Who would like to start. I had a question on proposal 40 and it was just to understand the way that the second bullet plant reads here. Eliminating one position. To understand. The AAA as a full program versus what I'm reading as one program in the program. So just some clarification about what this would do to the AAA. Community Services. So this is one component of, um, the older Americans Act. And we are responsible for, um, ensuring that members of the public know where to receive. Wellness services. So diabetes evidence - based wellness program. So diabetes prevention fall prevention, those sorts of services. So rather coordinating that as an internal service, uh, we would still, um, there would still be services in the community for those programs. I'm sorry. If I heard you, right, we are mandated to have a wellness program for certain items that you talked about. Is that correct? We're mandated to let the public know where services are available, what resources are available. And then you said that this would eliminate that or it would just happen somewhere else, but not at the county. The latter. Yeah. It would, there are still programs in the community. We still, a staff working with

4:40:16older adults would let people know of those resources, but we would not coordinate the provision of those services internally. So the mandate isn't that the county correct hosts those programs. It's just that we know about them and provide the resource of them. Okay. And then this one was a little different than some of the others. Where, um, two hours ago said like potential 10 positions out of 19 or something similar. How many people are on, this is one position, but I don't understand. But what is the team like one out of one? He's literally one person. Okay. Thank you. So. I need a little further explanation on 39. The volunteer coordinator, the memo narrative says the proposal would require program managers to arrange for volunteer tasks and hours directly. So every, you know, if say the, I don't know, victim assistance program or the, I don't know what, you know, the, um, one of your staff Mary Aldrid come to our town hall of an Ellens Park to talk about the opportunities, uh, in the programs that she coordinates. Um, so each of those programs would do their own volunteer solicitation. Correct. Recruitment application background checks supervision. That would be done by the individual programs.

4:41:55We used to have a volunteer coordinator for our department overall. And when that person was resigned, we did not replace that FTE. And that those roles went to program staff who are working side by side with volunteers. They're in a best position to supervise and manage and get the data. Now this will have an impact on the criminal justice system partners. Um, including our own, including CJS for sure. But we, we have practiced that model. Where the program manager takes on that role of recruitment and supervision. Okay. I don't support proposal 39. I mean, I think, I think that we won't, you know, this will be the lowest priority to actually try to recruit and train volunteers. It's time intensive. You have to know what you're doing. You have to be able to work well with them. And I think it'll, you know, if program staff are trying to do that as well, I think it'll just be such a low priority. We won't, we won't really see that benefit. I mean, it says in the narrative that the number of volunteers declined during the pandemic, it'd be great to get them back up again.

4:43:21I mean, everybody I know who has ever done like going to the jail and read and, you know, do like writing programs in the jail. You know, it's the stuff that they say has changed lives, including their own. So I wouldn't support eliminating that. I mean, I really feel like it eliminates a whole program just because it's not going to be a priority. I also cannot support 40 on the, um, the AAA. This is another one where we, we get requests for more services, more, more, more, more in our population as aging. And, um, and so I, um, I can't support, um, 39 or 40. Based on the narrative, proposal 38. It sounds like working together with OCA will be able to, um, continue to do those administrative, um, functions. Um, so that one look forward to hearing more about. For me proposal 38. I need more information. It seems like currently, um, there's not a ton of coordination between the support team and OCA and the commissioner's office. I think there's an opportunity for that in determining how we do it, but I'm not sure how it was identified that the reduction would be in the commissioner's office and not OCA. So that's not clear to me. So I think that the opportunity but needs some more flushing out and analysis done and understanding

4:44:58who would do which function and how we could accomplish the tasks that need to be done. Um, I support inclusion of 39 and 40. Thank you commissioners. Um, Commissioner Loch, mean, I'm not sure that I heard you weigh in on 39. Well, I think you had two yeses already. It was what I was thinking, but, um. I think I only have one. Oh, okay. I got lost in the off the hook. No, it wasn't to be off the hook. It was just, I didn't, I was trying to move us along. Um, I. I'm, I mean, I feel like I have the same statement about this that I am. Hopeful that there's some other reductions personnel around the entire organization. And I am also fine with moving all three of these four for consideration. There was an ask about some additional information on a couple pieces, which I'm supportive of. Thank you. That was helpful. Putting the next three proposals up for questions or discussion. I'm supportive of including these proposals. What's so proposal 42, wasn't enough for me on what this is. Okay. I didn't even know this was Community Services. Yeah. No worries. Um, so these are funds that we obtained, um, to support homeless services and Boulder County and to pay for things like bus passes. They were never used. And so they've

4:46:53been sitting there. For a while. And so, um, you know, none of these cuts are easy or as, as everyone has commented on our saying that they're not valuable. But when we just looked across the board in terms of, um, priority and also sort of evidence of, you know, if these aren't used, is there really a need or an opportunity to dispense those dollars? Okay. Thanks for that background. Uh, and, um, on 43. Multimodal transportation infrastructure. Is this, uh, Steve, I think you're going to need to come off camera on just a little bit more about what this actually is here. Yeah. Well, this is, this is one of the four engineers that work on our design and project implementation team for our road safety and other multimodal projects. That's basically what that is. Okay. Um, okay. I guess just since I started jumping in with questions, um. On 41, um. I think what I worry about on this is, um. You know, we've seen a lot of real benefit through IT on their, like, what do you call business support. Program that you have. Business partnerships? I believe this partnership. Yeah.

4:48:34Where I guess I wouldn't think that division and program managers are necessarily data geeks and that they would, they would need some training and support. And I just wonder, you know, I'm fine with, with looking at these savings if we, I don't want to lose that capacity to, you know, learn what we're doing. You know, you can't change what you don't manage, they say, or you can't manage what you don't measure. People say. And I want to make sure that we're not going to lose that capacity one way or another on that. So if there's, if the way to continue to get good data and understand what we're doing and what we're seeing and what our trends are and save 146, then I can give you a thumbs up. Yeah. Apologianipor IT directors. So this reduction is actually in the Community Services Department, but in IT, we've already been working and talking to Robin about how we can support that going forward in terms of what capacity is lost and how we connect to the, uh, the work that's being done there. And I'll just add that, you know, for most of our centralized people who are doing data analysis work in IT, most of them started in human services or community services. So I think we have a good amount of connection of that

4:49:55work already. And that will support in terms of training as well, uh, getting managers, program managers up to speed on what they can do with Power BI. Well, that was my note to myself is that we're going to have to support this with training. But when we were talking about centralizing data analysis, three hours ago almost, um, the, the conclusion was that it does not make sense to centralize that in IT because we want them with the subject matter experts close to the work. So that's, that's just my concern is this we need data on these things. We need to know if our programs are effective. We need to know if we need to make change. We need to know, understand changes in the community. And I just want to make sure we're not going to lose that capacity. And yeah, I don't want to speak for Robin and her team, but I think what, what's happening here is just a little bit of an intersection between the efficiencies project and priority based budgeting. So this decision and proposal 41 is coming as a result of Community Services Priority - based budgeting work. And how I think it relates to the efficiencies where commissioners is part of that recommendation around data analysis was to continue to keep an eye on that one. Because in the

4:51:09future, those program managers and department leadership could have that Power BI training and could be able to run their own reports and things. So it is a little bit of a combination. Informed by the efficiencies project, but coming from Community Services specifically. For me, it's all that we're going to need to train up for it. Yeah. And in some ways, it's a good way for us to pilot and test that assumption that we could make that work in terms of having program staff program managers take on more data analysis work on their own. Okay. So I guess I'll be okay for now on 41. Um, 42, it sounds like. This money probably sits in the budget. It does get spant. So I'm okay on that. I think I'm leaning towards no on 43 kind of for the same reasons that I didn't support reducing the in - house, um, design capacity is that these are improvements that are funded with the transportation sales tax. They're on our project lists. We want to get them done.

4:52:18And we're going to reduce our ability to actually put, get these projects off the drawing boards and onto the ground. And so I, um, I wouldn't support 43. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I think I'm fine with what's presented here on 41 and 42, 43. I do have just some questions to understand what would that impact be on. The commitments that have been made in that, I think it's like exhibit A, as we talk about it on multimobile projects and other infrastructure projects. And it looks like Steve came on. I don't know if you wanted to address that question. Yeah. I mean, I think you would have to expect that they would slow to some degree. Um, this is about 25 percent of our capacity to deliver on those sales tax projects. Okay. Thank you.

4:53:13All right. Seeing no further comments or questions on these. We'll move on. Couple of transfers from the general fund to other funds. Um, and then the automated speed enforcement program, I know that'll be a topic for later, uh, in the week as well. So. Seeking your, um, questions or guidance on these three. Just to clarify, Jana, did you want us to speak to proposal 46 or not. At this time. Um, specifically if you want to take it off the list, that would be helpful to hear today. Okay. But there's no need to give direction like make it happen. It's more just what are the things that we need to take off the list. Okay. We'd like to get from you today. I would not, um, move proposal 44 forward. We've done a lot of work as the other commissioners and the Authority Board. And so at this time. And I feel like that budget's pending.

4:54:12So there might be more information that would make me say, okay, I could do that. But at this time I wouldn't move that forward. And then on 45, um, I would move that proposal forward. Um, and 146, I wouldn't just based on what was in the memo, I wouldn't move that one forward at this time. Ms. Sharley? Yep. Um, yeah 44, I mean, I think we need to see what, what that budget's going to look like. You know, there have been a lot of work. There's been a lot of work to reduce the general fund transfer. And, um, I just need to see what the needs are. So I would say don't count it yet. And we, you know, maybe it'll be a smaller amount that we'll be able to reduce. Um, yeah, I mean, the fleet fund, it sounds like we're just right sizing to the speed with which we can actually acquire and absorb additional vehicles. So I'm good on 46. Uh, I'm sorry, 45, 46. Um, well, we're going to have an executive session on this. So I think we're going to have another conversation and I don't want to take it off the table or say definitely it's on the table here. So I think we're the timing's just not right on this one yet. Thank you. On item 44, how

4:55:41did you choose 500, 000 dollars and not like say 2 million dollars. So, uh, in consultation with the BCHA staff, um, and I invite Susanna to come forward, um, Sean Doherty and Susanna weighed in on this number. Good afternoon, Commissioner Susanne Lopez Baker Boulder County Housing Authority, Executive Director. Really quickly on that, the original ask was a million dollars in reductions and that would have been very, very difficult for the housing authority. Uh, so similar to what you all stated, we are working through our budget process separately. And just in some quick figures, we do feel like we could probably reduce down to a 500, 000 dollar savings, mostly based on some efficiencies that are being created and will be over the last over the next six months, uh, regarding our yarding, how else they in management system, um, as well as a few other, uh, possible reductions that we are currently modeling. And we will present those models to you in September for the Boulder County Housing Authority budget session. So just sharing my perspective on proposal 44 wearing my Boulder County Commissioner hat today. And we wear a different hats and have different opinions. And sometimes they conflict and that can be confusing to people. But today I'm sitting here as a Boulder County Commissioner. And from my perspective, we have to fund

4:57:01basic county services and we're making really tough choices. And there have been really tough conversations in this meeting today about real people's jobs. And so from my perspective, the funding, a housing authority in the county is discretionary. And using general fund dollars to do it as discretionary. And when we're making these hard choices, that seems like a place to look. So I would look at increasing the reduction to the housing authority from the general fund. I think one way to accomplish that would be to increase the amount of, um, housing tax dedicated housing tax that goes to the Boulder County Housing Authority and reducing the grants out to other agencies. So I think that there's a way to do this that would reduce the impact of layoffs on staff and reduce the expenditure from the general fund on this discretionary item. So I would increase the number beyond the 500, 000 to the full amount that the general fund of subsidizing and accomplish it through the housing, the dedicated housing tax that the voters passed for housing. And I think it's appropriate to use it on County Operations that are otherwise in jeopardy. And I think this could be a major source of funding to offset some of the impacts, the layoffs. Thank you, Commissioner.

4:58:10Would you like to end it the other two on this slide? So the fleet fund, I just, I read it a little different than how I heard commissioner Levy read it. So she said it, Matt, it just, uh, matches the ability to uptake vehicles to what we're able to do. It looked to me like it's a decrease in our electrification of vehicles, which I don't support. Um, I think our ongoing savings in the long run will improve as we transition our fleet over and get more off of the fossil fuel, um, supply thing. So I just, I read it differently. I don't support, um, slowing down that effort. I do think we need to make sure that we're right sizing the vehicles. Um, to the staff size because our vehicle study was pre v - SIP pre last year's cuts and things like that. So I want to ensure that we're not replacing vehicles that are no longer needed, obviously. But we have heuristics for 100, 000 miles, I think, in 10 years of driving.

4:59:00Um, that we use. And we weren't meeting those. So we really need to achieve those. So I wouldn't include 45 as it was stated, at least in my understanding of it. Um, and I agree that we have some more information. We're going to discuss with each other on the legal advice around 46. Thank you, Commissioners. Moving on to the last three proposals. Who would like to start. Commissioner Stolzman. You look like you're ready to, I don't support 47. I support 48 and 49. I'll try to be similarly brief. I do not support 47. Let's see, Complete Illumination 4. I don't support 408 either. And. I support 49. Um, brevity, I would, I support proposal 47 going forward. I support 48 going forward. And I would not do 49 and or have a conversation just to understand if there was another number that we could get to. On, on that last one. Okay. Thank you, Commissioners. Um, very briefly there were about 1. 8 million dollars worth of items that were not recommended. Those were outlined in your memo. Are there any of these that you would like, um, to see further information on or have additional staff analysis before we adjourn?

5:00:53I'm assuming not on the Jale program since that was not supported at the original level. Um, the recreational shuttles would be an additional amount beyond what was on the previous slide. And equity fund would be an additional mount beyond what was on the previous slide. The other three, we have not. Had on a slide yet. So I have a question about how the climate equity fund is reflected here at 750, 000. I read the memo to say that it would just be a reduction of 250, 000. Yes. This is the not recommended slide. So the further adoption here, I thought somebody had already pulled together our decisions. We did them by three tiers. And this is a further reduction. Okay. Thank you. So the question is going to be the question is, is there anything from this list that Commissioners would like to hear more about moving forward in your budget preparation process.

5:01:59No, I mean, I actually would have, uh, I didn't support adding the additional general fund money into the climate equity fund when we made that decision because it wasn't staff didn't request it. And, um, and that was in a million dollar ask. And so I, I mean, I would have, I would have supported reversing that because every year is a new year. It's not like anyone's depending on these funds. And we're talking about a million dollars. So I would have, I would have taken the full million dollars. So I'm hearing some interest in bigger number on climate equity fund going forward for your further discussion. Any others? I'll just share on the climate equity fund. My perspective when I think about justice 40 requires and gives us an opportunity. And when I say require based on a previous federal administration that believed in climate change and also addressing those who are most impacted and underserved communities. And so for me, because thinking about HR one again and all of the impacts that have gone out to climate funding and even some of the federal money that we have lost here at the county to do that work, um, I do believe that people are directly, um, depending on us to address the issues of equity and the connection that I believe our staff has been

5:03:22doing in the Oscar with Oscar team on, um, addressing how race impacts the equity, um, disaster that we're in right now. I think we have the item on for the 250. It was a two one phone. And so I think we can, as we look at the numbers and that line is in there so we can continue to talk about what that exact amount is, as we balance the budget. I mean, we were required by state law to adopt a balance budget this year. So we will get to that point. But I don't, I don't necessarily understand adding it because we already have a line on item there to talk about it. So, okay. Anything else from this slide. All right. Hearing none, um, commissioners that concludes the guidance we were seeking from you today, um, for this work session. And I believe that concludes your business for the day chair. Okay. So we are adjourned.