 Jim Waters, Longmont City Council, Marsha Martin, Longmont City Council, Susie Delva Ferry, Longmont City Council, Joe Peck, Longmont City Council, Zach Arnest, Public Safety Chief for Longmont, Maker, Deputy City Manager, Sandy Cedar Assistant City Manager, Jennifer Churchill, Public Affairs Specialist with Boulder County. Janna Peterson, Boulder County Administrator. Claire Levy, Boulder County Commissioner. I wanted to share a little bit about ARPA for Boulder County as you all know. Boulder County Administration is a, our local government will receive $63.3 million in ARPA funding from the Americans. Two cases from a higher level. We have brought on an administrator. Y'all are familiar with Leslie Irwin. She is going to be the administrator for the ARPA funding. We need somebody to make sure that we follow the federal guidelines that he was in. In line with that whole process as we know it's a four year, really a six year opportunity for us to use that funding to truly respond to those most affected by COVID-19 in Boulder County. So that's one piece from the higher level. We have a consultant who's been hired to go through and a lot of you have been asked when your program folks in throughout the city of Longmont have been asked as well as throughout the county organization to provide the reports, assessments, data that you all have been working on and collected over what was going to be 2020 until now. And they open that up to really look at all of our communities regionally throughout Boulder County about the state of, for example, Town of Ward or Netherland, et cetera. So that will be a document that will be compiled. That's one that will be open for folks to take a review on. And then the second one is the community engagement process that Matt was up to talk about specifically. I'm going to pass this around for you to get your digital devices out. There's a QR code on there and we would love for you all to share that. BoulderCountySurvey.com is the website for folks that are watching. The community engagement process is a huge opportunity for us. Thank you to Knight Foundation. Thank you to the Community Foundation of Boulder County who reached out to Boulder County and asked us if we would be willing to stop before we start funding and give our community members throughout Boulder County an opportunity to give their input on where that money is going to be spent. And so that's really the community engagement process. I have brought up two folks who lead that community engagement work who are out on the ground who were out yesterday at a soccer game talking with families about this particular opportunity and that process will accumulate on October 15th. So the survey results again at BoulderCountySurvey.com can be responded to by all residents of Boulder County. Folks who have their businesses in Boulder County. Again, who's been more suspected by COVID-19 when we look at the architecture. So that process then after October 15th our consultant, who was brought on by community foundation Boulder County will bring a report back with those survey results and that data to the Board of County Commissioners so that we can really look at where should that money be spent. And that is just the beginning of the phase of community engagement process to really look at how we use the architecture. So that's the quick summary broad overview but I appreciate you sharing out that QR code. I appreciate you sharing out that survey. There are still a couple more weeks for folks to participate to give your input. And for all of us, this is super important, especially for our non-resident. So that's my quick overview and at the end of October we will have that survey of those results. And you all, some of you are participating October 4th. We've been meeting with the mayor of Monk Beach in an update as well as with our supervisors, with our EODH, which is our elected official in the department heads of the county, with our staff and we did a virtual talk call just to let residents know about this opportunity. Some places are really sure where they want to spend a bunch of cities, but I see the bigger cities have the real opportunity in Boulder County and the county working together. Like we did with CARES Act, which I don't know if you know the backstory, Boulder County had a big hand in making sure that counties besides the big five, six counties got a share of that money and then we shared it with the cities. I think we helped people and it was a very gratifying way of helping people. So thanks for being part of it. And we'd like to continue that partnership. Just like to get out of the flood, it's interesting how to disaster to get good at responding to disasters. We did a lot of work with that flood online. And we're continuing on. Anybody else want to say something? There goes Marcia. I'm glad you were going to pick that up because I was going to say we'd really like to hear what Longmont has in mind and what your plans are for your share. Also, if you think that there are opportunities for us to partner, I think we'll get into some questions about housing here further down the agenda. The topic of early childhood and maybe you've got some ideas about how we can partner using ARPA funds to address some of those needs. So Sandy's calling up the presentation so I don't miss anything. We have we've had a couple of conversations with the council and I think a couple of points that we anchored on were really going back to the council's goal setting session and things that they've talked about and plans that we we've already had in place that we had worked on for a while. So one of the primary recommendations that we've made to council as staff and we're finalizing that to bring it back to them is really to look at affordable housing. We a few years ago, I can't remember exactly when we all came together as communities in Boulder County and set the 12% goal for affordable housing. And as staff and again council has to weigh in on the policy side of this as staff. What we really saw is that when you have this kind of money, it's a chance to make a significant change to community and hit some of your largest issues that we haven't been able to hit as aggressively. And so part of our recommendation and they're briefing me tomorrow on it. I think is how we can use that money to spin it into affordable housing quickly. It's a little bit different here. We're more like you all now with the housing authority as part of the city. So they as part of the housing authority retreat, I think set the goal of six affordable housing units in the next four years. Projects, not units. I call units as multiple but six, six affordable housing projects within the next was it three years of three years. And so obviously that you're going to need a significant capital investment in that to accomplish it. The other thing that we talked to the council about is looking at the safe harbor areas in the qualified census tracks and utilizing the money to really work with the neighborhoods in the qualified census tracks to really create more sustainable and resilient neighborhoods. Tying into some of the plans that we've worked. Another component of that was early childhood education. It's being part of this. We were looking at ARPA funds versus CV funds that we have from CDBG and general fund. And so one of the recommendations we made to council on this budget process was to put a half a million dollars into early childhood education. And so thus far the council said to move forward with that. So that'll be in the budget. And what was the other one Karen? I know I'm missing one category. The whole neighborhoods. Household assistance and individual assistance and what we talked to the council about is we really think that's one of the areas that is probably right for partnership because you all are already doing that. And obviously you got more money than we did. And so how we use that to help individuals and households that are still reeling from the pandemic and how we can work together because you already have many of those projects, many of those programs and you haven't set up where you're administering it. And I think that's a really good area for more discussions and partnerships. And so that's from a staff perspective. Oh, business assistance is the other piece. Sorry. But that's from a staff perspective. We still have to bring that back to the council for defining. And I think when we look at business assistance where it's sort of hanging for us is the whole duplication of benefit component in this. And the fact that if they got a PPP loan or they used any other federal funds and they may not qualify for this. And that's for Peter, who is our federal fund expert to kind of work through all of those issues. And so that's from a staff perspective. I don't know if the council has anything they want to add to that. When you mentioned early assistance to early childhood education and right now I think it's getting daycare back on his feet is probably the first order of business. What I would like to ask is when making that the decision that you did or the recommendation that you did about how much to allocate to that in specific. Do you have data about how many families that could be sending a member to the workforce that are not that that would pull back into the workforce roughly. So part of what we've talked about and we've talked to the county group on this is I think about 150,000 is actually for data collection. So that we can start getting that information because I think generally we have some high level data. But we don't have what we need to determine really what is the need what different categories to folks sit in. And so county may not know this. We partner with what works cities which was funded by the Bloomberg Institute and they came in and it was about data informed decision making. And so they're part of this conversation so that we can really refine the data and bring more detailed information to council which will then feed other conversations and what we really need to put into it. Because it was hard to say at least from an administrative point of view what's the number because there was just so much uncertainty in the data. So I really appreciate you Polly raising that issue of children and child wellbeing and you know the housing poverty you know the connection there and in the long term effects of poverty on the whole trajectory of a kid. And there's a lot of data about the benefit of early intervention and quality early childhood education but also the effect of toxic stress on kids when their parents are dealing with economic insecurity and how kids absorb that. And it affects their executive function. So that's something that has always been very important to me and I think embedded in this issue is mental health. We saw statistics I can't cite them to you but the spike in emergency room visits for suicide suicidal ideation and suicide attempts for children was just heartbreaking. So you know we through this process that that Marta is leading our collecting feedback and you know we just know from the comments that have been coming into the commissioners that mental health services are going to be real high up there. I think the trick here and then I'll put this handed over to Marta is to go from identifying the problem to identifying the solution. And we don't need to tell you this you're under the same limitations as we are. We have to get this money not just you know allocated or identified or earmarked. We have to get it spent and so you know we want to do that wisely. You want to do that wisely and it's I've just always found it's far more easy to identify the problem than to really identify those evidence based programs that will address that problem. Do we want to do we want to drill down on the early childhood issue right now kind of where that's where we were. I don't I don't want to go further with that if you if we want to go somewhere else. I just had one more ARPA question if that's OK. Yeah. Let's hold that for early childhood until the fifth agenda item. I'm trying to do about 15 minutes for each of these and then it will we'll get it all done. Thank you for the I was just as a curiosity because we're talking about this right now is the timeline and I didn't hear you speak to that. And it sounds like those are staff recommendations is what you were sharing. So there's a whole process I'm sure and we're going through that too. But I didn't know if you started thinking about a timeline yet and I'm in the hopes that our report that will be done at the end of October can inform from a community perspective. We would love to at least offer that as a resource as as I've shared in our mayor's meetings with a lot of you and in the consortium as well. So just want to make sure that you all are aware of that part of the timeline and maybe that could be helpful. Yeah. Yeah we are because Peter was talking to us and I think the outside date is 2026. Is that correct Sandy. And so when you saw the six projects in three years was predicated on really having the last one. The last one out the door in construction with enough time to spend down and actually meet that timeline. And one of the things that I failed to mention is I failed to mention broadband because broadband is in there especially digital divide. It's a little bit different for us because we already have it in place and so we're looking at how we fill gaps. And then what we did talk to council about is that these are one time dollars. So trying not to bring in ongoing expenses because of the one time dollars and then creating a different issue down the road. And that was the other thing we talked about with them. I had something I wanted to add and I'm glad that Claire Commissioner Levy mentioned this around mental health. And that's you know that's one of a huge factor that we are seeing with our students with our families and especially during this covid crisis. It's been ongoing but I think through the pandemic it has exacerbated and it really brought to light an issue that has been a problem for quite some time. And so one of the things and I was grateful for Karen but her name tags turned around. I think she knows who she is. So yeah Karen sitting in on one of the quarterly meetings for mental health partners. And one of the things that we discussed was the turnover the high turnover and being able the inability to hire and retain therapists so that inconsistency within the program. It's really it within the organization. It's really difficult for patients to have that sense of consistency and connection with with therapists. I know that it isn't ongoing funds. But if as we're as we're looking to put money into certain areas you know I would really I would like to see money put in towards mental health getting us through this pandemic. I mean I think we're all in crisis and we're in crisis mode. I was telling Councilmember Peck that I think last year was difficult teaching. This year is worse. And I in the 28 years that I've been in the profession this is the single most difficult challenging year that I've ever had. And and that's me. I'm thinking I'm able to juggle many things. You know I have a son with autism. I have a lot of resilience. I'm thinking of people who early career teachers people who are experiencing other traumas going on at home as well and dealing with loss. It's unmanageable. And so you know I can tie in what we're experiencing in the education field and tie it into you know what are our health care workers. And our mental health psychiatrists and therapists are dealing with. And if there is something that we can be thinking about as we're looking to allocate funds to help address some of those issues as well. So that's my two cents. I just wanted to ask I think both the Commission and the city manager whether on the front on the spending front. Whether there's been any thought given to some form of bootstrap spending because it's one thing to answer the to ask the question. You know how much should you allocate to this or that program and say we need to study it and get more data. But the need for doing things like getting daycare back up and running is immediate. We aren't going to be on the road to recovery until those problems are solved. So it's just a question and I'm handing the microphone to Joan because she and I were waving at the same time. But I hope we can answer the question. Thank you. So I think all of the issues have been addressed and they kind of all roll into the same thing. But it is the mental health and anybody who knows me will know that I've been on the subject for six years. Mental health affects everything. And we do have an option next week in our budget process to decide where we want to use a half of our marijuana tax on mental health. But what we need from my perspective and I know that the previous commissioners have heard this is from my perspective is a facility. So when we're talking about hard core dollars spent for sustainability not bandaid type issues but things that we can carry on after the funds are gone. I think that what we need is a one stop shop facility where our mental health partners our. What's it called recovery cafe for addiction where we can have hope in the hour center in people who are experiencing homelessness. Have a place to go instead of roaming around the city looking for different different social things to help them. We have all of these things in our city but a person who's experiencing homelessness or depression or mental health. They have to find these places. There's one on Kaufman there's one on over on Martin Street. There's what I really would like to see our hard core dollars into a facility where we can actually help people. And this is a larger discussion. But I think that would be something that is sustainable that we can use in the future. And it isn't just a bandaid. It is moving forward. It's going to answer her question when you're so yes because not all of it is for the data analysis and so I think there is room within the half a million. We also have we can look at our CDBG funds and then as we look at the funds in general on the ARPA we have capacity and then on the mental health side. Again I haven't been briefed yet Karen just told me there is mental health work in some of the projects that they're submitting. Okay regional transportation as you all know we have the 119 BRT that is in progress and we are doing our first in Maine transit station. But I also want you to be aware of the opportunity for rail. And I don't know what funding that ARPA or the county needs to put into that if anything. But I would like I would like that to be at the top of your list of transportation. We need we need facilities. We need stations whatever. I just want that to be at the top of that we are. We do have two regional transportation options coming with BRT 119 and the Northwest corridor as an alignment to the I-25 rail through Amtrak. I cannot get commuter rail. And you know there are some other spots that are in Amarck where there are those appointments. And one of which is I think in the RML organization. But I used to know that the problem happened before the county. And And The I am going to Apply to the One of the Four. That's an opportunity to Really bring some money to this issue. Which I think is the big thing that's been lacking. This 30% design study That initially people thought was going to be Three to five million dollars When RTB staff started looking at it and were saying 11 to 13 looked in. So money was the thing. I think it's the most realistic opportunity. But I know Marks is our representative on the 119 corridor. We've been really successful getting money for that. The white head route Sent a letter which we probably view on RTB. Really you know Strenuously objecting to the lack of money coming To lower county for restoration of service. I think they got their attention. And it was really nice to see Shoshana Lu And Governor Polo's support on that. So I think I'm sitting down with our board members next week. Or possibly just sitting down. You know just to sort of go on that point and see what we can do. But you know I always want to make sure that we're Well the county is at the table that we're speaking on behalf of everybody. I just want to thank you Claire for that. And I also am going to apply to be one of the Dr. Kaga pointees for that board. So thank you. I think it was when we first were going to have this meeting When it was scheduled at first and the discussion about The front range passenger rail and Amtrak wasn't really a reality at that time. Claire could you Claire could you talk if you have any more information to share about what the timelines might be For fleshing out the board or filling out the board for the front rail passenger district Review for us the counties that are involved. And what are the steps that you anticipate as we talk about options that you would anticipate that we all should be aware of. Right. What are the thresholds we have to pass to go from a piece of legislation to an option. Right. That's actionable. City of Lord. So make sure we'll try to wait in towards the Northwest Rail route because there are three groups that have been under study. And you know to try to make sure that there are performance numbers that are required so that because every now and then Northwest Rail route performs the best. That we're in the bill all provisions that allow a specific station some tax to do station area improvement. So within a half mile radius of the station there could be an additional special district fund that would be worn. And that would be formed through the PID or is that sort of what you want. To try to get better representation that was proportionate to the population. So the bill is originally introduced only gave the whole of Dr. Cog which is close to two million people three board seats. And it gave PID Cog which has I think about three quarters of a million. That has two. The south central basically the Pueblo area have one. So it was not fair at all in terms of population distribution. And I think we did a pretty decent job of getting that redistributed. But another thing we're really trying to work hard on is to make sure that you know that we actually know what kind of commitment there's going to be before going to the voters. Because you know there's a concern given what looked like disproportionate representation for the southern part of the state that's really interested in having a connection with the south of the state. That the resources would that all from the taxing authority up here all the money up here would go to down south and fund the troops. And so we put language in the bill that the area for the first phase of improvements has to reflect the orders with the highest ridership and the highest mitigating where we have to raise the suggestion. We generate the most we need the most money. The subjects in this district are formal legislators funding this app to keep the south west side of the chief building. This is the problem. This is the biggest special district ever created by the legislature. The clerk was talking about a very real as far as timing that tax is the big milestone and then the federal government when they talk about an X factor. My concern is that we've been talking about public transportation and connecting color all of Colorado from Kansas to Utah from the Mexico to Wyoming since the 70s. And we haven't done it and it's only gotten more and more expensive and now it's prohibitively expensive in every single way. So now what we're doing is breaking it up into special districts and we're already part of a special district as we know and Longmont has gotten less and less every year. So it's going to be a very hard to get people in Longmont to vote for yet another special tax district when we have seen our service cut and cut and cut. And now people talk about bus rapid transit. I was one of the first group of women to drive a bus in Boulder in 1974 or something like that. And I can tell you there is no such thing as bus rapid transit. A system that is not discreet from the roads is never going to be any faster than any car. So although it may have less stops it is still subject to all the same problems with car accidents with weather conditions with everything. So unless you have light rail or rail of some kind or something that is just that is separate from the road system it's not going to be very good public transit. We could have that. And I was very excited about Governor Polos who does seem to have a vision for what we can do. We can't keep paying for more and more and more roads. Even if they're electric vehicles they're still going to be on the roads and we can't keep. We have no way to finance it unless we change something about the gas tax with electric vehicles going to be more and more prevalent which is a good thing. So we really need to it seems to me advocate for transit systems how whatever means that is that are their own discreet path. And every other country does this in many places in this country do it. Colorado has problems because we don't have the mass of people to support this. But we really did have better transportation in the 70s. You could get on a bus and go to Meeker Colorado to do the same thing. Now you would have to either go to Grand Junction and rent a car or go to Steamboat Springs and rent a car. This is ridiculous that we're going backwards. So I would like to see us band together with addressing this on a statewide basis. Because frankly what we saw what we've seen in the RTD district is that only Denver has got this despite the fact that we voted on something which was supposed to be evenly built out. It hasn't been and the meltdown of 2007 was used an excuse for that but they've never gone back. So I support I think we need to support any efforts to make it better. But I really do think we need to be thinking more on a statewide basis and more in terms of light rail or something that is separate from the road systems as our basic connector and then buses off of that. Thank you. I just kind of like to get the central issue about the new proposed special district out on the table. Because it is very large and there's a lot of people in it. It could be that Boulder County will never vote for it. What happens if if the district passes but not in Boulder County. Right. So the we could be voted into this district even if the public of Boulder County does not does not go along with it. I just wanted that to be on the record. I just like to say I don't like the characterization. It may have begun that way. But I don't like the characterization of this was something about people not wanting it to be near them. I think it's something about markets. You know, with a composting facility, you have material that goes into the composting facility and you have the material that comes out of the composting facility. And on both sides, the point of the whole thing is a to reduce methane emissions from what would otherwise be compost or what would otherwise be landfill waste. Excuse me. But then you have the carbon footprint associated with getting the input to the composting facility to the facility. And you have the carbon footprint of getting the resulting products of the composting facility, the compost, the tea, all of that stuff to where it's going to be used. And I think the fundamental local objection to the first proposal was that there was no market for the product here in Boulder County. So I don't really like the idea of saying it was because people didn't want it nearby. It was because there was no market for it nearby. Is there, I'm not certain, I'm not certain what the take is from the, we heard a lot from the neighbors. And I'm certain that the markets are an issue. What would be helpful to me, we kind of, I was kind of surprised by the whole proposal. And I don't know what the disconnect was between our staff and your staff. So it would be helpful for me to know if there, what's the level of discussion? Is there momentum going forward? It's good to know you've hired somebody. Is there going to be a conversation to which we're invited or you're going to flesh out options and then kind of ask for reactions from municipalities? How will this unfold? Because we can't solve it ourselves. It's only going to happen when we do it as a partnership. And we need to do it. I mean, that's, we just can't get to the commercial aspects of this on our own. And yet we need to get, we need to get there. So, you know, what are your thoughts about what's the time frame? Are there steps? What do you need from us to move it in some direction? This is about zero waste. This is about the fact that we all live in a country and a county that wastes. And that really, I want to pull it back to that because it really isn't about specifically a public facility or a neighborhood or not a neighborhood. It's really about how do voters who decided and residents who agreed that were wasteful. And then we need to look at options about how we're going to be more efficient, more effective with saving money. In one little area. We can talk about finding all the resources. But this is one of those responsibilities. So I just want to make sure that we don't get that piece of this conversation. And to your question about what's going to happen. Yes, you hired somebody who was a couple of years ago. So I get about that opportunity to do community engagement, to go through a public process. And to set this conversation up whether it's a partnership, whether it's smaller projects. There's a lot of pieces to it. I just want to make sure that one that other piece of it really is the focus. And ensure you all, as well as those that are watching and participating online, that there will be a public process. For me, this is what it really is. To do all of the work. To do waste. To do the public. And our county administrator wants to talk about it all. And I think it's great that Janice here with us has been kind of shut those doors. Watch her tell me. I can't talk. One key thing in what Mark said is that we are asking this community staff person to do is really look at whether it is a facility that we need. Facilities that we're in the site. And in their inspection. And I think that the previous project, you know, kind of was driven by the thought that we need a facility and we need to be in more time. That there's something virtuous about, about two-term or own waste. And that sounds very virtuous. But I don't know that there's, that composting in Boulder County is apparently better than composting anywhere else. Other than the, the greenhouse gas emissions, you know, driving there and right back. So there is that. But, you know, we need to just really open this conversation up. Maybe it's a facility with smaller facilities. Maybe it's spending more time with the ag community in fighting waste to actually do it directly on site. I just really have to open the conversation up. It's really one of your, your thoughts of the long run on this. Because you are, you are really important partners for us. But now I want to show you what I know. I just wanted to add two things. First of all, give you a name. Noah Island is the person that we hired. He's definitely from there. He works for the City of Boulder. And so, has some good local experience and is really a strategist around zero waste in general. He will be the staff person who works in the Resource Conservation Advisory Board. So long as I have a member on that board. And a lot of these conversations about, you know, where are we going with zero waste? Whether it's infrastructure, whether it's the program. All of that will go through our fair. I just wanted to make sure that you're engaged with your work. And that's, though. I was all for this facility. I am a supervisor. I'm very sorry that you got the rail. I think it's really unfortunate that a small group of very wealthy people with a very savvy public relations person and a whole slew of lawyers were able to derail this. But I do think that there was a problem in that the previous commissioners did not really alert some of the places. I know Erie was very upset, all kinds of things. But as for a market, I mean every municipality around here needs mulch and this stuff for their work. And gardeners need mulch. We have the footprint of driving it to somewhere in Boulder County as opposed to where we drive it now, which is far, far away. It is much smaller. It makes perfect sense. And we do need a regional composting facility. And I hope we can arrange that because it is so much better and less expensive for everyone to do it this way. And I certainly think there's just as much of a market here as there is currently, which is, you know, the facility we use is far, far away. But he manages to have a market for them. So I don't see that that's actually an issue. But I really do support us having one in Boulder County. It just makes sense for the future. If I could clarify, I have a whole folder full of letters from organic farmers who said I can't use that compost. I have a whole folder full of letters from organic backyard farmers who said I can't produce. I can't use what that facility would produce. They gave their reasons. And so I'm not saying we shouldn't have a regional facility. Maybe we should and maybe we shouldn't. But we should have a regional facility where the produced compost will be an acceptable product to our local people. And I don't think we can overlook that. All compost is not the same. All green activity is not the same. And just because people have good lawyers doesn't mean they're wrong. It's the cost. They value our cost. We need that to be that. We have a public community that brings them out of time. It's called one-two-three-one-two. It's better than the public. We weren't able to allow them or those garbless properties that animals have. It renders me. We can do the same thing. Come away with new housing and it's ordinance that looks like and looks like. We're carrying purchase orders. We're going to live at our home versus an investor by our 14 days. We look at the property, offer it. It does not eliminate investors from the market. In case of priority, when you say that you want our workforce, our teachers offer sponsors to live in our home. We give them priority. When you say that you want our workforce, our teachers offer sponsors to live in our community. We give them priority. We would need to do some type of that allowance. It requires them to sell the full, I'll give it again. How many times have I done this? That's probably a chapter. A length of it. And that's committed to creating businesses, creating workforce, housing, and strong housing. So that there's some investment. I really believe that we need to be looking at it. It's not going to be one solution. There's going to be many and just concentrating on one piece is not going to solve the problem. And I really appreciate that you brought in these other creative approaches. So that is definitely something I want to take a deeper look into on top of, you know, continuing what we're doing to increase our stock, increase higher density and a myriad of options for folks to be able to buy a home, whether it be a condo, whether it be a single family home. But, you know, definitely continuing that what we're doing, but also looking at other options as well. So yeah, I am interested in knowing more about that. So yeah, I broke the mic. Whether to whether to revisit the idea of a countywide revenue source for housing. And you know, we are going to be going out with a poll. I've been hearing soon. I've been hearing that for about six months. But I think it's going to be soon to just try to test the waters on what how people are feeling here. Post COVID or we're not post COVID. We thought we would be. But are you know, are people feeling still uncertain enough about the economy that they wouldn't be supportive of new revenue sources for any number of things and housing and transportation is going to be part of that. But, you know, when we talk about solving the housing problem, or at least addressing it, we really do want to have housing in every community affordable housing in every community. But barring that and because sometimes, you know, we do have just a mismatch of jobs and housing and, you know, with two income families, maybe one person gets to live close to their job, but the other person doesn't. There we have a problem here with the cost of transportation and housing and the drive till you qualify might mean that you have an affordable mortgage, but your transportation costs coupled with your mortgage are now unaffordable and you are dependent forever on, you know, a working car and so all the more reason to try to locate housing in the community in which people work. But I think we also it comes back to that transportation issue and having better multimodal transportation options so that if people don't live in the community in which they work for whatever reason choice maybe it's not affordability that they have affordable transportation options as well. So we, you know, we do have to think about those two issues as being linked. Claire, I'm glad you mentioned transportation because Councilwoman Pack and I and former mayor toward the transportation oriented housing down in Denver, which is really interesting because I think we all know that it costs nine to twelve more thousand dollars a year to have a car. And if then you're you're only making twenty thousand dollars a year. There's nowhere you can live. And so if you can have something that is on a transportation line, you have much more of a chance of doing something. But I really think one thing that we need to prioritize in the country and certainly in Boulder County is home ownership because that is the only way to get out of a cycle of poverty. You know, we lost at least approximately 10%. I think I'm sure Martin knows about this and Aaron knows about this better than I do. But during the last giant meltdown of 2007 and eight, we lost a close to 10% of home ownership and it hasn't really come back. In fact, it's getting worse and worse. So we have to find ways to increase home ownership for the stability of every community. If a child, for instance, going back to kids has to move every three years or every year when the landlord jacks up the rent, then it's no life for a child. It's very disorienting and that family is going to be living in poverty or constantly stressed out financially. So not everybody will always have plenty of renters, but we used to be a nation where everybody or most people aspired to have an owning a home. And people seem to be giving up on that in despair and that's a very bad sign for our community. So I think if we can explore things like land banks, land trust, cooperatives, which are difficult but better than not owning anything. The intergenerational wealth, particularly for people who have been traditionally marginalized by everything, is critical to actually having a stake in your life. Anybody else? I get really stoked seeing the spoke on Coffin Street going up. That's so great. Every time I come drive up the Longman, I look around and it's just like, wow, it's happening. So thanks for your work with us on doing that one. Bit by bit, that helps, right? So let's get to early childhood education and then I'll do a call for public input. I don't see many folks, but I'll do it anyway. So if anybody wants to kick us off, please do. I'll just start. This has been a priority for this council for several years. And Marta and Claire were both with us, what, ten days ago or so when the governor came and spoke, both to promote what he's done with his initiative in the early childhood office. But to also reinforce where we are as a community working in partnership with the Early Childhood Council in Boulder County. We have an action plan, the data, the investment that Harold talked about earlier, hopefully a year from now. We can answer the question of how many parents and how many kids are unserved, what the needs of our employers are right in terms of their employees. Because the problem is not just a Longmont problem. You know this better than we do. It's a regional problem. It's at least a county problem. The Longmonters who work in other parts of the county or those folks who work here in every, all of them with children, especially at their preschool age kids. So for us, it's not just the Early Childhood Education, it's child care right through that continuum to the time kids are in school. And then the needs of kids, school age kids, you know, when mom and dad are around and kids need supervision. We asked folks in the event that we hosted ten days ago to reimagine a whole industry. And as we started this conversation talking about the best and highest use of ARPA funds, certainly this is going to be part of it. But it would be a mistake to think that's going to solve a problem. The needs are so, the system, we lack a system. We need a system, not unlike the K-12 system, right? Where it's funded on a stable, ongoing basis, where the work is, the employees are professionalized. How much of that could be at a county or local level? In our plan, we've got some options that we think would help meet state standards for the preparation and the credentialing of employees without getting caught up in some of the regulatory disincentives that occur at the state level. But at the end of the day, this conversation that's unfolding here, I know it, well, I don't know, I believe at some point it's going to end up on your agenda. Because we're going to talk about solving this on a county-wide basis. Maybe it's on the desks of the school boards at Boulder Valley and St. Brain Valley School District. But I suspect more likely it's going to be something where there's a group going to come to you to say, this only gets solved. I know this was something that was presented to Larimer County commissioners in the fall and they passed on putting something on the ballot. But I can just say that's an active conversation. And it's going to be really helpful sooner rather than later to get some idea of where you are, how you think about both the nature of the scale of the problem and the options for solving it from your perspectives on a county-wide basis. Tim, thanks for that. I wondered if you had any updates originally when I was working on that committee with y'all. The invitation was about a special district and potentially county-wide. And just curious if that's still in the conversations is a solution to get to the early childhood funding. Because it's changed some. It's gotten more significant and the needs gotten more dramatic. Yeah, we had Marta, one of our troops showing up every week. And one of our working groups was really organized around a question, special district yes or no. I mean there was, we never answered that question. There is no conclusion to that on a range of options or continuum, right? That's somewhere along, continue with other possibilities. We know counties have successfully proposed dedicated sales tax or property tax. I'm not certain in Summit County or Gilpin County, those counties that have done that. I know what was proposed in, what was going to be proposed in Larimer County was, I think it was a county initiative as opposed to a special district. I'm not surprised that commissioners passed on it just based on how I understood it to be organized and how money was going to be distributed. But there's something to learn from that experience, what they proposed and how it was analyzed by those commissioners. And I don't know Marta, what ultimately a proposal is going to look like. You know, it's going to be, everybody understands you've got all kinds of things potentially that you've got to consider putting on ballots or not. But I do know this, we won't solve this problem with one time funding, no matter how much money it is. And we, and it won't, we won't recover fully from this pandemic unless we can stabilize a workforce. And we won't stabilize a workforce by dragging the pre-pandemic child care system into the future. It's just not tenable. So I was, I guess I was just going to say the obvious really, which you sort of said already, Tim, is just the problem can't be addressed without an infusion of public money. You know, people complain rightfully so about the cost of child care, particularly infant and toddler. But yet our early childhood workforce is making poverty wages, sub-poverty wages. And people wonder why is child care so expensive when child care workers are so poorly paid. It's because it's very labor intensive. You need a facility. You need constantly, you know, to renew your equipment. You know, it's expensive. And the, you can't, the only way you can solve that is public money. And, you know, Denver has the, I think it's a mill levy. I don't think it's a sales tax for the Denver preschool program. So I think we're going to have to go that direction. I just don't think there's any way, not only for the workforce, and the workforce is really important. But for the well-being of kids, they need quality child care. They need to be taken care of by people who are committed to that profession and not be able to form bonds in relationships and not have that high turnover. So, you know, we've, there are so many needs and every time we talk about the kinds of things that need to go on the ballot, child care is one of them. And I guess it really is something to think about whether, you know, with a special district, that would be, you know, a subset of the county, whether that's the way to do it, whether to do it countywide. I don't think we know. We would really love to continue this conversation and get your thoughts. The need is certainly there throughout the county. I don't think anybody would say we're good. We don't need any more help. So we'll see where that goes. So I'm really proud that along one has, this is one of its visions for in our work plan as what we want for our city and county. But when we discuss this, I don't want us to forget that child care is not just in centers. It is also in homes for infant through 18 months old, 18 month old. And I do know that this is part of Governor Polis' vision as well. So when we talk about the expense of child care, it has to be equitable. A lot of people do child care in homes because of the cost and because of the consistency of the child care provider from birth through kindergarten. Some people stay with the same child care home for five years. Whereas in a child care center, the teacher, whatever you want to call them, the caregiver changes depending upon who the shift, when they're employed, etc. And it is a choice of a parent as to how they want their child cared for. So when we discuss this, I don't want us to forget that part of it, that if there is a tax in some way, either through an initiative, through a special district, etc. It's going to have to really take the cost of child care to the lowest possible amount because that is where the stickler is at the end of the day for parents. So is there anybody here for public comment? I see no one. So we'll close that part of the meeting and continue on. Okay, well, I just want to make a comment on child care. I think once again, we are, this is a very, very strange time, but we are also extremely lucky to have a governor who not only is future thinking in terms of transportation, but also has been involved with daycare since he was born, literally. I worked for his parents who had a baby and then realized they didn't know what they were going to do with that baby all day. And so they started asking their employees and their employees said, yeah, we've got the same problem. And so they started a daycare in their building. And I have been trying for years to try to get businesses to understand that they could pool resources. I mean, their employees would be less stressed, would have more time, would be happier, and in every way things would be better if they would pool resources and create sort of little regional childcare centers. Or if they have enough room, they could turn their, you know, part of their office into childcare. A lot of things have been done on a statewide basis, as Councilman Peck said. It isn't just a matter of incentives and money. It is a matter of the fact that it is a very difficult job. And people, the daycare centers often make a lot of money, a lot of money, but the people working there who are almost exclusively women are paid extremely poorly. And they also have to keep up, they have a lot of education they have to go through, a lot of hoops they have to go through. A lot of that has been changed by our terrific state legislators and the governor by helping people who are going through daycare education to get their certificates in a more timely way and helping them with financial incentives. You can't have a daycare center without daycare workers. So it is many different approaches like everything. It's not just a matter of taxing people and giving them, you know, having money available. It is also that you have to have daycare workers who will stay with them. Nobody wants to just weigh, warehouse their child. They want good care. That's you. I mean, the person taking care of your child is you in absentia. You want them to care about your child and also educate your child. And that takes a very special person. So money can't buy that. But, you know, if you help people, good people actually get their certification and you help small family people who are educating people in their homes to do a little better and make it easier for them. If you help out, for instance, we helped provide masks and various things for daycare centers. If everybody helps the daycare centers a little bit, we can have a better situation for everybody. So that's what I would like to see as an appreciation for what can be done on a statewide basis. We have already passed a whole lot of things in the last three years that make it much easier for daycare workers to actually be daycare workers. And that's a very important part of this. Just one last comment. The data on the number of license providers is pretty clear. That number has been declining year over year. We're not going to solve this through licensed providers only. But one of the interesting data points we heard from Larimer County, the Larimer County Council had offered 48 job offers last year. They hired 48 people. 45 of them had already left in the first year. So you think just to be at the cost. I mean, you understand this in terms of the cost of turnover. But that's a result of our failure to professionalize, compensate, support a whole industry and those people who we have tried to recruit to be part of it. So that's just not sustainable. And obviously that's going to take money and that's going to take public money. I suspect if we're going to re-imagine and then respond to what we imagine in terms of a new era of childcare. Childcare or any of these other topics are on the bottom of the agenda. It's the hockey puck drop. Get your stick ready. Take a swing at it. Everybody wants to go home? I'm interested in. I just want to bring to your attention that we have a Boulder County has an opportunity to possibly look at having an equestrian center at the Boulder County fairgrounds. And I would like that to be at some point in the future in 2022 to be a discussion that we open up with the commissioners to see if there's a possibility or any interest in furthering that discussion. I brought that up six years ago. So I just want to revisit it. The other thing is safe lots for sleeper vehicles. We have a lot of people. We have three safe lots for cars. And there are 33 people who are living in their cars right now that are waiting to be vetted to get into those safe lots. We have so many people who have been unhoused for various reasons. I would love it all to be COVID so we can throw a lot of money at it. But I don't know if that's true. That is something that we need to look into further. But we also have people living in their sleeper vehicles be their vans campers another type of sleeper vehicle because they have been unhoused again for various reasons. A lot of it because of COVID because their rent has gone up and some landlords or managers want back pay their back rent from the rent they lost over the time that they were not paying rent. So we had asked at one point to use the camp lot at the fairgrounds because it does have a dumping station for people who live in their sleeper vehicles. But they are residents of our city. They are not transients. And there are some people living in those vehicles who have children who are going to school in the same frame Valley School District. So I would like to re-address that issue as we look for housing for those people. We would like or I personally would like to open up that conversation once again to see if we can temporarily use that camp lot at the fairgrounds or perhaps another lot and charge dumping fees so that they wouldn't actually camp there. But perhaps could use the facilities. So and then air quality. Air quality is bad as we all know. That's a bigger conversation. I would just like to push that out there that I think that the county and cities need to have a joint conversation about how we can. I know we're discussing it with greenhouse gases and EVs and buses and trains and getting vehicles off. But how can we how can we address it in other ways to bring our county into the focus as being a solution as looking for solutions. So that's it. Those are my three issues. I don't think thank you. I don't think we're going to be able to do justice to any of these topics at the bottom. We just don't have the time but I think it's a great start. Yeah. Thank you. And I want to just respond to especially for public for the I'm on the master plan executive advisory board for the fairgrounds. And that public process has started with two weeks ago that group put together meetings with all the current users of the fairgrounds. So just so that folks know that the public then the open groups for community members who have new ideas who maybe aren't users currently of the fairgrounds. The groups of our community around the entire county because it is Boulder County fairgrounds folks in the mountains some of our other sectors of community who aren't currently using that facility for events. We are inviting those folks as well. And so there'll be a whole public process in addition to what's already started. So I just want to make sure that folks know that and certainly for the public. And if that's the ideas that they want to bring in and others we would be really really interested in hearing all of this is that plan develops. For the for the next meeting I was very happy to see barrier free homeless shelters or lower barrier homeless shelters on this agenda. I'm sorry we didn't get to talk about it. But I think it's an important thing. Because they're just they're what it's doing is it's it's increasing the service defiant segment of our unhoused persons because they're asked they're being asked to give up too much to get into navigation. And I you know regardless of whether it's constitutional it's inhumane. But I would like to ask the commission as a group and maybe this can be the commission's closing remarks. How you feel about the ACL use summer statement about Boulder County's coordinated entry program. Okay, I should have thought of sending to you beforehand. I'll send it to you afterwards and we'll talk about it at a later date. Sorry to blind slide you 730. It's about 730 so I think we'll call it a night so thank you everybody for doing this it was a year off and now we're back and it's great to see everybody again. Thank you for being public servants I think it's the highest calling. Being raised by a couple parent by a couple teachers. So, thanks for being part of this thanks for delivering service and look forward to working with you on these issues including our.