HomeMy WebLinkAboutItem 5B Letter to Council DiscussionFrom:Stamp, Debbie
To:Bowden, Yvette; Burke, Dan; Camacho, Mari; Case, Leah; Chasansky, Matthew; Cook, Mishawn; Cowern, Bill;
Davis, Kaaren; Easton, Sara; Farnan, David; Firnhaber, Kurt; Fong, Clay; Gehr, David;
hanneganp@boulderhousingpartners.org; Hayward, Heather; Hewat, James; Holmes, Brian; Hyser, Kristin;
Joyce, Heidi; KenCairn, Brett; Llanes, Sandra; Marin, Corina; Meschuk, Chris; Opansky, Holly; Poe, Erin; Rio,
Delanie; Schleske, Meredith; Seaton, Celia; Sheridan, Karen; Spence, Cindy; Sugnet, Jay; Taddeucci, Joe;
Wiebenson, Sarah; Wyler, Robbie
Cc:Yates, Bob; Young, Mary; Davis, Pamela; Reimann, Taylor
Subject:Instructions for Annual Board and Commission Letters to Council
Date:Monday, October 5, 2020 6:03:49 PM
Board & Commission Secretaries and/or Liaisons: Please forward this
email to your board chairperson(s)
Good Afternoon Board and Commissions and those who support them,
The Council Retreat Subcommittee has begun planning the annual retreat this coming January.
As requested annually, we would like to engage Board and Commissions to get feedback on
city performance. The Retreat Subcommittee asks that each Board and Commission submit
these items through a letter due 12/18/2020, and framed under the following categories:
What has made your board or commission happy in the past year?
What has made your board or commission sad in the past year?
What is your board looking forward to in 2021?
For the happy category letters should reflect and recap on 2020 actions that resonated as
positive for the Board/Commission. For the sad category letters should reflect and recap on
2020 actions that resonated as negative for the Board/Commission. Items listed in each
category should be city related, and substantive. To close out each letter, please share what
your Board or Commission is looking forward to in 2021. Please limit these letters to
approximately 2 pages, and submit them to Taylor Reimann, Assistant to the City
Council (treimann@bouldercolorado.gov), no later than December 18.
Each Board and Commission should also designate one of their members to (virtually)
present the letters at a Pre-Retreat Study Session on January 12 at 6 p.m. Presenters will
be given no more than 3 minutes to discuss the 3 questions; time can be allocated at their
discretion. Using a slide deck is optional, and presentations should also be submitted to Taylor
no later than Monday, January 11 at noon. After all Boards and Commissions have presented,
Council may have follow-up questions for some based on the information shared.
Please feel free to reach out to Taylor Reimann with any clarifying questions.
Thank you for your effort to support our Boards, Commissions, and Council as we continue
planning for 2021.
Respectfully,
Mary Young and Bob Yates
Agenda Item 5B Page 1 of 3
December 13, 2019
Mayor Sam Weaver
Members of the Boulder City Council
P.O. Box 791
Boulder, CO 80306
Re: Planning Board’s Annual Letter to City Council – 2020
Dear Mayor Weaver and City Council Members,
The Planning Board appreciates the opportunity to provide input into the annual work plan
process. As the board considered the top three priorities, there were two significant themes that
emerged. These themes represent community cultural values that provide a lens through which
all City of Boulder initiatives should be considered:
1) Equity: We encourage City Council to further Boulder’s goals of inclusiveness and
diversity. Stay vigilant in assuring that vulnerable and underrepresented populations are
both heard and served. Pay special attention to the concerns of our youth and seek out
their input.
2) Community Engagement: We urge you to continue to involve community members as
early as possible in planning initiatives, and that data collection be as robust as the city’s
capacity allows. Foster better understanding of and support for projects through continual
and comprehensive engagement. The board feels that engagement mechanisms such as
public notice should be examined to assure renters are equitably included. i
There are still several uncompleted items on the current work plan to consider. We have been
asked to identify our top three priorities for the upcoming work plan, but we felt it was also
important to underscore completion of the existing processes. Planning Board recommends the
following ranking with highest priority first:
1. Alpine Balsam
2. CU South
3. Use Tables
4. Parking Code/TDM
5. Community Benefits
6. East Boulder Area Plan
7. BVCP Update
Planning Boards top three priorities for the 2020 Work Plan are:
Resilience: What resilience means to Planning Board is the City’s ability to cope with challenges
brought about by climate change, weather events, natural hazards, human-caused hazards, and
CITY OF BOULDER
Planning Board
email boulderplanningboard@bouldercolorado.gov
web www.bouldercolorado.gov
Agenda Item 5B Page 2 of 3
economic, political, and social challenges. Our most important resilience efforts, at least in the
near term, should focus generally on implementation of flood plain preservation, education, and
safety efforts and specifically the completion of the flood control project at CU South.
Transportation: Planning Board believes that the City should continue to focus on addressing
Boulder’s transportation-related challenges, including the need to address climate change-related
issues, employment-related commuting impacts and the capacity of our streets and
transportation-related infrastructure to deal with increasing traffic loads. The Board believes that
improvement of public transit services and bike paths will play an important role in dealing with
these concerns.
Housing: Planning Board identifies housing as a top priority. Escalating home prices limit
housing opportunities for low, moderate, and middle-income households that, in turn, inhibit the
City’s aspiration to be “a complete community with a diverse and integrated population.”
(BVCP, Section 7.) Diagonal Plaza, CU South and other potential neighborhood-scale areas are
opportunities for the City to undertake subcommunity or area planning, resulting in land use and
zoning revisions, to advance the following BVCP objectives: create the conditions for a diversity
of housing types and price ranges (BVCP 7.06); development of housing for a full range of
households (BVCP 7.09); integration of permanently affordable housing throughout the
community (BVCP 7.14), and; encourage efforts to provide market rate housing for middle-
income households by identifying opportunities to incentivize moderately sized and priced
homes (BVCP 7.16).
Planning Board expects to play our customary role on these work plan items. Given the scope
and range of the topics, we recommend that TAB, HAB, WRAB, and OSBT remain
meaningfully involved as their authority suggests.
Respectfully submitted,
Bryan Bowen
Chair, City of Boulder Planning Board
On behalf of the Board:
Harmon Zuckerman, Vice Chair
David Ensign
Peter Vitale
John Gerstle
Lupita Montoya
Sarah Silver
i Expand public notification of development projects to include all residential and commercial renters
within 600 feet of a proposed project. The solution to this challenge would be to add “…and renters” to
all BRC 9-4-3 Public Notice Requirements. (The new language would read “To property owners and
renters……”)
Agenda Item 5B Page 3 of 3