[BoulderCouncilHotline] Comments re: 2023 budget

[Speer, Nicole]

Dear Colleagues, Staff, and Hotline readers,

I shared these comments during our budget study session, but Finance suggested it would still be helpful to share them via Hotline. So, while I generally try to save emails to Hotline for questions, below are my comments on the 2023 budget. I included suggestions/questions relating to how we might reallocate funds or think differently about how we are spending proposed funds.


  1.  The Additional Information document from 9/16 outlined the ways that our city is boosting support for families who are struggling financially in 2023 through one-time funds, through rental assistance, eviction support, and childcare subsidies. In addition, it outlined the funding and programs already supported by HHS, such as food assistance and other basic needs support. In addition to this funding, we are adding $200,000 to basic needs support for 2023. I still do not think this is enough to meet the growing number of residents who are barely hanging on to their housing given massive rent increases and continuing growth in costs of basic needs such as food.



We currently have $750,000 budgeted for the navigation center, but the navigation center likely won't be fully operational until winter 2023/2024. Hopefully we will be able to use some of the state ARPA funds directed toward homelessness and housing to buy or fix up a building for the navigation center, which leaves us on the hook for the cost of operations. But operations, at best, seem that they wouldn't begin until summer of 2023. If ~$750,000 is an estimation of the operating cost of the center, could we use some of those funds (e.g., $200,000) to provide additional basic needs support to folks at risk of losing their housing in the first half of 2023? You've all heard me say that homelessness is growing and will continue to grow. Anything we can invest in preventing homelessness now will pay dividends in the coming years, especially when it comes to family homelessness which, as we heard a few weeks ago in our homelessness update, is a major risk factor for adult homelessness.



We also still have some ARPA funds we set aside for public health crisis funds (~$500,000?). As most of the world has decided COVID is over, a justifiable use of some of these funds would be investing in basic needs support to help those who are worse off economically than they were before the pandemic. This public health crisis fund may be another source of funds to try to mitigate the public health crises of poverty, homelessness, and disability that COVID has exacerbated. Using some of these funds and some of the navigation center funds that won't be used in 2023 if we don't start programming services until summer 2023, could we get to $500,000 more in additional basic needs support for our community? This would be in addition to the $200,000 enhancement and the one-time funds mentioned above.



If we could set aside even a small portion of any additional basic needs funding we can identify to support low-income artists whose work advances our city's goals, that could be a way to address the desire some of us raised for more support for our incredible but financially struggling arts community.



  1.  We are spending over $17,000,000 on police patrol and traffic violations. Is there a way we can invest more in preventive measures like traffic and security cameras to maximize the amount of time officers are able to spend investigating bike and catalytic converter theft rings? Bike thefts are impacting so many in our community. It seems clear that there are organized groups targeting Boulder because they know many people living here have expensive bikes, but it isn't just those with expensive bikes whose bikes are being stolen (and who are losing their transportation). Can we put any of the $17,000,000 investment we are currently making in patrol and traffic stops to things that will deter thieves and make them easier to identify, such as installing and monitoring security cameras in public locations with high rates of bicycle thefts, distributing catalytic converter theft prevention devices/programs for residents at high risk of theft, etc.?


  1.  We are spending $373,000 to make the community court permanent. It is having success in getting people to access services thanks to strategic partnerships with providers, and it is very staff intensive. We need staff to ticket people, staff to connect people with services, and more staff to resolve the tickets. I'd like to see us improve on this program's success by seeing if we can make it more efficient. Is there a way we can use some of these funds to pilot a strategy that goes straight to connecting people with services, for example, by incentivizing people to engage with services rather penalizing them into service engagement?



  1.  I am concerned that the safe and managed spaces program has not reduced the number of encampments in our parks and public spaces. We seem to be playing whack-a-mole. When we clean up one area, people simply move to another area. Investing another $500,000 into this program to create a second cleanup team feels like the wrong way to use pilot money. For a pilot extension, I would like us to not just do more of the same thing, but to invest in strategies that are novel and may show better success in keeping our public spaces clean and accessible, such as incentivizing people to pick up their own trash and putting in portable bathrooms. With a pilot program, we should try new things to achieve our desired outcomes. Spending more money on the same thing we've been doing for the past year and a half doesn't feel like an effective use of pilot funds.

Thanks,
Nicole

Nicole Speer, Ph.D.
Boulder City Councilmember
Pronouns: she, her(s), ella

Phone: 303-519-9068
Web: bouldercolorado.gov/person/nicole-speer<https://bouldercolorado.gov/person/nicole-speer>
Twitter: @SpeerBldrCC<https://twitter.com/SpeerBldrCC>

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