Boulder’s City Council is set to hold its 2024 retreat on Wednesday and Thursday. The retreat gives council members a chance to discuss city issues and firm up key policy priorities for the city for the next two years.
In Boulder, council retreats typically happen biannually. According to Deputy City Manager Chris Meschuk, the city used to hold them every year but found it wasn’t necessary to have them that often. Now, the major retreats are held every two years, but on the off years, the council does “mini retreats” to check in on work plan items and make adjustments where needed.
Council retreats work a bit differently from normal meetings. The council won’t make specific policy decisions at the meeting, but council members will begin to set a course for tackling bigger-picture issues facing Boulder. They will discuss the items on city staff’s work plan for the year as well as the city’s broader strategic goals for the next few years.
Each council member has been asked to prepare for the retreat by making lists of issues they’d like to see the city prioritize. Meschuk told the Daily Camera that everyone’s ideas will be combined into one big list that will be shared with the whole council. He added that city staff may provide context on some items to aid in the decision-making process.
“We might try and do a little bit of framing or scoping to (help the council) understand, if that was your priority, here’s how much work it would take, or here’s how it relates to things we’re already working on,” he said.
On Wednesday, the first day of the retreat, council members will give statements on their vision for the city, talk about how to streamline decision-making and improve processes, and do a preview of council members’ priorities.
On Thursday, day two, the council will discuss how to communicate with each other and staff most effectively and what values guide each person’s feelings on what matters to the community. Later, the council members will work with facilitator Heather Bergman, who has facilitated the past several council retreats, to begin narrowing down the list of priorities to a handful that feel most important to the council as a whole.
“They may use some exercises of prioritization, whether it’s something as simple as straw polling or (something) fancier. … But the idea is, at the end, that hopefully they’ve got 10 priorities that they can all support as the top ones to focus on,” said Meschuk.
Meschuk said using a facilitator allows all council members, including the mayor, to participate instead of one of them needing to run the meeting.
Mayor Aaron Brockett told the Daily Camera he’d like to see the council prioritize issues like housing affordability, transportation safety and services for unhoused residents. He also wants to see an emphasis on equity and climate action in city initiatives.
“I’m looking forward to the conversation with my colleagues. I’ve spoken one-on-one with everybody, and people have some really creative ideas that they’re bringing to the table,” Brockett said.
“So I’m looking forward to hearing my colleagues put those out there and getting a chance to discuss them. And the challenge is really going to be to whittle it down from all the great ideas and pick the ones that we want to focus on in the next few years.”
Brockett doesn’t expect there are any issues likely to trigger major controversy among council members, although some individuals disagree on certain policy issues.
Mayor Pro Tem Nicole Speer also said she looks forward to the retreat.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for us to come together, to get to know each other a little bit more, to have some time to converse about topics that are of (the) biggest interest to us. We don’t often get those types of meetings to have those kinds of bigger brainstorming sessions. So I think it’ll be really great,” she said.
The priorities on Speer’s list include making it easier for more people in the community to serve on the City Council. To accomplish that goal, she would like to see processes streamlined to make the council more efficient, which she hopes would decrease the amount of time council members need to spend on their duties each week — currently, she estimates, it’s about a 25- to 30-hour-per-week job. In addition, she wants to look into increasing council members’ pay.
“I think if we can do both of those together, we’ll get to a really good place where we can have a more diverse group of perspectives and different types of community leaders on council than we typically have in the past,” Speer said.
The retreat is open to the public and is scheduled for Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Community members can join in-person at the Municipal Services Center, 5050 Pearl St. The council has not held meetings in the council chambers at the municipal building this month due to renovations and technical upgrades that are still underway.
There’s also an online option for anyone unable to attend either day of the retreat in-person. Agendas and virtual links are available at bouldercolorado.gov/events/city-council-retreat-1 for Wednesday’s meeting and bouldercolorado.gov/events/city-council-retreat-2 for Thursday’s meeting.
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