Boulder set to spend $2.7M on clearing encampments, cleaning parks

Apr. 29—Boulder City Council on Tuesday largely supported a plan to spend $2.7 million over 18 months on initiatives the city says will serve as tools to enforce its urban camping ban.

City staff, including Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold, Housing and Human Services Director Kurt Firnhaber, Deputy Director of Community Vitality Cris Jones and Director of Parks and Recreation Ali Rhodes, argued on Tuesday that these four measures, which include an internal cleanup team, a new ambassador program, two new urban park rangers and an additional police unit, are vital to ensure safety and to keep the city's public spaces clean.

While City Council members said in January that the city's prohibition on camping in public spaces should continue to be enforced, some advocates for those experiencing homelessness and a few Council members believe more policing is not the answer. Instead, they say the city should put that money toward providing a more diverse assortment of services and toward addressing the root causes of homelessness.

"Addressing those who continue to camp in public spaces in Boulder, as they have for decades — regardless of the city's failed policies — must be done in a way that gets to the root of the causes of people doing so," NAACP of Boulder County representative Darren O'Connor wrote in a letter to Council. "The Memorandum proposes expensive options that will likely push homeless people into less visible spaces, but will otherwise be yet another large expense to Boulder taxpayers that will only push the problem more out of sight."

Fewer than 12 hours after Boulder City Council signaled its support in the study session, a team of Parks and Recreation staff, a contracted ServPro team and several members of the Boulder Police Department cleared an encampment on the eastern side of Eben G. Fine Park.

This is all part of the routine for city staff, who go out about once a week, according to Boulder Police Sgt. Jeff Kessler. Urban Parks Manager Dennis Warrington agreed. Encampments are not new, but Warrington said the situation has escalated in his time with Boulder's Parks and Recreation Department.

Unanimous support for most measures

City Council members unanimously supported hiring a four-person internal clean-up team instead of continuing its contract with ServPro. At a cost of $435,000 over 18 months, the four-person team will be tasked with clearing encampments and other routine utilities maintenance work. Boulder Police Department will provide support with encampment removals.

While some of the tents at the park on Wednesday were reasonably well-ordered and clean, one particular site was much less so. Bags of garbage were taken to Western Disposal, and the crew cleaning the site found hypodermic needles and a gun magazine full of bullets. The person who had been camping in that particular tent was taken to jail for threatening officers, Kessler said, and his salvageable belongings will be put into a storage facility managed by the Parks and Recreation department.

Although Michael, a longtime camper who declined to provide his last name, said his community of campers does its best to police itself and to maintain their campsites, he recognizes the bigger picture.

"Our eco footprint is not gentle. It's not," he said while packing up his belongings from the spot at Eben G. Fine. "But like 97% of this stuff we found in the trash."

In addition to supporting an internal clean-up team, the City Council on Tuesday unanimously supported a pilot program that will form a contracted team of ambassadors to provide education and outreach, largely in the downtown and University Hill areas. The program will cost $868,000, but $300,000 of that will be footed by the Downtown Boulder Partnership.

"This is more eyes on the street given the lower amount of activity that we've been seeing (due to the pandemic)," Jones, of the city's Community Vitality department, said.

The Council also agreed to a pilot program that would hire a pair of unarmed urban park rangers to focus largely on education and code enforcement at an 18-month cost of $186,000.

For the pilot programs, council members agreed that it's important to have solid data and to ensure that the intended outcomes are clear.

"It's critical to collect real data ... both to track outcomes and (to) determine the efficacy of this program," Councilmember Mark Wallach said. "If we're going to spend this money and go down this road, we do need to know that it's impactful at the end of the day."

Policing debated

The Council also agreed to spend some $1.5 million on an additional six-member police unit to assist with these efforts, though the idea was not unanimously supported. In an unofficial 6-3 vote, Councilmembers Aaron Brockett, Rachel Friend and Adam Swetlik were the dissenting votes.

"I'm looking for new solutions," Swetlik said. "Additional police isn't a new solution. ... If we're going to spend $1.5 million on it, I would much rather take that money and try to balance the equation between enforcement and additional services."

But Herold on Tuesday argued that it's a matter of safety.

"This is probably the riskiest type of work that Boulder police engage in," the police chief said.

Safety is a concern for some community members as well. In 2021, there have been 335 reports of encampments in public spaces through the city's Inquire Boulder portral. Staff's presentation on Tuesday noted that encampments sometimes include weapons and hazardous materials such as propane tanks, used syringes and bio-waste.

Kessler agreed that officers should monitor encampment cleanups, at least in part because those tasked with removing hazardous materials often refuse to go out without a police presence. But he said this work is not why he got into policing.

During discussion on Tuesday, it wasn't lost on some members of the City Council that an additional police unit would come at a hefty price tag, an ask made not even an hour after the city shared that it's economic recovery is lagging after the pandemic.

Financing an additional unit would require more money for the police department than is currently budgeted — something the Council will vote on next month — and Brockett acknowledged that it would mean Boulder couldn't bring back some of the discontinued services "that the community has been missing."

In terms of communities that are successful in addressing homelessness, Steve Berg, vice president for programs and policy with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said in a previous interview with the Camera that it's best when the police, city officials, service providers, activists and those experiencing homelessness all work together.

"Everybody works together, and people aren't going to work together if the police are coming to what is people's home and throwing out their belongings," Berg said at that time. "You're not going to have people working together if that's what homeless people are experiencing."

Sanctioned campground

Jarrod Taylor, who watched the team from afar in Eben G. Fine Park on Wednesday morning, was frustrated about the amount of money and time that the city spends to clear encampments. He suggested something similar to a sanctioned campground, a place that could serve as a designated location "where you need to go if you want to live like this."

But the majority of the City Council on Tuesday felt differently. Councilmembers Brockett, Friend and Swetlik supported exploring the idea of a sanctioned encampment, but no one else was prepared to devote staff resources to researching the idea.

"This is about prioritization, prioritization of limited resources," Councilmember Bob Yates said, adding that staff hours and dollars should be spent on "programs that we know work rather than experiment with a program that we know will not work."

"Bob, I think we don't know that it wouldn't work," Brockett countered in the meeting. "There are successful examples with the most recent and most nearby one being Denver where their safe outdoor spaces program in the last nine months has been quite successful."

Mayor Pro Tem Junie Joseph did clarify that she is a proponent of the idea of sanctioned encampments in concept but would need some answers before she'd be able to fully support it. Location of the campground would raise equity concerns, she said, fearing that it would likely end up in a location where there are more minorities and lower-income residents, instead of in a wealthier part of town.

Michael, the long-time camper, said he'd be open to having a designated place to stay. On the streets, people form a community of like-minded individuals, and Michael said he feels like a failure if he's unable to support those in need. That's why he often allows new people to join his group.

The rules at the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless dissuade him from staying there. Primarily, he's worried about his belongings being stolen, and he would not be able to store everything he owns in the storage that's offered to shelter residents.

"It's another way for Boulder to be the republic that it is," Michael said of the rules at the shelter and the city policies that make it illegal to camp in public spaces.

City Council will resume its discussion of the city's homelessness policies at its regular meeting Tuesday, which will include open comment and the annual homelessness update.