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Ballot Measure 2M and the Boulder City Council processes

A relatively innocuous-appearing measure appeared on this year’s ballot, Measure 2M, “Debt Limit City Charter Language Change.” It asks: “Shall Section 97 of the Boulder Home Rule Charter be amended pursuant to Ordinance 8762 to modify the City’s debt limitation to be not more than three percent (3%) of the actual value of the taxable property within the City?” When I first read this, I had no clue what its significance would be. Did this just change how the debt limitation is calculated, or did it make a real difference in how much debt the city could take on? And was it addressing all debt, or just some? For example, does it deal with debt taken on by the water utility, or just the areas funded by the General Fund and paid for by our sales taxes, or what? The title was vague in the extreme. I even submitted an Open Records request for some dollar numbers, but got back nothing useful. So, I searched on the internet. I found that this measure would seemingly increase the basis to c...
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Opinion: Voting in this crazy election

 Given the pressing need for real change and reform in how Boulder’s government runs, here are some specific recommendations for how to vote. The budget situation is a mess — way too many staff hired over the last decade, using up financial resources that are necessary for long-term maintenance of our buildings; overly expensive projects like Alpine-Balsam and the South Boulder Creek dam; etc. The policy process is also in need of real reform. The current approach of using staff memos that have had no critical review plus lengthy council member comments with no real integration leaves the decisions under-informed. This is because the council’s agenda committee provides essentially no input to structure the information ahead of time. The public input process is fatally flawed. Surveys are hopelessly biased; public comments at meetings are ignored; and community experts are almost never invited to participate directly. All this (and much more) demands that we get new blood on...
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Opinion: We need council members who will actually fix our broken budget process

The list of Boulder’s financial messes keeps growing. What follows is a brief summary of some of the bigger issues. What is clear to me from looking at this is that it will take some very serious reorganization, including not only how things operate, but also how both the City Council and staff members fulfill their responsibilities. It is unacceptable to continue with business as usual. Ben Binder is a civil engineer and has been following the South Boulder Creek project carefully over the years. He recently pointed out to the City Water Resources Advisory Board, “The City’s Capital Improvements Program Guiding Principles specifically state that capital programming should ‘maximize efficiency of investment demonstrated by measurable cost/benefit analyses.’ “Yet I have not found a current cost/benefit analysis for the South Boulder Creek project in the information provided to the WRAB. If staff has not prepared and provided you with such an analysis, then staff has failed to su...
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Opinion: South Boulder Creek flood mitigation needs new minds doing new the thinking

Boulder just added a web page where the city states that it will start building the dam/floodwall for South Boulder Creek in October. No surprise to me, the projected cost went up another $10 million to $76.5 million since last year. (And that’s after spending something like $13 million on multiple re-designs to deal with issues that any intelligent person should have seen early on.) Just to list off some of the many problems that this “downstream” design still faces: The half-mile-long concrete wall along U.S. 36 requires a drainage system to get groundwater under U.S. 36 so as to avoid killing off threatened species on both sides; this will require significant ongoing maintenance to keep from being jammed up with dirt, etc. The detention pond at the north end of CU South property will require a liner, so that it doesn’t fill from high groundwater levels in that area. And the liner requires a drain, so it can empty and isn’t filled by pre-flood rains.  The road into CU South ...
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Opinion: We really need some new people on the Boulder City Council

I’ve tried to avoid commenting on elections because I’d rather focus on issues than personalities. But times change … so here are some of the many recent events that show we really, really, really need some new blood on our council/mayor. Item #1: The council added an “executive session” to their agenda for last week. Per a recent charter change, such sessions allow the full council to meet behind closed doors to consider legal issues. But their announcement contained no details regarding what they were considering. Since 2001, the Colorado Open Meetings Law has required state and local public bodies to provide notice of the topic for an executive session, “in as much detail as possible without compromising the purpose for which the executive session is authorized.” And in 2020, the Colorado Court of Appeals found that the Town of Basalt violated the COML for failing to provide the necessary details. But, although I raised the issue with the council, no details emerged. Apparently, the...
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Opinion: The importance of including Boulder citizens in city decisions

What started me off on this topic was an email I got from a friend regarding the Boulder City Council’s discussion of the tipped minimum wage issue at their recent meeting, and in particular the testimony of Rebecca Mitchell, professor at the Leeds School of Business at CU. Prof. Mitchell provided an excellent critique of the city’s work, which, no surprise, supported the city’s proposal that favored the restaurants. But before she finished, her testimony was abruptly cut off after exactly two minutes. Prof. Mitchell said her day job is to “evaluate whether the evidence supports the causal conclusion being drawn.” And she added, “The June 2026 report (done by city staff) does not do so. Instead, it reads as a post-hoc justification for policy direction that appears to already have been chosen.” If I were on the council and considering a decision, and a CU professor took the time to come and testify, I would want to hear all she had to say, ask her questions, and probe the issues she ra...
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Opinion: The Downtown Development Authority is even worse than I thought

I got some very interesting feedback on my most recent column on the Downtown Development Authority. Here’s a summary of some of what came up for me in reading the input. For your information, nothing is set in stone yet; the Boulder City Council could still come to its senses, and fix Ordinance 8763 passed July 23 on first reading. If the council passes Ordinance 8763 as is, creating the structure for DDA, the decisions to implement it and to divert incremental increases in sales and property taxes are voted on solely by downtown business folks. These decisions are submitted only to the “qualified electors as defined in the Act (CRS 31-25-8).” These are property owners, lessees, etc., in the DDA area, including Downtown and the Hill. We citizens get no say. The way 8763 is written, the DDA can divert incremental tax revenues (generated within the district) that we Boulder citizens dedicated by our vote for Open Space, Parks and Recreation, Culture and Safety, Arts, and Transportation....
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Opinion: Does a Downtown Development Authority make sense for Boulder?

The Boulder City Council is considering forming a Downtown Development Authority (DDA). This entity would be run by downtown property owners and have the power to use tax-increment financing (TIF) to fund improvements in downtown. The theory is that the DDA’s improvements would increase property and/or sales tax from this area, so it should be able to collect this increment to finance public improvements. The DDA’s board would make the decisions within the limits of Boulder’s zoning and other regulations, and state law. DDA’s are potentially useful in areas where there is a lot of development potential and attendant public infrastructure needs. But that is not the case in Boulder, where our downtown is mostly built out, and whose business success is more a function of the quality of the experience of residents, tourists and employees who come there but live outside of this area. A significant concern is that what the downtown property owners want may not be what the rest of Boulder...
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Opinion: How to fund Boulder’s building projects without a tax increase

The (re)emergence of the need to fund repairs and replacements of multiple City of Boulder buildings has encouraged me to try (again) to interest the city council in the large increase in Boulder’s spending that has occurred. I think this is important because, based on my analysis to date, the city, without seriously impacting levels of service (LOS), could reduce its operating budget and thereby save enough to fund most, if not all, of the required building work without a tax increase. I started by looking at the overall budget. It increased (inflation-adjusted) by about 23% over the last 10 years. Then I deducted the capital expenditures, so that it only reflected the operating budget, which in theory measures how much is being expended to pay staff and others to maintain LOS. The operating budget per capita (inflation-adjusted) increased by over 18% during the last 10 years; the number of employees increased by around 200 to well over 1,500, even after eliminating the library em...
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Opinion: City Council doesn’t like citizens complaining to the staff, but refuses to listen

Earlier this week, Boulder council members Matt Benjamin and Tina Marquis  published a lengthy complaint  accusing citizens of verbally abusing city staff. They told people to, instead, communicate their concerns directly to the council by showing up at public hearings or emailing them. The problem is that, based on the visible evidence, this council majority pays essentially no attention to anything anyone says. If they really wanted people to come to the council meetings or write to them with their concerns, then they need to demonstrate that they actually care by responding with useful action. A start would be to allow testimony from all the people who sign up, not just a random selection. Council members should ask questions right away and not wait until the end of the meeting. Tell them what the city can do for them. If things get repetitive, the mayor can always t...
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