Opinion: Taking on a tough issue


The current Boulder City Council should be acknowledged for taking on the “pops and scrapes” issue (also called “compatible development”) and trying to finish it during their term. We should commend this group of our peers for their willingness to struggle with a very difficult issue that has many citizens on each side, and even some on both sides at once. Yes, there have been mistakes made in the process, and the council should definitely avoid making them again, but at least they are making the effort.
The criticisms made by Mark Ruzzin and Leslie Durgin in a guest opinion (Camera, Sept. 15) were disingenuous. His council abandoned their attempt to deal with this issue by passing a Floor Area Ratio limit of 0.8 that accomplished essentially nothing. I know Leslie quite well — she was mayor when I was on council — and I believe her concern for a careful process is honest and well intended; however, in my opinion, given the work to date, the council that started this effort needs to finish it, as they are well informed on all the details and have heard all the concerns.
Having now patted the council on the back, they are also due some criticism. By far the biggest failure here was the lack of ongoing engagement by the council in refining the objectives and regulatory approaches. To summarize a lengthy process, after setting some rather vague goals for the project, it was turned over to the staff and the planning board to do the heavy lifting. The council should have had the staff come back to council much sooner, and then had a substantive debate on the objectives, on what kind and how much new regulation would be acceptable, and on where in the city these would be applied.
For example, there apparently still is some confusion as to whether this whole effort is about addressing the impact of a given house on its immediate neighbors, preserving overall “neighborhood character,” or limiting the size of houses to make them more affordable or energy efficient. And the option of simply regulating the building envelope itself versus regulating the ratio of floor area to lot size (FAR) only emerged recently, over a year and a half into the process.
None of this was helped by the staff hiring a consultant who came back with an integrated list of changes to the bulk planes, floor area ratios, wall lengths, etc. that were all to be implemented together. Had the objectives been narrowed prior to this work, I believe that three major impact areas would have been identified: two-story side yard walls looming over neighbors, oversized garages built in the setbacks, and houses filling their lots to the point where rear yard open space no longer exists. Then the consultant could have focused on these issues. I am still concerned that the first two are not adequately addressed.
When the council finally fully engaged some months ago, they were faced with the consultant`s recommendation, a tweaked version generated by the staff and another by planning board, survey results, and comments from citizens, some of whom are at least as knowledgeable on this issue as the council. Resolving all this in a way that a real majority of council could support is a very difficult task, so we shouldn`t expect perfection in the results, even if there were such a thing on a controversial issue like this. But at least there will be results.
What can be learned from this? First, the council needs to distinguish projects that are routine and can be handed off to the staff from projects that are unique and for which council must provide much earlier input and greater ongoing oversight. The Climate Action Plan (that took a major citizen effort to revive) and the Blue Ribbon Commission II (an unelected non-charter group that is making important financial decisions) are other examples of projects that have not been receiving sufficient attention. The council can only do a few of these each term; members must commit to involve themselves directly or not bother to start them. Second, there must be more debate as these big projects are being fleshed out. Strenuous discussion needs to be promoted during the early stages of any project, so that issues and objections actually get dealt with, and the minority isn`t simply left being naysayers at the end.


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