Steve Pomerance

Tuesday’s Boulder City Council vote to limit trail building on Anemone Hill, to exclude mountain bikes from its north and east sides, and to ask the Open Space board to study a mountain bike link up out of Boulder Canyon and then west to Four Mile Canyon, was exactly the right thing to do. Anemone Hill is the long ridge between Boulder Canyon and Sunshine Canyon (the west extension of Mapleton Avenue.)  Anemone Hill has a rich and diverse wildlife habitat, especially on its north side, which faces Sunshine Canyon, where most of the rejected trails were proposed to be built. Indicator species (which give information on the health of the habitat) that live in that area include Northern goshawk, Abert’s squirrel, black bear, and wild turkey. Building trails every couple of hundred yards on the ridge’s north face would have destroyed much of this important habitat. The east side, because it is so accessible from Settler’s Park off Canyon and Centennial Trailhead off Mapleton, i...

Voting yes on Ballot Issues 2B and 2C will allow Boulder to take the necessary steps to determine if it should become Colorado’s 30th municipal electric utility. 2C authorizes the City to form the utility, but only if stringent financial, reliability and environmental safeguards are met. 2B, which only costs the average household about $1/month, provides funds to complete engineering plans and obtain the legal decisions necessary to finalize costs. If an independent third party expert determines that rates at start-up will not exceed Xcel’s, and all other conditions are met, Boulder could form a municipal utility, with local control, competitive rates, long term price stability, increased renewable energy, and a 50 percent or higher reduction in CO2 output. Profits that now go to Xcel become savings to Boulder ratepayers. Our energy dollars stay at home. We can remove the restrictive rules on solar installations, promote local innovation, and attract hi-tech businesses. Or Xcel mig...

Voting yes on Ballot Issues 2B and 2C will allow Boulder to take the necessary steps to determine if it should become Colorado’s 30th municipal electric utility. 2C authorizes the City to form the utility, but only if stringent financial, reliability and environmental safeguards are met. 2B, which only costs the average household about $1/month, provides funds to complete engineering plans and obtain the legal decisions necessary to finalize costs. If an independent third party expert determines that rates at start-up will not exceed Xcel’s, and all other conditions are met, Boulder could form a municipal utility, with local control, competitive rates, long term price stability, increased renewable energy, and a 50 percent or higher reduction in CO2 output. Profits that now go to Xcel become savings to Boulder ratepayers. Our energy dollars stay at home. We can remove the restrictive rules on solar installations, promote local innovation, and attract hi-tech businesses. Or Xcel mig...