Opinion: When will the big growth questions be addressed?
Sept. 17 was a great day. At 5 a.m. my climbing partner
and I left Boulder to climb Navajo Peak via Niwot Ridge. After some hours of
hiking, we started on a mile long section of rock scrambling along the steep,
exposed ridge. The route finding was complex, and the views toward the Boulder
watershed, the plains, and the Continental Divide were great. Conditions were
perfect — sunny, warm, and not too windy. Some hours later, we finished by
descending Airplane Gully, passing wreckage from a post-World War II small
plane crash. We then hiked out, also beautiful, but more hours on top of an
already long day. We got to the car tired and thirsty, but satisfied and no
blisters.
This wonderful day followed a not-so-good Tuesday
evening at the City Council meeting, which started with a study session on
growth and development. Many of council members’ initial comments were
seemingly directed at convincing those who came to ask for action on
controlling growth that there was no problem. According to these council
members, the city’s planning is working fine, and the current spate of building
are just projects that had been on hold because of the economy. Undisputed by
other council members were comments to the effect that traffic has not
increased, our water supply is more than adequate, Boulder Junction is
supplying more housing, and there was plenty of chance for public input into
that project during the many years over which it was planned.
It bothered me that the other sides of these issues were
not acknowledged: Many more big buildings are still in the pipeline, as the
meeting’s handouts demonstrated. Rush hour congestion has gone up markedly
because of in-commuting; that Boulder residents have cut their driving has kept
total vehicle travel from increasing. Our water supply depends significantly on
the drought-plagued Colorado River via the Colorado Big Thompson project, but
we are way down in priority for Colorado River water, and CBT East Slope water
is apparently even junior to West Slope requirements (according to a water
attorney I talked to recently.) Boulder Junction will also add employment, so
we’ll get very little if any net housing gain, but we will get large amounts of
extra traffic. And if citizens feel that they were not well informed, well, maybe
the council should take some responsibility for that.
The motion to look at growth issues, passed later in the
evening, was allegedly written by two council members that afternoon, but was
not even emailed onto the city hotline for the public to read. From what I
could gather, the motion will split the relatively complete three page list of
work projects submitted by various council members into “discrete items” or
insert them into the Comprehensive Housing Strategy, the Sustainable Streets
and Centers project, the Envision East Arapahoe project, or the catch-all
Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan five-Year Update. I expect that the
overarching questions of “how much, how fast, and under what conditions”, whose
answers would provide needed context for almost all the projects on the list,
will be deferred to the 2015 BVCP update. So even if answered, these questions
will become mostly irrelevant because the above projects will likely already be
finalized, or close thereto.
Besides, the BVCP’S policies (there are
dozens of pages of them) are unenforced. Just for example, Policy 1.30 “Growth
to Pay Fair Share of New Facility Costs” says, “…new development (shall) pay the cost of providing needed
facilities and an equitable share of services including affordable housing, and
to mitigate negative impacts such as those to the transportation system.” This
policy is followed reasonably closely in utilities (but not all aspects),
partially in General Fund departments, and weakly in transportation; the
requirement that new commercial/office development fund its share of affordable
housing is ignored. Or consider Policy 2., the “Built Environment.” It
designates the area southeast of Baseline and US 36 as a “neighborhood activity
center”. So how is it that the zoning allows projects like Baseline Zero’s
55-foot high hotel/office complex to be proposed?
When we were almost finished with Niwot Ridge, we ran
into a guy from north Boulder. He made a point of telling me how bad the
traffic has become in the last few years, and we discussed what might happen
about all the growth and whether the majority of the council would ever give
the ordinary citizens a real chance to provide direction.