Steve Pomerance

According to the IRS, “Opportunity Zones are an economic development tool — that is, they are designed to spur economic development and job creation in distressed communities.” This concept was part of the 2017 Republican tax cut bill. About 8,700 census tracts have been approved as opportunity zones across the country. Boulder’s opportunity zone was selected by the governor’s Office of Economic Development and our city government employees without consulting the City Council or the citizens. This census tract is about 2.5 square miles, and encompasses the area between 28th and 55th Streets, and from Arapahoe Road to Iris Avenue, with a notch cut out by Valmont and Airport roads. This “distressed community” includes the new Google office buildings, the 29th Street Mall and Boulder Junction. Obviously, this choice was not about helping the disadvantaged; it was about getting investors to dump yet more money into Boulder, plain and simple.(Diagonal Plaza is the only part of the oppor...

According to the IRS, “An Opportunity Zone is an economically-distressed community where new investments, under certain conditions, may be eligible for preferential tax treatment.” “Opportunity Zones are an economic development tool—that is, they are designed to spur economic development and job creation in distressed communities.” So you know, according to our state government, which designated Colorado’s Opportunity Zones, the area in Boulder between 28 th Street and 55 th , from Arapahoe to Iris, is a “distressed community.” And we’re not the only one to have such a bizarre designation. Parts of Fort Collins, Estes Park, and Grand Junction are now OZs. But there are some rural parts of the state included that at least might be genuinely in need. Investing in an OZ gets you some incredibly beneficial tax breaks. If you stay in the deal for 10 years, you pay no Federal capital gains tax on any profit you make in the deal. (Plus, you get to avoid 15% of the capital gains tax...

Last Friday morning, I was asked by some folks to take a look at the details of Proposition 110, the 20-year 0.62 percent state sales tax increase that would fund transportation projects. In the portions of the proposed law that would give counties and cities 40 percent of the revenues (with half going to each) I noticed the following phrase, “(1) After paying the costs of the Colorado state patrol and any other costs of the department (CDOT) exclusive of highway construction, highway improvements, or highway maintenance, that are appropriated by the general assembly …,” followed by the allocation rules for the counties and cities. So it’s clear, this phrase is embedded in the current statutes, and the drafters of Proposition 110 simply included it and made it apply to Proposition 110’s revenues. Then I looked at the portion of Proposition 110 that allocated 45 percent of the proceeds to the state. I was surprised to find that this phrase was specifically removed. And it was not ...

By  MATT BENJAMIN ,  ED BYRNE ,  ALLYN FEINBERG ,  MARK MCINTYRE ,  STEVE POMERANCE ,  EVAN RAVITZ ,  TYLER ROMERO ,  MICHAEL SCHREINER ,  JOHN SPITZER  and  VALERIE YATES We urge city of Boulder voters to vote  yes  on Ballot Question 2G, which reads, “Shall Sections 38, 45, and 56 of the City Charter be amended pursuant to Ordinance 8274 to allow the Boulder City Council to adopt ordinances that permit use of electronic petitions and to permit on-line electronic signing or endorsement of initiative, referendum, and recall petitions?” The city of Boulder’s Campaign Finance/Elections Working Group unanimously recommended this to Council, who unanimously voted to put it on the ballot. (The initiative, referendum and recall processes are the elements of direct democracy. The initiative is where a group of citizens gathers enough signatures to put a proposed piece of legislation on the ballot and asks the voters to ap...

Some seriously flawed initiatives to pay for transportation and schools are on the ballot: Proposition 110 raises our taxes for 20 years, but generates only enough money to meet a fraction of the growth-related transportation needs generated during that time. Proposition 109 borrows $3.5 billion for roads, to be paid off by diverting our existing taxes from other uses. Amendment 73 constitutionally changes our tax rates and raises an excessive $1.6 billion per year to fund education costs, yet completely ignores the almost half a billion dollars per year cost of building new schools to address our growing population. None of these initiatives makes any attempt to address the underlying cause of these huge funding gaps: Colorado’s growth is not paying its way. If we actually required new development to fully mitigate its impacts, most of the need for these tax-and-debt increases would go away. I realize that the idea of requiring developers to solve the problems that they create i...

This spring, I wrote an op-ed entitled ”  Parking garage on the Hill — boon or boondoggle? ” I have learned more about this, and it’s become clear that this proposal is a far worse deal than I had envisioned. The following is based on readily available data, but everything is still fluid and so may change. The notion that a proposed 201-space underground garage is going to solve the Hill’s parking needs is simply not true. A new hotel above the garage will displace 88 existing spaces (62 in the Pleasant Street University Hill General Improvement District lot, plus 26 other spaces) leaving a net gain of 113 new spaces. But the hotel could use all these up. Here’s how: Assuming only half the hotel patrons drive and a 20 percent vacancy rate on the 189 rooms, that’s 75 cars, leaving 38 net new spaces. The hotel employees (about 38 per shift) and restaurant and shop employees (maybe another 42, depending on what actually gets built on site), even if only half drive, will use up...

On Tuesday night,  the Boulder city council chose the best approach to mitigating the risk of future flooding on South Boulder Creek . But, given our situation, there are no perfect solutions. First, Boulder is one of the most flood-prone cities in the country. We have numerous creeks that run through the city. And being up against the foothills allows sudden storms to dump rain into the drainages that flow directly into town with almost no chance to dissipate. Second, some of Boulder’s drainages are huge. For example, the South Boulder Creek drainage above Colo. 93 is about 100 square miles. One inch of rain throughout that area would drop over 5,000 acre-feet of water, about five times the storage capacity of the measures under consideration Tuesday night. (An acre-foot is one acre covered with one foot of water, or 43,560 cubic feet.) Third, much of Boulder was built without serious consideration of the flood risk. South Boulder is not the only area subject to severe i...

FAR “density transfer”, used at 1440 Pine and 311 Mapleton: Add underlined language to BRC 9-2-14 (c): (c) Modifications to Development Standards: The following development standards of B.R.C. 1981 may be modified under the site review process set forth in this section. However, land underneath a building or part of a building may not be counted in calculating the allowed floor area for another building or part of a building, and no building or part of a building may be built on land that has been counted in calculating the allowed floor area of another building or part of a building: Spot Zoning, used at 311 Mapleton: Add underlined language to BRC 9-2-19: (e) Criteria: The city's zoning is the result of a detailed and comprehensive appraisal of the city's present and future land use allocation needs. In order to establish and maintain sound, stable and desirable development within the city, rezoning of land is to be discouraged and allowed only under...

Here are a few observations about what was discussed Tuesday night at the Whittier ADU meeting that you all attended. First, I would like to acknowledge Sam for putting in the time and energy to actually try to think through some of the issues and to put together an approach that would accomplish some of the goals without being a wholesale rezoning. But there is a lot more work to be done, as I have tried to lay out below. My concern is that trying to address all this in a council meeting, when the groundwork has not been done properly, and where citizen input is necessarily going to be one step behind, is not going to produce anywhere near the optimal result. The staff work is just not adequate: They failed to identify all the issues, and their arguments are pretty much a replay. And there is no real goals analysis, options development, or critical evaluation. Here are some examples of where significant issues still exist. At the end I lay out an outline as to how yo...

The debate around allowing more accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in Boulder neighborhoods has ignored a number of fundamental issues, and so has unnecessarily turned into a pitched battle. First, the objectives are not clear. City staff cherry-picked from the endless list of comprehensive plan goals to target having a “variety of housing types.” Some council members want ADUs to be permanently affordable, in spite of the difficulties created by state law’s prohibition on rent control. Others argue that ADUs that rent at market rate will help keep people in their homes in the face of skyrocketing property taxes. (Boulder Valley School District and county commissioners could address this by matching tax revenue growth to inflation rather than property value increases.) And then there are the undercurrents — more people should have the “right” to live in single-family neighborhoods, Boulder is mainly “rich, white, and privileged,” Boulder should be a big, dense city, etc. What is una...