Steve Pomerance

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...

In 1858, Chief Niwot, Boulder’s first real environmentalist (that we know about), told the European settlers the area was cursed: “People seeing the beauty of this valley will want to stay, and their staying will be the undoing of the beauty.” We are seeing Chief Niwot’s curse play out. The arguments for more and more, whether based on the specious need for continual growth and change or on the magical logic that more people means less total impact, drown out what should be obvious — there are fundamental constraints on how many people and jobs can be jammed into the Boulder Valley and still have it be a desirable place. Growth plus climate change have made our water supply much less secure. Boulder has three water sources: the Arapahoe Glacier area via the Lakewood Pipeline, the Middle Boulder Creek drainage via Barker Reservoir, and the Colorado River via the Colorado-Big Thompson Project (C-BT). Under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the Lower Basin states (CA, AZ, NV) are ent...