Steve Pomerance

The Open Space Board of Trustees finally did what the City Council and the Water Resources Advisory Board have failed to do. The OSBT conditioned the use of open space for flood control on city staff taking a serious look at upstream options. This could potentially avoid both a view-blocking dam along U.S. Highway 36 as well as destruction of important wildlife habitat. This examination of a broader range of options is long overdue. Also, thanks to council member Mark Wallach for raising two big equity issues – which creeks should get the flood control money to maximize the benefit/cost ratio, and who should pays for the University of Colorado Boulder’s expansion agenda, CU or Boulder citizens. That these questions still exist exposes the fact that this process was mismanaged from the beginning. South Boulder Creek was one of multiple tributaries that flooded in 2013. It’s the biggest, but others, including Bear Canyon Creek, Bluebell Creek, and Skunk Creek, also had very signifi...

The “direct election of mayor” initiative is fatally flawed. This initiative, which emerged a few weeks ago, is so flawed that the proponents should withdraw it and not submit it again until they have addressed its obvious problems. And for those council members who, because of the coronavirus’s impact on signature gathering, seem attached to the idea of simply putting initiated measures on the ballot without doing detailed analysis, this is a perfect example of why not to do that. Under this proposal, Boulder would end up with seven council members and a mayor, eight in total. Even numbers don’t work, because they lead to deadlocked votes on many issues. That’s why councils have odd numbers of members. What happened here is that the petitioners reduced the number of council members getting four-year terms in each council election from four to three. As a result, there would be three four-year term members in one odd-year election, then another three in the next odd-year election...