Opinion: Boulder mayoral election plan misses mark


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, plus one two-year term council member elected at every odd year-election. That’s seven. Then the initiative adds a directly elected mayor, elected for four years in the non-presidential even year election. That adds up to eight, not nine, as proponents have said.
The petitioners also apparently forgot Charter Section 3 that states: “The legislative officers of the city shall consist of nine council members elected from the city at large and collectively called the council.”
Running for mayor in an even year non-presidential election will be tough. The mayoral candidates will have to compete for visibility on a crowded ballot, including the races for United States Senate and House of Representatives, Colorado Senate and House, and Boulder County Commission. Gaining visibility costs money. So this structure will create a lot of pressure to ignore Boulder’s voluntary campaign spending limits and raise big bucks. Facing this cost will also exclude most candidates, other than those that are part of the power structure, severely limiting people’s interest in running.
One thing that works well about the current system is that the mayor is chosen by and from the council to organize and run the meetings, and so has their agreement to do that job. A separately elected mayor may not have the necessary experience, simply because there is no requirement that mayors actually serve on council. And the mayor won’t have the support that comes from being chosen by his or her peers, so expect more conflicts.
Under this proposal, the mayoral election is in an even year, whereas the rest of the council is elected in odd years. That puts experienced council members who want to run for mayor in a quandary. A sitting council member could choose to not run for council for a second term. Then that person would run for mayor in a year or in three years after retiring, depending on how their term lined up with the even year non-presidential mayoral election cycle. Either way, we lose the depth of knowledge that sitting council members have about current issues.
Or council members could run again for council and win second terms, and then run for mayor while already on the council. If elected as mayor, they would then be serving their third terms, and so, if they wanted to run for a second mayoral term, under the three term limit passed in 2016, they could not. Again, expertise would be lost.
Under the scenario where a sitting council member is elected mayor, which is valuable because that person would be up to speed on current issues, that council seat would be vacant until filled at the next November’s regular council election. So for that year, there would be one less person on council.
Finally, the petitioners say that they want the mayor to have more political clout because the mayor will likely have gotten more votes overall simply because more people vote in an even-year election. But that’s a shaky argument, because those extra voters apparently aren’t particularly interested in city issues, since they don’t bother to vote in the odd-year city elections when council members are elected.
Many cities do have directly elected mayors, but I have never heard of one that has this non-functional odd-year/even-year structure. The conclusion is obvious: This proposal is simply not ready for prime time.

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