Steve Pomerance

The  City of Boulder and University of Colorado Boulder are close to cutting a deal. CU gets to annex its flood prone property and then potentially make a pile of cash by selling most of it to a private developer, the residents of South Boulder get inadequate flood protection and the rest of us get none for the foreseeable future, traffic becomes a disaster, and the jobs/housing balance and affordable housing situation is made even worse. Here are the many facets to consider: It’s a non-solution to flooding:  The proposed detention pond on South Boulder Creek will fill up and overrun if the storm significantly exceeds the 100-year size, creating a shorter but still powerful flood. And that will definitely happen, given climate change and the huge increase in atmospheric water from global warming. That’s why detention ponds are the solution of last resort. Worse, once the land is developed, expanding the pond to 500-year capacity will not be realistic: there are issues with...

  In 2019, Boulder citizens passed the ballot measure entitled “Tax on Tobacco Vaping Products.” Now the City Council is considering extending this to marijuana vaping devices. The 2019 measure imposed a 40% tax on the retail sales price of electronic smoking devices and components thereof, with “devices” being defined in the Boulder Revised Code, Chapter 4.5. That chapter is titled “Sale of Tobacco Products.” And it defines “Electronic smoking device” as “any product containing or delivering nicotine intended for human consumption …” During the discussions around that 2019 ballot measure, to the best of my memory and also based on feedback from others, there was no serious discussion about applying it to devices used for marijuana. And the people in the business seem to be in agreement that marijuana devices are not suitable for tobacco. So why is the Council considering extending this tax to marijuana devices? If they think this is a problem and that teenagers — or whoever — ...