Featured Piece: Let the citizens vote on CU South

In my almost 40 years in Boulder politics, I have never seen a project create such controversy, and it’s no surprise: CU South is the size of downtown Boulder both in acreage and development potential.

The proposed “100-year design” flood detention pond is inadequate given climate change and the limited pond size, which cannot reasonably be expanded once CU develops the nearby area.

The deal was negotiated without investigating a land swap with city-owned land north of the city limits.

Condemnation of the needed property was apparently not even looked at. And it was done without a proper flood control master plan to evaluate the costs and benefits of projects on Boulder’s many creeks, determine which ones were worth doing, and then prioritize them based on the most benefit (including life/safety) for the least cost.

Boulder’s politics have worked best, and created the least conflict, when the processes are open and the citizens can observe and engage as matters proceed. Sometimes things have been messy, but people can live with that if their government is being transparent. But Council members doing negotiations behind closed doors insults and angers many interested and informed citizens.

It might be less unacceptable if the outcome had been a refined and carefully crafted agreement. But at every citizen input session, more problems were pointed out, and major revisions had to be made. The most recent ones expanded the annexation agreement from 30 pages to 43 pages! Clearly the process of having Council members and CU staff on the inside and the citizens kept outside did not work.

Boulder’s charter requires meetings of Council committees be open to the public, with one unrelated exception. The Colorado Open Meetings Law, CRS 24-6-402 apparently requires meetings of an “advisory” body of elected officials to be open even in cases like this where it consists of only two people. So, given that the mayor and another Council member were in all the meetings, IMO these meetings should have been open. It may take a lawsuit to restore proper behavior.

The agreements still lack many elements. For example, there is no requirement that all housing CU builds be permanently affordable. The site could be net-zero energy use. Trip limits could have been modeled on the highly successful Stanford University/Santa Clara County approach done for Stanford’s major campus expansion over 20 years ago. No enrollment cap exists. All these and more could have been explored had the negotiators just asked.

What is really galling is the push by the Council majority to pass this annexation prior to the election to moot the citizen initiative that requires a popular vote. If this annexation is such a good deal, why is the Council afraid that the citizens might turn it down?

This attempt to avoid a citizen vote could create all sorts of legal problems. A normal ordinance does not go into effect until 30 days after passage. So to attempt to preempt the initiative, it must be passed before Sunday, Oct. 3. And there is a 10-day requirement for publication before the final passage. That backs up the timeline even further. So there is simply not enough time to do all the work that should have been done. Substantive changes at this point are simply not going to happen, making Tuesday’s citizen input pretty irrelevant.

To avoid these limits, the Council majority may try to pass this “by emergency” so it goes into effect immediately and escapes the initiative. But Charter Sec. 47 states in part, “No ordinance making a grant of any franchise or special privilege shall ever be passed as an emergency measure.” Clearly this is for the “special privilege” of CU. It also states, “The facts showing such urgency and need shall be specifically stated in the measure itself.” But no major flood control facilities will be built for years. And in-neighborhood actions have been neglected.

The citizen initiative (squashed by the city last year) gathered adequate signatures this year well prior to the Council’s consideration of the annexation. Respectful behavior would have been to plan to put the agreements on the ballot as the initiative asks, like in a special election in a few months.

Finally, a quick response is not the same as an effective solution. What is currently on the table sells out real protection for the folks in South Boulder for what is convenient but inadequate. So let the citizens vote and decide whether they want to accept this flawed outcome or want something better.

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