Steve Pomerance

  By Lisa Morzel, Cindy Carlisle, Allyn Feinberg, Crystal Gray, Spense Havlick, Steve Pomerance, Gwen Dooley, BJ Miller, Phil Stern   We are former Boulder City Council members, who served from 4 to 21 years each on Council (85 years collectively). We also are knowledgeable about the issues and history of CU South.  We encourage Boulder citizens to vote YES on Ballot Initiative 302 in the upcoming city election. We read the recent guest opinion by five mayors regarding the recent annexation agreement of CU South between the City and CU. We, as they, want to ensure that our residents are fully protected from the risks associated with floods, want opportunities for a range of housing options that actually are affordable, and want to safeguard in perpetuity the unique ecosystems and species on our Open Space. In our view, the current annexation agreement is unacceptable and has many flaws, both from the process and content perspectives. Some major flaws include: The ...

I’ve been thinking about what the next Council members should focus on so that their term is satisfying and productive, both for the citizens and for themselves. I’ve already written about the critical importance of gaining good citizen input and actually engaging the citizens, as well as the value of ensuring that Council materials are complete and accurate so that everyone is on the same page about the facts of the situation and good debates can occur. But in addition to these activities, I have recently have been observing the importance of the Council culture that underlies all this. For example, having a council dominated by one member or one point of view, or by a clique that marginalizes council members who don’t go along with the majority, is really very detrimental — it leads to bad decisions and bad feelings. And, because the decisions that get made do not include real consideration of alternatives, when appropriately criticized for this, the majority just “circles the wago...