Opinion: What makes good Council culture

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 wagons.” That happens because there was no adequate debate, and concerns ignored during that process show up as critiques after the decision.

To a large extent creating a functional culture is the responsibility of the mayor. First, the mayor needs to encourage full and real debate rather than dominating the conversation. Second, the mayor needs to make sure that the various points of view, including those that come from community members as well as from Council members who are in the minority, have support by providing useful, unbiased data that address or provide information on the implication of those points of view. And third, the mayor needs to make sure that the city staff does not try to curry favor by just backing up the majority position.

This goes to the very heart of what our local democracy is. We call it “representative democracy,” but we in Boulder do not elect people to make decisions for us, but with us. We elect them to run a process where we have a real role, and not just feel like we’re talking to a glass wall.

Boulder has plenty of smart people who really know the issues. So when the Council and staff fail to provide complete, unbiased information, it becomes an ongoing sore point. This has become a serious problem in recent years. For example, last year it took months to restore the charter initiative timeline to what was obviously required in state law. And even then, there was never any acknowledgement that there had been a major mistake. This year, there are a number of obvious problems with some ballot measures that should have been dealt with but weren’t. And there is the need to correct the city ordinance that exempts petitions from state regulations as to form. This flaw leaves the petitioners without any certainty. The Council is well aware of this issue, but has failed to fix it.

Then there are the big substantive issues that the recent Councils have studiously avoided. These include the impacts of growth on our finite and climate-diminished water supply, on our inability to avoid gridlock on our streets from ever-increasing traffic, and on the lowered quality of the experience of being on our Open Space because so many more residents are using it.

Do citizens want more and more jobs, as in the current draft East Boulder Sub-Community Plan, and to have to pay for more transit to (inadequately) attempt to address the resulting traffic snarls? Do the citizens want more and more students, as under CU’s unbounded growth plan? Do the citizens really think that Boulder should try to accommodate everyone that wants to move here? Should Boulder become the next Silicon Valley? Is our affordable housing program adequate, when it is not achieving the percentage of affordable units necessary to maintain our current population’s economic distribution? And who should be paying the costs of growth, to the extent that those impacts can realistically be mitigated?

These are big issues. But to actually engage these productively, Council members need to stop being triggered by one-liner policy statements that are used to invalidate those who don’t immediately and mindlessly accept them.

So I’m looking for Council members who will think critically, who aren’t afraid to take on the powers that be, who will try to find out what the citizens really want, and who will be independent and not just go-along-to-get-along. Getting elected just puts you in the position to start asking hard questions and getting useful answers.

 


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