Steve Pomerance

The city council recently took up the issue of allowing more “accessory dwelling units” in single-family neighborhoods. An ADU is a self-contained apartment within a single-family house or in a separate building on the same lot. Currently, Boulder has significant limits on ADUs, including requirements for off-street parking and density limits, like allowing only 20% of houses in a 300-foot radius to have ADUs. These were carefully worked out several years ago. Now, some council members are pushing to allow all single-family homes to have ADUs, both internal and external. That would allow three units on every lot — two ADUs plus the main unit — though with the proposed 900-square-foot size limit, this could look like a duplex plus another house. And even with a constraint of, say, a maximum of five unrelated people, it would effectively turn every lot into a small condo development, since ownership could be through an LLC whose members change with whoever is living there. Interestin...

I spend a lot of my time hiking and scrambling in the mountains. I find it immensely rewarding to focus on where I put my feet and hands, and look at the scenery, landscape and geology, which is more-or-less like it was before humans over-occupied the planet. And I think that the risks, however slight, add to the experience of being just a small piece of nature. Coming back down to our current political reality in Boulder is always a shock. But being in the mountains gives me some perspective — at least I hope it does. My observation is that although big decisions may engender strong feelings, they do not have to be so highly polarizing as they are now. Fundamentally, having the full set of real facts and proper analysis kept in the public view has always reduced controversy, narrowed the set of realistic options and made it more difficult to take extreme positions. I offer the CU South controversy as case in point. In my opinion, the problem started with the lack of consistent awarene...