Opinion: Addressing some past mistakes, and maybe avoiding some future ones

Sometimes it’s worth digging into past situations so that we can learn and avoid repetitions. For whatever reason, in the last few weeks several caught my eye.

Many of you know of the 311 Mapleton project that replaced the old Memorial Hospital buildings with senior housing and facilities and is now under construction. The original “promise” by the developer, in exchange for building only eight permanently affordable units on the huge 311 site, was to develop the Fruehauf property on 33rd Street with over 100 units of affordable housing. There was a big controversy over a possible conflict of interest that one council member had in voting for this, and it barely was passed by the council on a 5-4 vote. 

Somehow this commitment regarding the Fruehauf property was never properly documented. As a result, the city was not going to get any affordable units other than what was on the 311 site. But now, according to Boulder staff, the developer has finally decided to give the undeveloped Fruehauf property to the city. I’m guessing the planned for 100 units of affordable housing could, after subsidies, cost the city at least $100,000 each (e.g. as single-bedroom units), for a total of $10 million or likely much more — far more than the land is worth.

Clearly, there was a gaping hole in the process. It would help to know exactly what happened in detail so that such mistakes are not repeated.

Another issue we can learn from relates to the Marshall Fire and Xcel Energy. According to a Channel 7 news story, “Boulder County Sheriff Curtis Johnson and District Attorney Michael Dougherty say the power giant worked to delay the investigation and attempted to block investigators from interviewing key employees.” The article continued, “Boulder’s investigation also yielded a cell phone video taken almost 200 yards from the ignition point. It shows a floating power line detached from the pole in the moments after the fire had started.”

Johnson pointed to a text message from an Xcel employee to demonstrate how the company worked to delay the investigation. Denver7 Investigates obtained that text message, which was sent minutes after the fire started, through an open records request. The text, sent from an Xcel lineman to his supervisor, states, “I think our lines may have started this fire east of El Dorado.”

This all goes to the fundamental question of why the Public Utilities Commission continues to let Xcel run the system, especially when the basic financial design of the regulated monopoly system rewards the utility for maximizing its investments, and not for saving the ratepayers money and cleaning up our power supply.

A third one is the Legislature’s statewide ballot measure Prop HH, which relates to our property taxes. What’s amazing is that, per the latest news I’ve read by the Kiowa County Press, now 17 of Colorado’s 64 counties have joined a lawsuit stating that the ballot measure violates the Colorado Constitution, alleging that the ballot language “violates Colorado’s single subject rule and the ballot language is intentionally misleading.” It’s also opposed by the Colorado Municipal League.

I tried to read the Legislative Summary to see what HH was about. This “Summary” is over 1,700 words! In spite of my training in math, physics, etc., I could not grasp why the bill was structured the way it was, nor whether it would raise or lower total taxes. 

In my opinion, the Legislature has not faced up to the simple fact that property values (and our complex property tax structure) no longer have any relationship to what it costs the various governmental entities (school districts, county and city governments, and special districts, like fire and library) to serve their constituents and that new facilities (especially new schools) to serve growing populations should fairly be paid for by development impact fees, not general taxes. The result is messes like Prop HH, which to me missed a real opportunity to clean up our tax and fee structure.

Finally, there is the current discussion at the Boulder City Council regarding the future of the Boulder Municipal Airport. For whatever reason, there has been very little discussion about the commitment that Boulder made to the FAA two years ago, in exchange for a multi-million dollar grant, to keep the airport in operation for up to 20 more years. That potentially puts the decision point way out in the future. Maybe the city can buy its way out of the agreement, but it wouldn’t be a trivial cost. All of this deserves serious public discussion. 

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