Steve Pomerance

In January, the Boulder City Council will consider making some very significant changes in the zoning for our neighborhoods, potentially leading to building of multiple units on what were single-family zoned lots. Their arguments for such upzoning generally ignore the negative effects, are not particularly strong or logical in my opinion, and do not have neighborhood support. Yet, the process proceeds forward as if on rails. This willingness to proceed irrespective of strong public sentiment against this is, in my view, largely a function of the current council’s approach of minimizing their face-to-face participation with the citizens of Boulder. For example, public participation in meetings is now down to two minutes per person (it used to be three minutes), with the number of speakers limited (it used to be unlimited). But what is far worse is the practice of council members not engaging with citizens who raise legitimate issues. That just dissuades citizens who have important thing...

I’ve suspected for a long time that climate change is making our world population level unsustainable. Reading “Recipe for disaster” in the Nov. 16 issue of New Scientist, a respected British science publication, confirmed that view and lays out the long-term future we face. Our food situation is dire: Climate change has had devastating consequences for farmers around the globe. And efforts to compensate, such as clearing forests to grow more crops, have led to increasing carbon dioxide levels, as well as biodiversity loss.  Pests and pathogens are expected to increase. Glacial melting is reducing water supply in some areas. The Dec. 9 New York Times reported that three-quarters of the Earth’s surface has become “persistently drier” in recent decades. And, although increased CO2 levels have slightly improved plant growth rates, once the global temperature rises to exceed 3 degrees C, that effect will reverse. Our local water supply is at risk. The Denver Post last week reported tha...

On Thanksgiving, it seems appropriate to look back and try to appreciate the good things that have happened, while at the same time looking forward to what might be. When I was in college, my worst skill was writing, and all through my youth, I really disliked listening to people talking politics. Now, I really appreciate that I have mostly gotten past both those blocks and have the chance to write about our local political scene, though I’m still more interested in policy than politics. For example, I appreciate that Boulder now has its own fiber network, and we won’t have to rely on private providers with their own systems for internet. But regarding the recent contract signed to give ALLO-Communications a 20-year lease, I note that, per a person at the Institute for Local Self Reliance, some of the best systems are municipally operated and are right here on the Front Range, in Loveland, Fort Collins, Estes Park. Maybe next time… On a larger scale, I really appreciate the work of...

I received many times the usual number of comments regarding my recent column on the “Family Friendly Vibrant Neighborhoods” survey and the willingness of some council members to ignore what the apparent majority of citizens respondents want. These came to me directly and also via NextDoor. Here are some of them, occasionally with edits for length and style: “Thank you for your editorial/letter about growth in Boulder. I thought I was the only one noticing and concerned about it!!” “The ‘progressives’ who have taken control of Boulder just seem to be developers in disguise.” “Neighborhood densifying: nothing has been said about PARKING — a disaster for those who do not have a driveway to park.” “Why do the ‘progressives’ just want to stuff more and more people (and cars) into Boulder? It just makes no sense.” “Collectively the community survey delivered a statistically significant ‘against’ the proposed changes … two to one not in favor, for instance...

I seldom get angry about political matters, since I generally focus on policies rather than personalities. But the October 17 city council session on the results of their flawed “Family Friendly Vibrant Neighborhoods” survey really got to me. No surprise to me, a substantial majority of the survey respondents did not favor densification of their single-family neighborhoods. After all, people bought into these neighborhoods precisely because of their lack of overcrowding, large amounts of green space and quiet streets. So why would they want to convert to being dense, noisy, traffic-ridden, overdeveloped and overpopulated? This serious lack of support apparently upset the plans of the “progressives” on the council to use the survey results to support their densification goals. So, they responded at the meeting by undercutting the survey, saying that it was not statistically valid. And, strangely, this view was not refuted by...

First, the big shocker: Ballot Question 2C more than triples the pay for the mayor and council members! Beginning in December 2026, pay would go up to 50% of Area Median Income for the mayor and 40% for council members. It wasn’t so long ago that council members were not paid at all. For much of my time on council, we all were volunteers. Council members worked hard to do a good job, just because it was their civic duty. But after pay was added and then increased over the years, in my observation, council’s performance deteriorated. The role of the council used to include unbiased and complete agenda preparation, full and open discussion of issues at council meetings, giving all citizens enough time to say what they needed to, then listening and asking questions, and making decisions based on facts and not just abstract values. Now, the agenda materials are not reviewed by the Council Agenda Committee, which was created expressly for that function....

I read  Proposition 131  for the first time many weeks ago. The concepts in it were very appealing: open primaries and ranked choice voting (RCV) for candidates. But something didn’t feel right. I understand that no voting system is perfect. But identifiable problems should be fixed. Here are my thoughts on the major ones. Prop 131 creates open primaries by allowing the candidates selected by political parties and qualifying unaffiliated candidates to be listed on a single primary ballot. In June each voter gets a single vote, and the top four vote-getters go on the November ballot. Therefore, there’s no guarantee that a particular party’s candidate will make the general election.  Then in November, voters get to rank these four candidates. Using the standard RCV process, the one with the fewest first-place votes is dropped, and those voters’ second choices become their first choices, and the process is repeated until there’s a winner. ...

Around noon on Wednesday, I read the Camera story on the latest attempt by our council to  fix their abysmal public processes . They allege to want to get more and better input by taking up the suggestion by the National League of Cities folks to have citizen forums on specific topics early in their process. The story said that the first forum will be Thursday, Sept. 26. So I immediately tried to sign up. But, per the City’s web site, the meeting was to be virtual and signup was already closed. So, I emailed the council and staff that both state law and the city charter require such meetings to be open to the public. When I rechecked at 4 p.m., it had become a real meeting (6 p.m. in the council chambers) open to the public. This is just the latest example of a failure by the council to manage themselves effectively. The meeting with the NLC folks (that I attended) where this process was demonstrated was way back in February. Now, all of a sudden, ...

The Legislature, the Governor, and Advance Colorado and Colorado Concern, the groups behind Initiatives 50 and 108, struggled to write a bill in the special session to reduce property taxes further than the 2024 session’s SB24-233. The stimulus was the increased property tax burden that resulted from rapidly increasing property values in many areas of the state. They accomplished that goal, a bill was passed and the groups pulled their initiatives from the ballot. That was good work. But unfortunately, there are still some fundamental problems with the tax structure that have not been addressed. So, I expect that these issues will reemerge down the road. Our local and state governmental entities are mostly funded in five fundamental ways: income/capital gains tax, sales tax, property tax, fees and Federal grants. Fees may be for operating costs (charged per unit and based on cost, like for water treatment and delivery) or for capital facilities needed because of growth (charged based o...

No doubt many of you remember the surveys the city of Boulder sent out a couple of years ago that appeared to be so biased as to be essentially useless other than as propaganda pieces. Well, last Friday I and many others received another one of these sell-jobs enticingly titled “Family-Friendly Vibrant Neighborhoods.”  Translating, this means adding the maximum density to the still surviving lower-density parts of Boulder that the council can do without violating the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. FYI, the BVCP cannot be changed without the consent of the County Commissioners, who have a lot more sense and are not advocates of unlimited growth at any cost. Fortunately, this limits the damage the “progressives” can cause, at least for the immediate future. In addition to the cavalier attitude of some of our council members about unilaterally changing the character and livability of our neighborhoods, the survey offends by asserting that this is an attempt to address housing cost...

For Thursday night the city council scheduled consideration of this motion regarding legal action about the future of the airport: “Motion to authorize the city attorney to initiate and pursue litigation against the United States of America, the Federal Aviation Administration, and Michael G. Whitaker in his official capacity as Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, to obtain a judicial determination of the duration of the city’s obligation to continue operating the Boulder Municipal Airport.” Since I’m writing this prior to the council meeting, I cannot comment on the outcome, though I suspect it will be rubber-stamped. When I saw this motion announced on Monday, I was baffled. First, the city attorney had already filed the lawsuit on Friday, July 26, almost two weeks ago, per the lawsuit’s signature page. And the city has asserted that the city attorney has the authority to file this on her own. So why is the council now, after the fact, claiming to be “authorizing th...

What got me started on this topic was a July 21 Hotline from Boulder’s deputy mayor Nicole Speer to the council, city staff and citizens of Boulder discussing the Denver Regional Council of Government’s draft Regional Housing Needs Assessment. This is DRCOG’s attempt to provide a quantitative picture of future growth in the Denver Metro area. Per the quotes that Speer pulled, it says that the region will need 511,000 more housing units by 2050 to accommodate current needs and projected future growth, and that 300,000 of these will need to be affordable to households earning 60% or less of area median income. When I read this email, the first question that came up was, where did these numbers come from? In particular, how does DRCOG know that 511,000 new units will magically meet demand? So I read the full report to see how these numbers were determined. As it turns out, DRCOG hired a consulting company to do the work, and they based their analysis on data provided by the Colorado State...

The Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan is an agreement between the Boulder City Council and the County Commissioners that lays out the allowed development across the whole Boulder Valley, including the city of Boulder, the unincorporated areas of Gunbarrel, and the surrounding rural prairie and foothills. The BVCP is updated every five years to reflect the current vision for future growth and development. The Plan includes basic levels of density, use, etc. But the details of city zoning are set by the council, and the county’s are set by the commissioners. The Plan divides the Boulder Valley into four parts: Area I, the actual city of Boulder; Area II, adjacent parcels that are designated for possible annexation once services are available so they can be developed at an urban level; Area III Planning Reserve, about 500-plus acres north of town, including 200+ acres bought for parks, that may be “moved” into Area II; and Area III Rural Preservation, all the rest of the land, which is in...

The title of this column may sound a bit loaded, but that’s what is being discussed, according to Saturday’s Daily Camera story on some possible 2024 ballot measures that our city council is considering. My first reaction was, “Are you kidding?” The last thing we need is to reward poor performance, allow the council’s discussions to be even more concealed from public view and give them even more power. When I was elected to the council in 1985, council members served as volunteers, with no pay at all. Looking back, it is my observation that almost all of the many people I served with in my 10 years on the council worked very hard, took their council job seriously, sacrificed their free time and worked to include the citizens in the decisions. It was more of a calling than a job. My impression was that most people felt humbled (to some extent, at least) to be granted the power and responsibility that the job creates and demands. A critical improvement was when we created the Council Age...

“1.7 million more people are projected to move to Colorado by 2050. … Yes, you coming here will not make it less affordable for everyone else,” said Rep. Steven Woodrow, in Tuesday’s Denver Post. Woodrow is a Denver Democrat and sponsor of HB24-1313, the transit corridor densification bill that just passed. But survey results indicate that 1.7 million is just a tiny fraction of the demand. And Woodrow apparently doesn’t understand who pays for the costs of such growth. One of the arguments for HB24-1313 is that almost all these new people will move into its transit areas and use rapid transit, like RTD, instead of driving to work. The problem is that RTD’s 2024 budget of $1.246 billion is paid for mostly by sales and other taxes. These taxes are paid by all residents; only 5% of RTD’s budget is paid by fares from the actual riders. Worse, these riders constitute only a very small portion of all commuters.  What happens when a lot more people are added, and instead of a tiny fractio...

I follow the Boulder City Council’s Hotline, so even when I’m staying elsewhere, like last week up in Dillon, I’m kept aware of some of what is going on at the city. For those of you who don’t follow it, the Hotline is the public email service that council members and city staff use to communicate with each other, and which anyone can sign up to receive. What has struck me over recent years is the almost total lack of substantive commentary by council members on the actions that the council is considering. The Hotline is not legal for the council members to use for detailed back-and-forth discussions; those are supposed to take place at open public council meetings. But, other than council member Mark Wallach, who does an excellent job of it, almost no council members ever raise substantive issues with the staff presentations, or bring up issues that were not addressed or need further discussion. The Council Agenda Committee used to do in-depth substantive reviews of agenda materials. ...

Maybe the truth might be too uncomfortable to hear. I’m talking about the latest densification proposals being bandied about at recent Boulder City Council meetings. Last year there were some relatively innocuous moves to up-zone a few areas to allow for a bit more housing. But now the push is on to densify many single-family neighborhoods. I’m not talking about a few limited-size accessory dwelling units (ADUs), but wholesale changes in the zoning itself to reduce minimum lot sizes that would multiply the number of houses and people. Let’s be clear — the “progressive” majority doesn’t seem to really care about making housing truly more affordable. If they did, they would have already raised the percentage of permanently affordable units required for new developments from the current 25% (some or all of which can be off site) to 50% on site. This is the minimum required to even come close to maintaining our economic mix of citizens. And they would have increased the jobs-housing linkag...

House Bill 24-1313, or Housing in Transit-Oriented Communities , which is now at the state Senate, is the successor to the pro-growth bill that failed to pass at the end of last year’s session. That bill generated a lot of substantive objections, especially over the loss of local control over how much and what kind of growth Colorado communities wanted. Unfortunately, this 70-page bill is not much better. And it’s so complicated that just the administrative costs will be substantial. Here’s my attempt to identify some of its many issues. This bill basically attempts to leverage communities with significant transit service to allow massive densification, up to 40 units per acre, of areas within a half mile of certain transit stops. That’s way above the typical low-density neighborhood with maybe four to six units per acre. It threatens to cut off certain federal highway funds or legally force communities to comply if its goals are not achieved. The bill exempts many areas from its h...

I recently read about a group in the Denver area called Citizens Against Utility Abuse (CAUA). Their immediate focus is on the deal that cities that have granted Xcel franchises have received regarding undergrounding their power lines. All such franchises apparently have essentially the same terms as Boulder’s franchise does, which states, “The Company (Xcel) shall budget and allocate an annual amount, equivalent to one percent (1%) of the preceding year’s Electric Gross Revenues (what Boulder ratepayers paid Xcel for electricity), for the purpose of undergrounding its existing overhead electric distribution facilities located in City Streets…” plus details. The group’s complaint is that equivalent undergrounding is not available in areas that don’t have franchises. (A franchise gives Xcel exclusive rights to serve electricity for periods up to 20 years.) Xcel makes money from undergrounding; the funds Xcel invests earn the same high return as if invested in power plants or transmiss...