Steve Pomerance

By the time you read this, the City Council will have decided whether to repeal Boulder’s Residential Growth Management System. This piece of our city code addresses how many housing units are allowed to be built in a year. It has significant exemptions, like for affordable housing units and whole projects with at least 35% affordable units. Thus, it provides an incentive for developers to include more affordable units. The reason this is an issue is that the Legislature, in its infinite wisdom, decided that the “housing crisis” required them to pass a law last session that forbids local governments from limiting the annual number of residential building permits. They called such restrictions “anti-growth laws.” But the council’s concern is misguided: Boulder’s RGMS is NOT in violation of this state law, simply because our current RGMS exempts affordable housing units. According to BRC 9-14-8 “Exemptions,” the City can approve an UNLIMITED number of permanently affordable units by righ...

Comments on the “Accessory Dwelling Unit” bill draft, dated 1-10-2024. By Steve Pomerance, former Boulder city council member; drafted on 1-15-24 and edited on 1-18-2024, after listening to the Zoom session that Judy Amabile, the bill’s sponsor, held the afternoon of 1-17-2024 Very Brief Summary of the draft “Accessory Dwelling Unit” Bill: The bill requires a subject jurisdiction to allow, as a use by right, one accessory dwelling unit as an accessory use to a single-unit detached dwelling in any part of the subject jurisdiction where the jurisdiction allows single-unit detached dwellings as a use by right. The bill also prohibits subject jurisdictions from enacting or enforcing certain local laws that would restrict the construction or conversion of an accessory dwelling unit. Subject jurisdictions are those in metropolitan planning organizations (the northern Front Range, Boulder/Denver area, Colorado Springs area, Pueblo area, and Grand Junction area.) My Background: ...

The Colorado Supreme Court recently ruled that Trump cannot appear on the primary ballot because he “having previously taken an oath…to support the Constitution of the United States…engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same…” Whatever the history of this third clause of the 14th Amendment, its real value is to help prevent our democracy from turning into a dictatorship. If the person wanting to be the next president engages in insurrection, this allows us to prevent them from occupying our democracy’s most powerful position, knowing that they might do it again. If it was their second time around, that president would have learned from the first experience and would proceed with more careful strategic planning. And (s)he would have over three years to appoint fellow conspirators to gain an irreversible lock on power. Democracies are not immune from takeovers.  “Why Democracies Collapse,”  by Diskin, Diskin and Hazan evaluated the collapse of 30 democracies, iden...