Opinion: It’s time for the council to ask the neighbors who live there
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...