Steve Pomerance

From observing the recent city council discussions on water, I thought it would be useful to go over some of the basics. Boulder’s water comes from three sources: North Boulder Creek (the “Watershed” below Arapahoe Glacier), Middle Boulder Creek (flows into Barker Reservoir near Nederland), and the Colorado-Big Thompson project (from the Colorado River, includes Windy Gap reservoir). North Boulder Creek drains the east side of Arapahoe Peak; the water is stored in multiple small lakes/reservoirs within the Watershed. The water flows into the Betasso Pipeline, starting on the west side of the Peak-to-Peak Highway near Caribou Ranch, then to the Betasso Treatment Plant near Sugarloaf. Barker Reservoir water is piped to Koessler Lake, west of Green Mountain, and then down a pipeline to Boulder Canyon and up to the Betasso plant. Some of this water runs down to the hydro plant in Boulder Canyon. The C-BT water flows from the Colorado River headwa...

In my last Camera piece, I said, “If all it takes is the council similarly claiming something is an ’emergency,’ then the council could pass most anything ‘by emergency’ and avoid public hearings completely.” Well, the council did exactly that at their next opportunity, abusing Charter Section 17 by passing “by emergency” the new rules for council meetings’ start times and schedules. Almost every definition of “emergency” I’ve found requires an event to be “unexpected” or “sudden,” and “demanding immediate attention” to prevent loss of life, property, etc. But the situation with “open comment” has been a mess since the war in Gaza got going. And after well over a year of failed attempts to fix the situation, it is hardly “sudden” or “unexpected.” If it is so serious, why weren’t these new fixes proposed two weeks sooner? Or why not wait one more meeting and get some public input? All this raises the serious question of why the council doe...

On July 1, the City of Boulder filed a motion in the lawsuit brought in early April by Boulder citizens regarding the bonding of the South Boulder Creek flood control dam. The City’s motion claims that the citizens’ lawsuit is “frivolous” and asks them to pay over $46,000 in attorneys’ fees. When I heard about this, I inquired of the city attorney, the mayor and councilmembers. The city attorney only said she “authorized the filing of the motion.” But councilmembers either didn’t respond or refused to even say whether they had discussed this with her. Apparently, no one wants to own what seems a blatant attempt to suppress citizens’ dissent. The fundamental legal issues in the citizens’ original lawsuit are clear, and in my opinion, the exact opposite of “frivolous.” Can the City charge fees based on the “impervious surface area” of people’s lots within the City to pay for this dam, when the floodwater being controlled comes (almost) totally from outside the city? Can the City pass the...

In Sunday’s Camera, I noticed the huge disparity in information content between the City and County meetings announcements. The City’s had only four column-inches, versus the County, which had 20 column-inches. The City’s had date, time and name of board or commission, but zero content as to what the meeting was about. The County’s, in contrast, were very detailed. Then I noticed a line in the City’s ad, in small print, saying that an asterisk indicates that the complete agenda is in the Public Notice part of the classifieds. Three of the six boards’ names had asterisks, so I went to the Public Notice section and looked. But there was only one agenda; two were missing. One of the two missing ones was Open Space, so I went online and, after some searching, found that meeting’s agenda outline, but the individual items had no content. I dug further but was frustrated by a notice that I needed to allow cookies, but provided no way to allow them. My second try, using a different set of page...

At the beginning of each regular council meeting, it is the tradition to hold open comment. This used to be a chance for citizens to raise issues or concerns they think the council needs to focus on. Unfortunately, it recently has become more of a forum for protests on various non-city issues. The good news is that the council will be discussing how to fix this. But I feel that some more in-depth consideration is needed to avoid just changing the format or timing without really addressing the underlying desires of citizens to really be listened to, versus the apparent lack of value that council members give to what is said. Supporting this perspective, the poll the City just did says that barely over half of respondents approve of the job the City is doing in providing services to residents. That low rating indicates a need for real change. Council members are not better or smarter or even many times more well-informed than the rest of us. And the council is not supposed to be separate...

Last Sunday, June 8, the Denver Post had an extensive article on the  “Data Center Boom”  in Colorado. Data centers can be small, in nondescript buildings, and support our use of internet and emails. Or they can be huge, like the ones supporting the use of artificial intelligence. Per the article, Xcel currently estimates that the current requests for data centers will increase electric use by 1,923 megawatts over the next 6 years. That’s enough to power 2.1 million homes; it is an increase of 31% above our current power supply. The total requests by 2031, not all of which will come online, is estimated to be 6,181 megawatts, which would nearly double Xcel’s current electric power needs in Colorado. Generating this massive increase in electricity requires either burning lots more fossil fuels, with attendant greenhouse gas emissions, or installing a huge number of photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, batteries for storage or building nuclear plants. Cooling the da...

Note: This column has been updated to reflect that six cities are a part of the lawsuit against the state to protect local authority. A key story in Monday’s Camera was about Lafayette having joined Aurora, Arvada, Glendale, Greenwood Village, and Westminster in a critically important lawsuit that will decide whether home rule cities, including Boulder, get to determine their own land use, or if the Legislature and governor can dictate how to zone and manage our cities. I’ve put a fair amount of time into researching this issue; here’s what I’ve found to date: The Colorado Constitution allows cities to become “home rule” and in effect, self-governing by the citizens passing a charter defining their form of government, with certain basic structural rules. Article XX, Sec.6 provides that the laws of home rule cities “supersede … any state law in conflict therewith.” The case law refining this system started in the late 1800s on topics relevant to all cities, like how courts operated. The...

The first meeting of the group of 48 volunteers to discuss “15-minute neighborhoods” was Saturday, May 10. According to one of the many pages on the city’s website devoted to this subject, “15-minute neighborhoods are neighborhoods where daily goods, services and transit are within a 15-minute walk (about a 1/4 mile) of where people live or work.” Unfortunately, because much of the city’s material comes across as being biased towards establishing these neighborhoods (which require massive densification of most residential areas), the people who volunteered were possibly biased toward that outcome. But the rest of us will not know, and have no way to determine, the extent of such bias in this process, because the meetings’ locations, names of participants, agendas and materials are secret. So, those of us who were not among the chosen cannot attend these “Citizen Assembly” meetings even as observers. I think that is terrible. A process this consequential should be done openly! The argum...

I was surprised by a recent move in our Legislature by some Democrats who are pursuing House Joint Resolution 25-1023. This resolution, if passed by both houses, would initiate a lawsuit in state court to invalidate Article X, Section 20, of our state constitution, commonly known as TABOR. Their objective apparently is to disempower our ability to vote on state-level tax increases, a power that we voted for ourselves over three decades ago. They want to do this without having to put it on the ballot so we get the final say. The politicians’ position is based on the U.S. Constitution’s Article IV, the “Guarantee Clause,” which requires that states have “a Republican Form of Government.” Their argument is that this does not include “direct democracy,” like citizen-sponsored initiatives. Although the resolution specifically targets TABOR, this could end up being applied to other direct democracy votes, because the arguments would be the same. My first research was to look at which states ...

Flooding in Boulder will get worse as climate change increases storm intensity and frequency. Thus, making good decisions about flood protection is critical; they should be based on facts, not speculation or defensiveness about past decisions. The assertion being made that the dam and floodwall currently proposed for South Boulder Creek will be “lifesaving” is a good sound bite. But it is not supported by the facts: No one died in South Boulder during the 2013 floods; the only deaths in or near the city were two people descending a flooded road in the North Boulder foothills. U.S. 36 is frequently closed by snowstorms and will flood anyway in storms larger than the dam is designed for. Boulder Community Hospital is accessible by many other routes. And the city can purchase a few high-water 4WD vehicles for emergency evacuations by first responders. The City’s 2014 flood survey shows that the proposed dam and floodwall will only address a fraction of the flooding damage in South Boulder...

A few weeks ago, the council authorized “by emergency” a $66 million dollar bond issue to cover (some of) the remaining costs of its attempts to protect downstream properties when South Boulder Creek floods again. SBC has had major floods in the past, including in 1893, 1934 and 1969. The City has a map of what buildings would and would not be “protected” by the proposed Phase 1 dam from a “100-year” flood. It shows that, in spite of the dam, a huge number of buildings will still be vulnerable to SBC flooding. Buildings/Removed Buildings in the S. Boulder Creek 100yr Floodplain proposed Project. (Photo credit / The City of Boulder) The Phase 2 and Phase 3 projects that are supposed to protect these buildings are not yet defined nor are there cost numbers, that I can find. Additionally, there is flooding from other sources, like Viele Channel and Anderson Ditch, that the dam won’t control at all. Also, I’ve been told that the City has none of the necessary regulatory body approvals for ...

In my last column, I provided some information that was inaccurate. Unfortunately, the real information is worse. I had said that the proposed South Boulder Creek dam along U.S. 36 and Table Mesa Drive would “protect” around 600 structures for a cost of around $90 million.  The 1/25/24 council memo states that 600 structures are in that floodplain and that the South Boulder Creek Flood Mitigation Project will protect only 260 of them from a 100-year flood. If 260 structures are “protected,” then that leaves 340 “unprotected.” Redoing the math, the $90,000,000 estimated cost figure I used divided by 260 structures is almost $350,000 per structure, over a third of a million dollars! I immediately communicated this much larger number to the City Council, figuring that the shock might stir some serious rethinking. I did not receive a single reply. I also made a request under the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) for “the most recent detailed updated cost estimate for the project” (along...

I just read an excellent paper called  “The Questionable Economics of the 15-Minute City”  by Rachel Meltzer, a professor of planning and urban economics at Harvard. To quote her, “The economics of the 15-minute city don’t really work.” Her analysis points out that any kind of establishment, whether it is a supermarket or an urgent care clinic, has fixed costs. So, the “catchment area” needs to be big enough to have enough customers to cover those costs. Also, many stores have become bigger and contain a wider variety of goods than 20 or 50 years ago. Thus, any given area is now served by fewer stores with more goods per store. Looking at Boulder, we see these economics at work. For example, we have about 10 grocery stores, and over the last years, we’ve had two supermarkets close and a couple of new ones open, that I can think of. And they are mostly distributed geographically. So, even with all the planned growth in East Bo...

Earlier this year, the February 6 city council agenda provided notice for Boulder’s first executive session with the opaque explanation: “pursuant to CRS 24-6-402(4)(b) for conference with attorneys for the City for the purpose of receiving legal advice on specific legal questions regarding meeting management and the First Amendment.” This behind-closed-door session was actually about how the council was finally going to wrest control of its meetings back from the protesters, after a year-plus of almost constant disruptions. I’m happy to see this finally happening, though, in my opinion, it did not require instituting executive sessions, which I don’t support because their privacy encourages bad behavior and deal cutting. Colorado statute 24-6-402(4) states that the public notice of an executive session requires “identification of the particular matter to be discussed in as much detail as possible without compromising the purpose for which the executive...

As many of you know, the city’s 2020 Franchise Agreement with Xcel grants Xcel exclusive rights to deliver electricity in Boulder for 20 years. But Xcel also agreed to give Boulder the right to exit the franchise every five years. This year, 2025, is the first opportunity. The money for undergrounding powerlines, which Xcel denied Boulder during the 10 years we were out of franchise, has been committed for that purpose. So that concern is resolved. And the Legislature finally clarified existing state law guaranteeing equal treatment for all customers to ensure that all Xcel-served areas get undergrounding money, whether in franchise or not. According to all reports I’ve received, the Xcel-Boulder advisory panel, created as part of the 2020 settlement with Xcel, has not produced much of consequence. Thus, there is a significant level of dissatisfaction with what Boulder has gotten, and some enthusiasm for pursuing an alternate path. This dissatisfaction was strongly amplified by Xcel’s ...

I was reading last Sunday’s Camera and came across the City of Boulder’s public meeting schedule. It announced two Saturday events, at 7:00 p.m. on Jan. 25 at the library and at 2:00 p.m. on Feb. 08 at the council chambers. They’re called “You’re Invited to Shape Boulder’s Future Through Storytelling,” and described as follows: “Join the City of Boulder, Boulder County, and Motus Playback Theater … for a dynamic event where your stories help shape the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan update through interactive theatrical performance.” The link to the city’s website provided this info: “BOLDER. BOULDER. BETTER. With Motus Playback Theater. Join Motus Playback Theater, Boulder County and the City of Boulder for a fun and engaging event where your vision for Boulder comes to life on stage! Share your story or reflection about what matters most to you, and watch professional actors transform it into a theatrical performance with movement, music and spoken word.” But I found zero info on h...

“Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”  What made me think of this saying was the recent criticism by some Boulder City Council members of Boulder County’s plans for spending its just-passed affordable housing sales tax (actually an extension and repurposing of an expiring tax). The saying is supposed to remind people not to criticize others for flaws that they may also suffer.  Their major criticism is that the County did not give Boulder its share of the total revenues as funds to go into Boulder’s long-running affordable housing programs but instead will be part of the County’s separately run programs. I understand the thinking, but it raises the question about what improvements are needed in Boulder’s own “glass house” housing programs, which, at current rates, will not reach the (inadequate) target of 15% permanently affordable units until the 2060s.  Here are some examples: The inclusionary zoning requirement (the fraction of new housing developmen...