Steve Pomerance

On Tuesday night the City Council had a useful discussion on possible sales tax ballot items for the open space and transportation departments and the general fund. Their discussions yielded significant improvements over the proposal that was floated at previous meetings. And many council members have finally acknowledged that there are some serious problems coming for the city’s transportation system that are not going to be solved by a few million additional dollars a year. Paramount of these is dealing with the impacts of growth and shifting funding to some form of user fee. But there was still the vestige of the idea that, just because Boulder voters re-approved in 1997 a 0.33 percent sales tax for open space, now set to expire in 2018, that they will meekly accept a new 0.33 percent sales tax that is partially for other purposes. Boulder voters are much more focused on how their money will be spent and whether there is real value to be gained, than whether the new taxes add up

Xcel is spending massive sums of money chattering about the dangers of Boulder creating a green electric utility and firing criticisms at Boulder’s analyses. If all Xcel says were true, it would be in Xcel’s interest to stop its barrage of negativity and just let Boulder pursue its own future. Then, if the disaster that Xcel keeps predicting actually occurs, other cities would not even think about following Boulder toward a cleaner energy future. And Xcel’s nearly $700 million of pre-tax income from Colorado would be protected forever. Or at least until ratepayers revolt over skyrocketing rates from rapidly increasing coal costs, and carbon taxes make an albatross of Xcel’s new billion dollar Comanche 3 coal plant. ( sourcewatch.org/index.php /Existing_U.S._Coal_Plants) In spite of essentially flat electric sales, Xcel’s Colorado pre-tax/after-expense income more than doubled in six years — from $323 million in 2006 to $690 million in 2012 (per PSCo’s 10K filings.) So the $8.2 mill