Opinion: When will the big growth questions be addressed?


Sept. 17 was a great day. At 5 a.m. my climbing partner and I left Boulder to climb Navajo Peak via Niwot Ridge. After some hours of hiking, we started on a mile long section of rock scrambling along the steep, exposed ridge. The route finding was complex, and the views toward the Boulder watershed, the plains, and the Continental Divide were great. Conditions were perfect — sunny, warm, and not too windy. Some hours later, we finished by descending Airplane Gully, passing wreckage from a post-World War II small plane crash. We then hiked out, also beautiful, but more hours on top of an already long day. We got to the car tired and thirsty, but satisfied and no blisters.
This wonderful day followed a not-so-good Tuesday evening at the City Council meeting, which started with a study session on growth and development. Many of council members’ initial comments were seemingly directed at convincing those who came to ask for action on controlling growth that there was no problem. According to these council members, the city’s planning is working fine, and the current spate of building are just projects that had been on hold because of the economy. Undisputed by other council members were comments to the effect that traffic has not increased, our water supply is more than adequate, Boulder Junction is supplying more housing, and there was plenty of chance for public input into that project during the many years over which it was planned.
It bothered me that the other sides of these issues were not acknowledged: Many more big buildings are still in the pipeline, as the meeting’s handouts demonstrated. Rush hour congestion has gone up markedly because of in-commuting; that Boulder residents have cut their driving has kept total vehicle travel from increasing. Our water supply depends significantly on the drought-plagued Colorado River via the Colorado Big Thompson project, but we are way down in priority for Colorado River water, and CBT East Slope water is apparently even junior to West Slope requirements (according to a water attorney I talked to recently.) Boulder Junction will also add employment, so we’ll get very little if any net housing gain, but we will get large amounts of extra traffic. And if citizens feel that they were not well informed, well, maybe the council should take some responsibility for that.
The motion to look at growth issues, passed later in the evening, was allegedly written by two council members that afternoon, but was not even emailed onto the city hotline for the public to read. From what I could gather, the motion will split the relatively complete three page list of work projects submitted by various council members into “discrete items” or insert them into the Comprehensive Housing Strategy, the Sustainable Streets and Centers project, the Envision East Arapahoe project, or the catch-all Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan five-Year Update. I expect that the overarching questions of “how much, how fast, and under what conditions”, whose answers would provide needed context for almost all the projects on the list, will be deferred to the 2015 BVCP update. So even if answered, these questions will become mostly irrelevant because the above projects will likely already be finalized, or close thereto.
Besides, the BVCP’S policies (there are dozens of pages of them) are unenforced. Just for example, Policy 1.30 “Growth to Pay Fair Share of New Facility Costs” says, “…new development (shall) pay the cost of providing needed facilities and an equitable share of services including affordable housing, and to mitigate negative impacts such as those to the transportation system.” This policy is followed reasonably closely in utilities (but not all aspects), partially in General Fund departments, and weakly in transportation; the requirement that new commercial/office development fund its share of affordable housing is ignored. Or consider Policy 2., the “Built Environment.” It designates the area southeast of Baseline and US 36 as a “neighborhood activity center”. So how is it that the zoning allows projects like Baseline Zero’s 55-foot high hotel/office complex to be proposed?

When we were almost finished with Niwot Ridge, we ran into a guy from north Boulder. He made a point of telling me how bad the traffic has become in the last few years, and we discussed what might happen about all the growth and whether the majority of the council would ever give the ordinary citizens a real chance to provide direction.

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