Steve Pomerance

  The “Christmas Wishes” expressed in last Saturday’s Camera by the Editorial Advisory Board were right on. Emily Walsh succinctly described our current situation: “I cannot understand why we have let difference, hate and fear encroach on every interaction we have.” Bill Wright concurred: “I wish for respect and patience with people we don’t agree with. Especially if the person you don’t agree with is me.” Former Boulder City Council member Andrew Shoemaker perfectly captured what’s needed: “Let’s work on the one wish that could be attainable in 2022, and which is the first step to any chance of resolving the rest of the list — collaborating with an open mind to tackle Boulder’s problems. You may have great ideas about how to solve our local problems, but so does your neighbor. Other citizens with different approaches also care about Boulder as much as you. Let’s consider checking our egos at Boulder’s door and recognize that it’s OK to change our minds.” In my experience of almost

“Bedrooms Are For People” lost at the ballot box, saving months or years in court attempting to resolve the disparity between the title and the ordinance. But many on the new Council want to take up the occupancy issue anyway.  That’s fine, but this is not a simple issue, and I hope the council recognizes this. The Council members need to start by discussing what they realistically want to achieve, and what they see as appropriate conditions and constraints on their goals. Having some reality in this discussion is critical, since the kind of one-liners tossed around during the campaign are not much use in doing good policy work. For example, there was the idiotic statement that, “Everyone who wants to live in Boulder should be able to.” But what if there are a million such people? We don’t lack for legitimate issues to be explored: For example, it seems reasonable that two single women with two kids apiece could share the house that one owns that is currently zoned for a family plu