Opinion: Louisville citizens get to vote on their future. Why not us?

This election, Louisville citizens get two sterling opportunities to help set the direction of their city, courtesy of citizen initiatives. Ballot Measure 300 will help decide what happens in two relatively undeveloped areas, Redtail Ridge and the McCaslin Corridor. It would require at least 30% of any housing be affordable to persons earning at or below 80% of median income. 

Thirty percent is stronger than Boulder’s requirement. It also eliminates Boulder’s loophole that allows developers to pay a fee instead, which requires matching funds from external sources (like tax breaks, etc.) to generate enough for the housing to be affordable. So, rather than increasing developer profits, the Louisville measure actually benefits the people who need affordable housing.

Ballot Measure 301 expands Louisville’s current set of development impact fees to specifically include library, transportation, parks and trails, open space, recreation, emergency services and municipal buildings (along with the usual fees for water, wastewater and flood control). And, critically, it requires impartial studies to update fees every five years that include citizens’ oversight of the process. This could ensure that in Louisville, “growth really pays its own way.” 

The citizen oversight is necessary to ensure that the city doesn’t hire a firm whose fee recommendations are so low that their only claim to fame is that the fees cannot be successfully challenged. The optimal is a firm such as the one that gave Boulder reality-based recommendations on housing fees some years ago — that we needed to require 50% of new housing development to be affordable, and to require new jobs development to pay for housing for workers that could not afford to live here otherwise; that would have upped the current fee by multiples.

These two initiatives, put on the ballot by the citizens, will help to make sure that Louisville’s new development is a benefit rather than a detriment. So I certainly hope that the citizens support them.

In Boulder, we have plenty of issues deserving a vote. But council has not seen fit to put them on the ballot (and initiatives here are very difficult and time-consuming). Here are a few of the many:

Both the city’s budget and staff levels have grown excessively fast over the last years, as I’ve pointed out before. The budget, after adjusting for inflation and population, went up almost 40% in the last 10 years. Staffing levels have increased almost 20% over the last six years (per a citizen study), even though our population hasn’t grown.

Now the council wants to impose a Transportation Maintenance Fee, even though we already have a transportation sales tax that has kept us operational for decades. As far as I can tell, this new fee is purely a revenue-raising measure and is being done as a fee to avoid having a tax election.

This fee is solely based on building size and use. Therefore, nothing we do to reduce our impact on the system will reduce how much we pay. Drive a three-row 6,000 lb. SUV, or ride your e-bike, you pay the same. (According to analyses done in the 1950s, road wear increases roughly by the fourth power of the weight per axle, so heavy vehicles are by far the most serious culprits.)

The fee exempts CU, the Federal labs and the BVSD, apparently because these governmental entities are tax-exempt. But all three of these entities pay water, sewer and flood control fees, just like anyone else, according to city staff. So why are they excluded from this fee, and we are left holding their bag?

By the way, per the city’s report, CU’s share would have come out around 4% of the total. Given the massive impact CU has on our traffic levels, there’s something seriously awry in the calculations, in my opinion. We deserve a vote on this fee

And while we’re at it, how about giving us a vote on raising our inclusionary housing requirements with no more fee-in-lieu that the developers’ love (because of the extra profits), and requiring new business growth to pay for affordable housing for workers who will need it?

And stop changing the regulations to allow more densification of our neighborhoods without giving us residents the final vote. I know that would reduce my paranoia level and that of many of my friends.

And, finally, we never got a say about inviting Sundance with 50,000-plus attendees for 10 days (and while CU is in session), nor about the short-term rentals that will now be allowed almost everywhere.

If initiatives were easier here, I suspect these issues and others would be on the ballot.