Steve Pomerance

The Boulder City Council majority is about to approve a charge on homeowners who build additions to pay for more affordable housing. As with other recent fee decisions, it means more money for the council without a citizen vote, since TABOR requires a vote on taxes, but not on fees. And again, the fee’s logic and legality are sketchy, in my opinion. Here’s my take: Per last year’s U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, all fees, including those legislatively enacted (i.e. generally applicable), should be able to meet the Nollan/Dolan case standards: (1) there must be a “rational nexus,” a logical connection between what the fee is being charged for and the impact the fee will pay to mitigate (the Nollan case), and (2) “rough proportionality,” a close equivalence between the cost being covered and the amount of the fee (the Dolan case). Last year, the council approved using stormwater fees to pay for the South Boulder Creek dam. These fees are calculated on the “impervious area” (the area t...

Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others,” or words to that effect. But there is a wide range of forms of democracy — from what are, in effect, elected dictatorships, to those where direct democracy works in parallel with elected democracy. The Scandinavian countries’ democracies are rated best, along with Switzerland, and almost all have accessible processes for national and/or local initiatives. In Switzerland, citizen initiatives only require 100,000 signatures in a country of almost 9 million — slightly over 1% — and the signature gathering process is relatively simple. Also, Switzerland allows initiative votes up to four times per year. In Boulder, non-charter legislative initiatives require the signatures of 10% of the average number of voters in the last two municipal candidate elections. In 2023, over 33,000 people voted. This will likely increase substantially in 202...