Opinion: An improvement in the City Council’s process on the airport and elsewhere

Last week, the Boulder City Council finally acknowledged that straw polls and nods during a study session are not decisions, and that these need to be made by a formal vote in a council meeting. They, in effect, acknowledged what Charter Section 16 already says, “The council shall act only by ordinance, resolution, or motion. All legislative enactments must be in the form of ordinances; all other procedure may be in the form of resolutions or motions.”

Additionally, there now seems to be a movement to actually study topics in study sessions, including a tacit acknowledgement that the staff work on the airport was incomplete. An example: The big issue has been whether to accept FAA money, which requires an “in perpetuity” commitment to run the airport under the FAA’s terms. But the materials never really analyzed how easily the city could fund the airport. Budgets and projections for 2024 through 2030 show the airport’s annual shortfall averaging only $302,432, a tiny 0.06% of the city’s 2026 budget of $521 million.

Additionally, the materials failed to point out that the city budget has increased by around 24% (!) over the last 10 years; that’s after adjustments for inflation and population. This occurred in parallel with the failure to address the $400 million backlog of major facilities’ overhauls and replacements, like the rec centers. It looks like there has been a large, unnoticed, uninvestigated increase, along with avoiding bringing the backlog front and center during all those years of ever-expanding budgets.

So, relative to the airport, there is absolutely no need to make “in perpetuity” commitments to the FAA by taking its grants to address the current shortfalls. It looks like cleaning up the budget’s over-expenditures could easily handle the airport’s deficit many times over.

And, of course, no one has a clue as to what, if any, financial contribution the FAA might make in the future; this makes its “in perpetuity” commitments doubly questionable. Also, CDOT says that they will help maintain things like the runway without perpetual obligations, a better alternative to FAA money.

To really make the airport decision and all the other big decisions that the council is faced with possible, the council’s agenda committee needs to start doing its work. This involves three basic steps:

First, limit the number of projects the council takes on to what it can reasonably get done. This should be done in the goal-setting session. It’s far better to make good decisions on a focused set of issues than to try to take on the universe. Schedule study sessions for all the complex topics, so that both the council and citizens are fully informed before decisions are even considered. And council should not hesitate to set up citizen task forces when necessary.

Second, the agenda committee needs to ensure that the materials staff prepares for the council’s sessions are complete, unbiased and relevant. This means that all reasonable options are evaluated, and that all relevant pros and cons for each option are explored. The job of the staff is not to push the council toward any particular outcome, but to make sure that the council’s decisions and citizens’ inputs are based on the full set of facts, while not burying the important stuff in hundreds of pages of irrelevant material. Include all council members in this process, so they don’t have to write lengthy last-minute memos, as they do now.

Third, get public input on the issues. Invariably, there are citizens who know as much or more than staff or council about parts of agenda items. Their input is invaluable, so it should be sought, not avoided. This includes inviting these citizens to testify at council meetings, including asking questions when necessary to learn what they know. And, to help this and be respectful, show citizens’ faces while they are testifying, so they are not just disembodied voices.

Relative to all this, council member Ryan Schuchard wrote an excellent email to the council Hotline last week, outlining a specific structure for the airport discussion. It now remains to be seen if Mayor Brockett and the others on the agenda committee will do their job as it should be done.

A cartoon I saw recently somehow seems appropriate to the current situation. It shows three kings, wearing robes and crowns, sitting around a table with their wine glasses. The first one says, “Power corrupts.” The second one replies, “But absolute power makes you smarter and fairer.” To which the third comments, “It’s a conundrum!”