Steve Pomerance

I got some very interesting feedback on my most recent column on the Downtown Development Authority. Here’s a summary of some of what came up for me in reading the input. For your information, nothing is set in stone yet; the Boulder City Council could still come to its senses, and fix Ordinance 8763 passed July 23 on first reading. If the council passes Ordinance 8763 as is, creating the structure for DDA, the decisions to implement it and to divert incremental increases in sales and property taxes are voted on solely by downtown business folks. These decisions are submitted only to the “qualified electors as defined in the Act (CRS 31-25-8).” These are property owners, lessees, etc., in the DDA area, including Downtown and the Hill. We citizens get no say. The way 8763 is written, the DDA can divert incremental tax revenues (generated within the district) that we Boulder citizens dedicated by our vote for Open Space, Parks and Recreation, Culture and Safety, Arts, and Transportation....

The Boulder City Council is considering forming a Downtown Development Authority (DDA). This entity would be run by downtown property owners and have the power to use tax-increment financing (TIF) to fund improvements in downtown. The theory is that the DDA’s improvements would increase property and/or sales tax from this area, so it should be able to collect this increment to finance public improvements. The DDA’s board would make the decisions within the limits of Boulder’s zoning and other regulations, and state law. DDA’s are potentially useful in areas where there is a lot of development potential and attendant public infrastructure needs. But that is not the case in Boulder, where our downtown is mostly built out, and whose business success is more a function of the quality of the experience of residents, tourists and employees who come there but live outside of this area. A significant concern is that what the downtown property owners want may not be what the rest of Boulder...

The (re)emergence of the need to fund repairs and replacements of multiple City of Boulder buildings has encouraged me to try (again) to interest the city council in the large increase in Boulder’s spending that has occurred. I think this is important because, based on my analysis to date, the city, without seriously impacting levels of service (LOS), could reduce its operating budget and thereby save enough to fund most, if not all, of the required building work without a tax increase. I started by looking at the overall budget. It increased (inflation-adjusted) by about 23% over the last 10 years. Then I deducted the capital expenditures, so that it only reflected the operating budget, which in theory measures how much is being expended to pay staff and others to maintain LOS. The operating budget per capita (inflation-adjusted) increased by over 18% during the last 10 years; the number of employees increased by around 200 to well over 1,500, even after eliminating the library em...