Steve Pomerance

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 cit...

I’ve been following the council’s process around the Boulder airport and have been frustrated by the lack of good background info regarding the options. So, I did a bit of research. Thanks to all who helped me, including a long-time climbing partner, who is a pilot and an attorney and was involved in the Aspen airport fight. Regarding the “straw poll” that the council took at a recent study session: Some attempted to treat this as a decision to accept a grant from the FAA, which, per the FAA’s terms, would require continuing the airport operations indefinitely, and under FAA jurisdiction. The council should read its own rules. Charter Section 16 states, “The council shall act only by ordinance, resolution, or motion.” The Boulder Revised Code Sec. 2-2-8 requires a council motion to approve the city manager’s signing of any lease of three years or longer. And the council is only empowered to make such motions at official meetings, not study sessions. The reason that FAA jurisdicti...

For Thursday night the city council scheduled consideration of this motion regarding legal action about the future of the airport: “Motion to authorize the city attorney to initiate and pursue litigation against the United States of America, the Federal Aviation Administration, and Michael G. Whitaker in his official capacity as Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, to obtain a judicial determination of the duration of the city’s obligation to continue operating the Boulder Municipal Airport.” Since I’m writing this prior to the council meeting, I cannot comment on the outcome, though I suspect it will be rubber-stamped. When I saw this motion announced on Monday, I was baffled. First, the city attorney had already filed the lawsuit on Friday, July 26, almost two weeks ago, per the lawsuit’s signature page. And the city has asserted that the city attorney has the authority to file this on her own. So why is the council now, after the fact, claiming to be “authorizing th...

I follow the Boulder City Council’s Hotline, so even when I’m staying elsewhere, like last week up in Dillon, I’m kept aware of some of what is going on at the city. For those of you who don’t follow it, the Hotline is the public email service that council members and city staff use to communicate with each other, and which anyone can sign up to receive. What has struck me over recent years is the almost total lack of substantive commentary by council members on the actions that the council is considering. The Hotline is not legal for the council members to use for detailed back-and-forth discussions; those are supposed to take place at open public council meetings. But, other than council member Mark Wallach, who does an excellent job of it, almost no council members ever raise substantive issues with the staff presentations, or bring up issues that were not addressed or need further discussion. The Council Agenda Committee used to do in-depth substantive reviews of agenda materials. ...

Sometimes it’s worth digging into past situations so that we can learn and avoid repetitions. For whatever reason, in the last few weeks several caught my eye. Many of you know of the 311 Mapleton project that replaced the old Memorial Hospital buildings with senior housing and facilities and is now under construction. The original “promise” by the developer, in exchange for building only eight permanently affordable units on the huge 311 site, was to develop the Fruehauf property on 33rd Street with over 100 units of affordable housing. There was a big controversy over a possible conflict of interest that one council member had in voting for this, and it barely was passed by the council on a 5-4 vote.  Somehow this commitment regarding the Fruehauf property was never properly documented. As a result, the city was not going to get any affordable units other than what was on the 311 site. But now, according to Boulder staff, the developer has finally decided to give the undeveloped ...