Steve Pomerance

I’ve tried to avoid commenting on elections because I’d rather focus on issues than personalities. But times change … so here are some of the many recent events that show we really, really, really need some new blood on our council/mayor. Item #1: The council added an “executive session” to their agenda for last week. Per a recent charter change, such sessions allow the full council to meet behind closed doors to consider legal issues. But their announcement contained no details regarding what they were considering. Since 2001, the Colorado Open Meetings Law has required state and local public bodies to provide notice of the topic for an executive session, “in as much detail as possible without compromising the purpose for which the executive session is authorized.” And in 2020, the Colorado Court of Appeals found that the Town of Basalt violated the COML for failing to provide the necessary details. But, although I raised the issue with the council, no details emerged. Apparently, the...

Let’s start with the city budget. In the last 10 years, Boulder’s budget went up 85% — 39% after adjusting for inflation — mostly in the last 5-6 years. And we had almost no population growth. My first thought was that there must have been a backlog of capital projects to be done. But then a friend did an analysis of the city’s staffing levels. This is measured in “full-time equivalent” staff members, or FTEs. Here’s what he found: In 2019, Boulder had 1,252 FTE’s per 100,000 residents. In 2025, we had 1,493 FTE’s per 100,000. That’s an increase of 19% per capita in six years! And during that time, the city stopped running the library; that accounted for a decrease in need of approximately 78 FTEs. For comparison, Fort Collins has only about three-fourths as many FTEs per 100,000. Are our council members even aware of this massive increase in money spent and staff hired? For a test, some months ago, I sent my analysis to an apparently knowledgeable council member. After clarifyin...

First, the big shocker: Ballot Question 2C more than triples the pay for the mayor and council members! Beginning in December 2026, pay would go up to 50% of Area Median Income for the mayor and 40% for council members. It wasn’t so long ago that council members were not paid at all. For much of my time on council, we all were volunteers. Council members worked hard to do a good job, just because it was their civic duty. But after pay was added and then increased over the years, in my observation, council’s performance deteriorated. The role of the council used to include unbiased and complete agenda preparation, full and open discussion of issues at council meetings, giving all citizens enough time to say what they needed to, then listening and asking questions, and making decisions based on facts and not just abstract values. Now, the agenda materials are not reviewed by the Council Agenda Committee, which was created expressly for that function....

The Colorado Supreme Court recently ruled that Trump cannot appear on the primary ballot because he “having previously taken an oath…to support the Constitution of the United States…engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same…” Whatever the history of this third clause of the 14th Amendment, its real value is to help prevent our democracy from turning into a dictatorship. If the person wanting to be the next president engages in insurrection, this allows us to prevent them from occupying our democracy’s most powerful position, knowing that they might do it again. If it was their second time around, that president would have learned from the first experience and would proceed with more careful strategic planning. And (s)he would have over three years to appoint fellow conspirators to gain an irreversible lock on power. Democracies are not immune from takeovers.  “Why Democracies Collapse,”  by Diskin, Diskin and Hazan evaluated the collapse of 30 democracies, iden...

The nasty postcards have exposed a gaping hole in Boulder’s election laws. I’m referring to the nasty anti-Yates postcards sent out by the Working Families Party promoting Nicole Speer or Aaron Brockett as Boulder’s first directly elected mayor. When the first card showed up over two weeks ago, ten citizens (including me) immediately wrote to Nicole Speer and Aaron Brockett, formally requesting “that you IMMEDIATELY disclaim any involvement and IMMEDIATELY repudiate this organization’s attempts to influence Boulder’s elections.” Nicole was silent. Aaron posted something on social media. The city council (who were copied on this initial communication) did not take a stand against these ugly, partisan attacks. And WFP’s campaign continued — with a second large postcard, web ads, and “polling” phone calls — and very likely shifted the close outcome in Brockett’s favor. Both former council member Crystal Gray and I immediately filed formal complaints with the City over WFP’s failure ...

This election seemed pretty calm until this last weekend when two postcards showed up from some entities called the “Working Families Power National PAC” and “Colorado Working Families Power.” The larger card, from the National PAC, beat up on Bob Yates, who is running for mayor, and instead advocated the election of Nicole Speer or Aaron Brockett. The other card, from Colorado WFP, advocated for Speer. No doubt most of you have seen the larger card, so I won’t go into its offensive and partisan content. (By the way, WFP National PAC claims to be “progressive,” whatever that now means.) As of Wednesday morning, only the WFP National PAC had filed the required campaign reports with the City. That the CWFP group appears to have not done this apparently puts them in violation of the City’s election laws. However, from further research, it appears that both are actually the “Working Families Party.” Additionally, the PAC group filed as an “Independent Expenditure Only,” which is apparent...

No, I’m not running. I’m too old, and I’m term-limited besides. But, having listened to many of the council candidates, I think much more emphasis is needed about where Boulder is heading.  Here’s a start: Boulder needs to focus on improving our quality of life, not increasing the quantity of bodies, so that we minimize our impact on climate, natural and agricultural lands, our water supply (which needs a serious risk analysis done ASAP), housing affordability and air quality (and lean hard on the state to finally do its job). Let’s keep Boulder livable. Reducing emissions means net-zero energy use requirements for all new buildings, bringing existing buildings up to current standards, adding PV panels, two-way metering, and micro-grids. Reduce traffic by charging for commuter parking, paying people to car- and vanpool, increasing delivery services, adding protected bike lanes, encouraging e-bikes where they reduce traffic (but not adding to over-use of Open Space), and electrifyin...

Under the system proposed by the City Council and approved by Boulder voters (with no alternatives provided for us to consider), a sitting council member with two years left in their four-year term can run for mayor. That council member only must resign their council seat if they are elected as mayor. So, if they lose, they retain their council seat for two more years, and there are four council vacancies to fill. But if they win, the council candidate that got the fifth-most votes gets the now vacant fifth seat. As a result, the voters have total uncertainty as to how many open seats there will be. Will there be four or five open seats on the council to be filled in the upcoming election? For example, this year, if council member Nicole Speer wins the mayoral race, there will be five open seats, and if she loses, there will be four. But the voters only get four votes, even though there might be five open seats. That makes it very difficult for everyone, including candidates deciding w...

  I attended the court hearing last Thursday on the challenge to the ballot title for the referendum on the CU South annexation passed by the council a year ago. (Note: The council could have held a special election last January, avoiding eight months of delay.) The judge ruled that she did not have jurisdiction, basically because of the council’s amendment a few years ago to the Boulder Revised Code that said that no state laws apply to the initiative, referendum and recall processes, other than those related to certain criminal offenses. (The Code contains laws passed by the council; the Charter can only be amended by citizen vote.) Since neither the Charter nor the Code contain any procedure for challenging ballot titles, the judge, and the rest of us, were left hanging.  Additionally, because of this amendment to the Code, there is not even a legally required format for the petition itself. So that gets made up by the city (also unchallengeable, by the way). And that t...

  I thought Camera readers would be interested to hear from other former council members about the proposed shift to even-year council elections. I contacted over a dozen former council members with whom I’ve stayed in touch. Eight volunteered to share their thoughts. Below are their comments in alphabetical order. Cindy Carlisle: Boulder’s non-partisan odd-year elections focus candidates and the electorate on an informed discussion of local candidates and issues. Electors aren’t distracted by the noise and money of national campaigns in even years. Citizens concerned about the city’s future and how it’s shaped participate, examining items both mundane (capital improvements) and exotic (Campaign Finance Reform!). Roughly one-third of the city, some 35,000 people, are CU students living here for, generally, four years. Changing local elections from odd to even-numbered years only to attract a transitory population — who can vote now — seems counterproductive to sound governanc...

  Why not ask the people? This all started when I saw the Boulder city staff’s proposal to increase the climate action tax to expand Boulder’s investment in reducing our carbon output. I applaud these efforts, having been involved in renewable energy projects since 1975 when I built my solar home, and in 1982 when I designed Boulder’s solar access ordinance. But why are we not requiring that all new buildings be net-zero in energy use? With all the new technology and the availability of community solar, it’s totally feasible and reasonably economic. If the council is not willing to take that step, why not poll the citizens to see if there is political support? What also caught my eye was the additional $1.5 million for wildfire prevention efforts. After the Marshall and NCAR fires, this is clearly a very serious issue. So I contacted the city council about the fire risks associated with unhoused people camping on city lands. The response I got back from one council member was...

  “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government,”  Thomas Jefferson once said . Unfortunately, the current notion about shifting our city elections to even years will lead to exactly the opposite. Many people in Boulder invest a lot of time in national and state-level elections. To force them to spread themselves even thinner will just dumb down our local elections. And others don’t get enough information to make informed choices. A perfect example of this dumbing down and information gap was the  strange statement made by Councilmember Matt Benjamin , a member of the so-called progressives, “At the heart, it’s lifting up those that are disenfranchised and don’t vote in odd years.” “Disenfranchise” means “deprive someone of the right to vote.” But every registered voter in Boulder County gets a ballot in both even and odd years. These can be filled out and returned by mail, or deposited in a drop-box, of which there are now ...