Steve Pomerance

The idea of putting a 55-foot building on the southwest corner of Broadway and University Avenue in Boulder is a terrible idea, plain and simple. It will destroy one of Boulder’s iconic views and make that area just another overdeveloped, unpleasant, unattractive place in our city, where unpleasant, unattractive overdevelopment is becoming the norm. Drive, bike, or walk up from downtown, or just look from across the intersection, and see if you don’t agree. The city finally commissioned a study to evaluate the economic benefits of a proposed hotel at that location. It compared the Hill hotel versus office/commercial and affordable housing development. Conceptually this makes sense — compare scenarios and see which one does the best. But the chosen scenarios were not comparable. Each of the non-hotel development scenarios only looks at redevelopment of the 20,000-square-foot Pleasant Street parking lot. In contrast, the Hill hotel would take up that lot plus the whole rest of the ar...

Some Camera readers have asked me questions about how regulated monopoly investor-owned utilities like Xcel work in practice. Here is some background information. Xcel Energy is a holding company that owns regulated monopoly utilities in eight states, including Public Service Company of Colorado, which is regulated by our Public Utilities Commission. Xcel makes money by investing their own cash equity (plus money derived from bond sales) in building power plants, power lines, etc. These investments are then added to the “rate base” on which Xcel is granted a rate of return by the PUC. This return is calculated based on the bonds’ interest rates and a rate of return on the equity, which, per the relevant case law, is supposed to be, “commensurate with returns on investments in other enterprises having corresponding risks.” The bonds are paid off as they come due. The invested equity is paid off in equal payments over the lifetimes of the power plants and other infrastructure. In r...

Colorado is now in a position to make a radical transformation of our whole system of generating electricity. Wind and solar have become so cheap that we can shut down all our coal plants, shift to more renewables, and still pay less for electricity, as recent studies by the Sierra Club and Vibrant Clean Energy confirm. The key is to dismantle our century-old model where the regulators (the Public Utilities Commission) operate in a reactive mode and so end up “captured” by for-profit investor-owned utilities. We need to replace this model with one where decisions are made independently and solely in the public interest. We have efforts in many states to learn from. We can see that going only halfway and leaving the investor-owned utilities with a significant decision-making role is guaranteed to perpetuate the struggles that we have here in Boulder. We will be shifting to more electric cars and heating systems, so demand for electricity will significantly increase. So we should...

According to the 2018 Boulder Community Profile, since 2000 job growth has been about 50% faster than residential. Excluding kids and retired folks, jobs likely grew at more than double the rate for resident workers. We now have well over 60,000 in-commuters. As a result, traffic congestion has dramatically increased. Unless we make some significant changes, it will just get worse faster, because we have exceeded the capacity of almost all our intersections. Even secondary streets are now heavily congested. Water, Boulder’s prized resource, may finally come under pressure. We get a significant portion of our supply from the Colorado River via the Big Thompson project. Given the multi-decade drought induced by climate change and the Colorado River Compact constraints, at some point, probably sooner than later, we will be forced either to buy out farmers’ water rights or live with a lot less. More people means more big buildings, more views blocked, more open opace trampled, more ...

In last November’s election, Boulder voters passed a number of charter amendments related to Boulder’s elections. They mostly addressed the provisions related to direct democracy, which occurs through initiatives, referenda and recalls. Direct democracy ensures that when citizens are not satisfied with the actions of their elected representatives, they have independent paths on which to proceed. (So it’s clear, charter amendments can also be done through initiatives, but the rules are in state law and cannot be changed locally.) The initiative process, referenda and recalls have long been paper processes: Citizens first write up what they want to do. City staff members then review the draft and provide technical feedback. Then the final version is printed, typically over a hundred copies, and circulated by regular citizens or paid circulators for months to get the requisite number of signatures. Gathering signatures has gotten harder, as many private property owners seem less wil...

The latest Colorado energy bill,  HB19-1313 , was apparently drafted for (and presumably by) Xcel Energy, though its language allows other utilities to choose to come under its provisions. Here is the bill’s fundamental requirement: “By 2030, the qualifying retail utility shall reduce the carbon dioxide emissions associated with electricity sales to the qualifying retail utility’s retail electricity customers by eighty percent from 2005 levels. For the years 2050 and thereafter, or sooner if practicable, the qualifying retail utility shall seek to achieve the goal of providing its retail customers with energy generated from one-hundred-percent clean energy resources so long as doing so is technically and economically feasible, in the public interest …” The bill only covers “retail sales” and does not include “sales for resale.” These constitute about a fifth of Xcel’s total sales. It only regulates CO2, but not other emissions, like methane. So the bill allows much more green...

I just reviewed the 2019 Legislature’s bills related to our critical need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses. I’m very pleased that finally we are really moving forward, thanks in large part to our elected representatives from the Boulder area. But the process is not complete, and some legislation is missing important pieces. Here are some brief comments on some of the bills: HB19-1261 — Climate Action Plan To Reduce Pollution This far-reaching bill requires an overall statewide reduction in 2025 greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26 percent from 2005 levels, 2030 greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent, and 2050 greenhouse gas emissions by at least 90 percent. Additionally, it requires regulated investor-owned utilities (IOUs) to create “clean energy plans” to meet an 80 percent reduction target for their emissions by 2030, though the language is somewhat confusing re: actual performance. In exchange, these utilities apparently get relief from future carbon taxes...

This concept, popularized by Garret Hardin in the 1960s, discusses a community owned pasture that is becoming overgrazed because, although each additional cow on the land benefited that cow’s owner, the end result was damage to everyone. In other words, the cumulative effect of decisions that may benefit given individuals may irreversibly harm the whole community. This problem manifests itself in as many ways as we have “commons.” At the most global level, our common atmosphere has provided us with the stable climate that allowed humans to flourish. Yet our extra cows — our individual greenhouse gas emissions — are in the process of destabilizing our climate, threatening to extinguish much of life on Earth. Locally, we have many commons: wonderful open space, great mountain views, mostly non-gridlocked street system, lots of parks and recreation centers, good schools, multiple bikeways, some permanently affordable housing, accessible libraries, peaceful and uncongested neighbor...

I commend the Boulder City Council for having an ambitious list of projects to consider for its January 2019 retreat. But the first thing I’d like to see the council do is to correct some of what went awry in 2018. Their goal here should be to re-establish trust between the citizens, city staff, and council members so we all can work together to make Boulder a better place to live. First on the list is the “opportunity zone” mess. It is simply unacceptable that the city staff did not immediately communicate with the Council and the public about the opportunity zone process when the state informed them about it in mid-February 2018. It wouldn’t have taken more than a few minutes to forward the state’s emailed request to the council Hotline. Then the Council members and interested citizens could have known about it. But instead, the city manager submitted the application without anyone knowing except some city Economic Vitality staff members and Chamber of Commerce folks. The city ...

Last Friday morning, I was asked by some folks to take a look at the details of Proposition 110, the 20-year 0.62 percent state sales tax increase that would fund transportation projects. In the portions of the proposed law that would give counties and cities 40 percent of the revenues (with half going to each) I noticed the following phrase, “(1) After paying the costs of the Colorado state patrol and any other costs of the department (CDOT) exclusive of highway construction, highway improvements, or highway maintenance, that are appropriated by the general assembly …,” followed by the allocation rules for the counties and cities. So it’s clear, this phrase is embedded in the current statutes, and the drafters of Proposition 110 simply included it and made it apply to Proposition 110’s revenues. Then I looked at the portion of Proposition 110 that allocated 45 percent of the proceeds to the state. I was surprised to find that this phrase was specifically removed. And it was not ...

By  MATT BENJAMIN ,  ED BYRNE ,  ALLYN FEINBERG ,  MARK MCINTYRE ,  STEVE POMERANCE ,  EVAN RAVITZ ,  TYLER ROMERO ,  MICHAEL SCHREINER ,  JOHN SPITZER  and  VALERIE YATES We urge city of Boulder voters to vote  yes  on Ballot Question 2G, which reads, “Shall Sections 38, 45, and 56 of the City Charter be amended pursuant to Ordinance 8274 to allow the Boulder City Council to adopt ordinances that permit use of electronic petitions and to permit on-line electronic signing or endorsement of initiative, referendum, and recall petitions?” The city of Boulder’s Campaign Finance/Elections Working Group unanimously recommended this to Council, who unanimously voted to put it on the ballot. (The initiative, referendum and recall processes are the elements of direct democracy. The initiative is where a group of citizens gathers enough signatures to put a proposed piece of legislation on the ballot and asks the voters to ap...

This spring, I wrote an op-ed entitled ”  Parking garage on the Hill — boon or boondoggle? ” I have learned more about this, and it’s become clear that this proposal is a far worse deal than I had envisioned. The following is based on readily available data, but everything is still fluid and so may change. The notion that a proposed 201-space underground garage is going to solve the Hill’s parking needs is simply not true. A new hotel above the garage will displace 88 existing spaces (62 in the Pleasant Street University Hill General Improvement District lot, plus 26 other spaces) leaving a net gain of 113 new spaces. But the hotel could use all these up. Here’s how: Assuming only half the hotel patrons drive and a 20 percent vacancy rate on the 189 rooms, that’s 75 cars, leaving 38 net new spaces. The hotel employees (about 38 per shift) and restaurant and shop employees (maybe another 42, depending on what actually gets built on site), even if only half drive, will use up...