Steve Pomerance

“Bedrooms Are For People” lost at the ballot box, saving months or years in court attempting to resolve the disparity between the title and the ordinance. But many on the new Council want to take up the occupancy issue anyway.  That’s fine, but this is not a simple issue, and I hope the council recognizes this. The Council members need to start by discussing what they realistically want to achieve, and what they see as appropriate conditions and constraints on their goals. Having some reality in this discussion is critical, since the kind of one-liners tossed around during the campaign are not much use in doing good policy work. For example, there was the idiotic statement that, “Everyone who wants to live in Boulder should be able to.” But what if there are a million such people? We don’t lack for legitimate issues to be explored: For example, it seems reasonable that two single women with two kids apiece could share the house that one owns that is currently zoned for a family...

Ballot Item 2B, the Five Year Utility Occupation Tax to Replace Lost Franchise Fee Revenue, has perhaps the longest ballot title since I`ve been involved in Boulder politics. But it is a crucial issue in November`s election. Let me explain a bit about 2B and how it came about. Ballot Item 2B would safeguard the city`s financial ability to deliver services by simply replacing the franchise fee we already pay on our Xcel bills when the current 20-year Xcel franchise expires at the end of December. So 2B is not a new tax, in spite of what the mandatory ballot language required by the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) says. In fact, 2B is designed so that our energy bills will not increase — we will pay essentially the same amount as we would have otherwise paid, just under a different name. Even without a franchise, Xcel is required to continue delivering both electricity and natural gas to its Boulder customers. And if Xcel temporarily extends the franchise past December and continu...