Steve Pomerance

In my last Camera piece, I said, “If all it takes is the council similarly claiming something is an ’emergency,’ then the council could pass most anything ‘by emergency’ and avoid public hearings completely.” Well, the council did exactly that at their next opportunity, abusing Charter Section 17 by passing “by emergency” the new rules for council meetings’ start times and schedules. Almost every definition of “emergency” I’ve found requires an event to be “unexpected” or “sudden,” and “demanding immediate attention” to prevent loss of life, property, etc. But the situation with “open comment” has been a mess since the war in Gaza got going. And after well over a year of failed attempts to fix the situation, it is hardly “sudden” or “unexpected.” If it is so serious, why weren’t these new fixes proposed two weeks sooner? Or why not wait one more meeting and get some public input? All this raises the serious question of why the council doe...

In my last column, I provided some information that was inaccurate. Unfortunately, the real information is worse. I had said that the proposed South Boulder Creek dam along U.S. 36 and Table Mesa Drive would “protect” around 600 structures for a cost of around $90 million.  The 1/25/24 council memo states that 600 structures are in that floodplain and that the South Boulder Creek Flood Mitigation Project will protect only 260 of them from a 100-year flood. If 260 structures are “protected,” then that leaves 340 “unprotected.” Redoing the math, the $90,000,000 estimated cost figure I used divided by 260 structures is almost $350,000 per structure, over a third of a million dollars! I immediately communicated this much larger number to the City Council, figuring that the shock might stir some serious rethinking. I did not receive a single reply. I also made a request under the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) for “the most recent detailed updated cost estimate for the project” (along...

I want to acknowledge Colorado state Representatives Elizabeth Epps (D-Denver) and Bob Marshall (D-Highlands Ranch) for starting a process that may have huge benefits in reducing the polarization of our political processes. Last week, according to The Denver Post, they filed suit against the Colorado House of Representatives and its leaders and caucuses of both parties for violations of the state’s Open Meetings Law. The alleged violations include closed caucus meetings and the use of electronic messaging apps that auto-delete to secretly communicate. Bringing this lawsuit required enormous courage from these first-year representatives. And, critically, they hit on a problem that I think is, in many ways, responsible for the kind of positionality and buzz-word politics that many of us find so appalling.  It appears that when a subset of the legislators decide among themselves behind closed doors what they want to do, their ability to then listen to their constituents who see issues...

  I’ve engaged in a number of conversations recently about the need to defuse the increasing polarization that is occurring around almost every issue in Boulder. We face complex questions around issues such as growth, affordable housing, our energy future, and racial equity. But our governmental processes, at least as far as they involve giving ordinary citizens a role in the decision-making, have become more and more of a one-way street, with input being depersonalized and almost no interaction. As a result, there is no realistic way for most citizens to have meaningful discussions with our decision-makers. The expanding importance of these issues has resulted in citizens feeling an increased need to engage, supported by real fears of the consequences of not doing so. But at the same time citizens are experiencing a decreased ability to actually have any influence or effect on the outcomes. This frustration comes from feeling that no one is listening. In particular, many citizen...

Based on the Boulder City Council’s discussion last Tuesday night, the answer is — whenever the council decides it isn’t. To understand why this is important, some background is necessary: Boulder has very stringent open meeting laws. Charter Section 9 provides the primary directive, “All meetings of the council or committees thereof shall be public.” So, unlike under state law, the council cannot hold executive (closed-door) sessions for any reason. The citizens temporarily granted executive session power in 2014 for the Xcel negotiations occurring then. But it was abused, and in 2017, the citizens rejected the council’s request to extend that power. Section 9 also contains the only exception to Boulder’s requirement that all committee meetings be public. It allows a committee of not more than two council members and any number of noncouncil members to meet privately to screen applications for city manager, city attorney and municipal court judge; to evaluate their performance, an...