Steve Pomerance

Earlier this week, Boulder council members Matt Benjamin and Tina Marquis  published a lengthy complaint  accusing citizens of verbally abusing city staff. They told people to, instead, communicate their concerns directly to the council by showing up at public hearings or emailing them. The problem is that, based on the visible evidence, this council majority pays essentially no attention to anything anyone says. If they really wanted people to come to the council meetings or write to them with their concerns, then they need to demonstrate that they actually care by responding with useful action. A start would be to allow testimony from all the people who sign up, not just a random selection. Council members should ask questions right away and not wait until the end of the meeting. Tell them what the city can do for them. If things get repetitive, the mayor can always t...

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...

At the beginning of each regular council meeting, it is the tradition to hold open comment. This used to be a chance for citizens to raise issues or concerns they think the council needs to focus on. Unfortunately, it recently has become more of a forum for protests on various non-city issues. The good news is that the council will be discussing how to fix this. But I feel that some more in-depth consideration is needed to avoid just changing the format or timing without really addressing the underlying desires of citizens to really be listened to, versus the apparent lack of value that council members give to what is said. Supporting this perspective, the poll the City just did says that barely over half of respondents approve of the job the City is doing in providing services to residents. That low rating indicates a need for real change. Council members are not better or smarter or even many times more well-informed than the rest of us. And the council is not supposed to be separate...

Around noon on Wednesday, I read the Camera story on the latest attempt by our council to  fix their abysmal public processes . They allege to want to get more and better input by taking up the suggestion by the National League of Cities folks to have citizen forums on specific topics early in their process. The story said that the first forum will be Thursday, Sept. 26. So I immediately tried to sign up. But, per the City’s web site, the meeting was to be virtual and signup was already closed. So, I emailed the council and staff that both state law and the city charter require such meetings to be open to the public. When I rechecked at 4 p.m., it had become a real meeting (6 p.m. in the council chambers) open to the public. This is just the latest example of a failure by the council to manage themselves effectively. The meeting with the NLC folks (that I attended) where this process was demonstrated was way back in February. Now, all of a sudden, ...

Last week, I was engaged in a somewhat heated discussion with some Boulder city staff members about having more openness in the Advisory Group meetings that are taking place as part of the Xcel franchise agreements approved last year. I realized that I was frustrated, not by the city staff, but by the general retreat from openly involving the citizens of Boulder in the decisions that are being made that determine our future. And that is exacerbated by the lack of real Council discussion on these big issues. It’s as if somehow significant disagreement or intense interchange is now frowned upon, and what counts is false civility or something like that. Apparently, my feelings were getting the best of me. This does not only relate to the details of some particular policy, but to the contextual discussions also. In simple terms, we don’t have real opportunities to discuss where our community is headed. Momentous decisions are being made, and I, and many people I know, feel like there is ...

  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...

Recent months have been really scary. Everyone is threatened by the coronavirus. Testing is way behind where it should be. The stock market is dropping at record rates, and the economy as a whole is slowing dramatically. Many people are being pushed to the edge, both economically and health-wise. But within this bleak scenario, there are things to be thankful for. Our local and state governments are doing a very good job with the resources and technology that they can access. Walking in neighborhoods is a pleasure, with people greeting each other — at the appropriate physical separation. We have our open space, where we can get out and enjoy nature. I recently hiked the southern portion of the Mesa Trail and was greeted by truly spectacular views of the Denver skyline and the eastern plains. The air was clearer than I ever remember seeing in my 50-plus years in Boulder. I also had time to read a book that I’ve put off for years — “The March of Folly,” by Barbara Tuchman, first p...

Here we are starting 2018. We have a highly educated and engaged citizenry, a smart City Council, and a hard-working city staff. Yet any number of people I know are worried about the next city project that will likely go awry and leave them, once again, feeling disenfranchised and stuck with a result that they know is far from optimal. Why are we still struggling with this sort of systemic failure? What is the missing piece? The city manager is responsible for the city’s operations and budget, and the city attorney is responsible for writing and enforcing the laws. But in Boulder we also spend a huge amount of time and energy pursuing new paths, dealing with new problems and opportunities, and attempting to be on the cutting edge in many areas at once. However, managing these types of activities is not really anyone’s primary responsibility, nor has there been any focused effort to consider what is required to do so successfully. The Public Participation Working Group touched on th...

The Boulder City Council is setting up a working group to improve how the “public” participates in its governance. This will be a big undertaking, since the process is flawed from top to bottom. At the highest level, the lack of trust is evident. Citizens are asking, “Do the council and staff really work for us the citizens, or are they in it for themselves? Do they really value what we care about, or do they hold their personal goals and interests paramount?” This should not be an “either/or,” but the current unacknowledged tension makes many citizens feel irrelevant, whether they are testifying at a council meeting, or are invited to participate in a staff-managed process. I certainly have experienced this myself. There is an almost total lack of feedback when testifying at council or emailing the council on substantive issues. And even as an appointee to the city’s working group on impact fees (an area where I’m a relative expert), when I identified significant flaws in the st...

In the last week or so, a number of Boulder council members have started asking about a group of advisors to the city planning and development services center (P&DS). I’m not talking about the planning board, which has been in the news lately for asking some tough questions about the costs and benefits of the huge Google building at 30th and Pearl. I’m not talking about the landmarks board, which raised some issues about the activities of some property owners on Mapleton Hill. No, I’m talking about the “P&DS advisors.” Never heard of this group? Well, neither had I until last week. According to an email from city staff, “P&DS Advisors are a customer/stakeholder group that is convened by staff on a quarterly basis. This group provides feedback to the P&DS management team about the development review, technical document, building permit and inspection processes. Discussions provide opportunities for customers to offer suggestions about business-process improvements an...

Some municipalization supporters recently did an analysis of Xcel’s Colorado pre-tax profits, based on Xcel’s multi-state corporate filings: Colorado now accounts for nearly half of Xcel’s profits, although our customer base is far smaller than Xcel’s in Minnesota, and even a smaller fraction if you include the other six states where Xcel also provides power. In the eight years from 2004 to 2012, Xcel’s Colorado pre-tax profit more than doubled, even though sales and generation capacity were essentially flat. Amazingly, the same data was presented in a strong article in  redstate.com , a notorious conservative website. (Google “kyle forti xcel colorado” .) Apparently both the left and the right are upset about the increase in Xcel’s Colorado profits. Boulder, of course, is part of Xcel’s profit machine. The same local people calculated that Boulder contributes something like $35 million a year to Xcel’s windfall. This excess is, to some extent, a function of the exorbitant al...

On April 26, the Boulder Planning Board finished its three-day review of the proposed annexation and development of the Hogan-Pancost property, located adjacent to the East Boulder Community Center. The city staff did not identify significant downsides in their memo, thereby effectively endorsing the project, but the planning board still turned down the annexation request 7-0. This unanimous vote raises fundamental questions about the suitability of the site for development in general, as well as about the proposed development plans in particular. City staff and the planning board members are smart, capable people. So how did they come down 180 degrees apart? Or, to generalize, when should city staff be advocates and when is their role to just provide information? The planning board had concerns about flooding, ground water, wetlands, riparian areas and neighborhood impact. All these issues are covered by policies in the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, with which annexations m...

Xcel Energy, in what appears to be an attempt to gain a PR victory to try to stop Boulder from creating a municipal electric utility to escape from Xcel’s coal-intensive monopoly, asked the city to engage in yet another last-moment process. I fully expect Xcel to use this to try to kill the muni process so it can keep its Boulder customer base. The first four Xcel-City processes in the last five years produced little to nothing of value: The first was SmartGridCity, which Xcel promised to be the Holy Grail by helping integrate solar, wind, and demand management, providing real time billing and information, and costing the ratepayers nothing. SGC ended up producing little of customer value, and ratepayers are already on the hook for nearly $30 million of its costs. Then came the franchise negotiations, in which Xcel basically stonewalled the city. After the vote on the occupation tax that replaced the franchise came the city’s offer to Xcel to be its “laboratory” , where Xcel could ...

I was at REI last weekend and ran into an old friend, Jeff McWhirter, who is the president of the South East Boulder Neighborhood Association. We got into a long discussion about the possible annexation and development of the Hogan-Pancost property. It’s about 22 acres, off 55th south of Baseline just south of the East Boulder Community Center, and perhaps the last significant piece of undeveloped land Boulder can annex without going into Area III of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. The land is so fraught with problems that this process has been going on (and off) for about 17 years. The current proposal is for 120-plus units, part senior housing, some “affordable” units, and over 60 market rate houses. The issues specific to the site include lack of easy access to shopping and services, poor transit, and, more significantly, serious flooding potential, high ground water and threatened species. Unfortunately the data on these big issues is not the best. Current flood studie...