Steve Pomerance

Note: This column has been updated to reflect that six cities are a part of the lawsuit against the state to protect local authority. A key story in Monday’s Camera was about Lafayette having joined Aurora, Arvada, Glendale, Greenwood Village, and Westminster in a critically important lawsuit that will decide whether home rule cities, including Boulder, get to determine their own land use, or if the Legislature and governor can dictate how to zone and manage our cities. I’ve put a fair amount of time into researching this issue; here’s what I’ve found to date: The Colorado Constitution allows cities to become “home rule” and in effect, self-governing by the citizens passing a charter defining their form of government, with certain basic structural rules. Article XX, Sec.6 provides that the laws of home rule cities “supersede … any state law in conflict therewith.” The case law refining this system started in the late 1800s on topics relevant to all cities, like how courts operated. The...

In January, the Boulder City Council will consider making some very significant changes in the zoning for our neighborhoods, potentially leading to building of multiple units on what were single-family zoned lots. Their arguments for such upzoning generally ignore the negative effects, are not particularly strong or logical in my opinion, and do not have neighborhood support. Yet, the process proceeds forward as if on rails. This willingness to proceed irrespective of strong public sentiment against this is, in my view, largely a function of the current council’s approach of minimizing their face-to-face participation with the citizens of Boulder. For example, public participation in meetings is now down to two minutes per person (it used to be three minutes), with the number of speakers limited (it used to be unlimited). But what is far worse is the practice of council members not engaging with citizens who raise legitimate issues. That just dissuades citizens who have important thing...

I seldom get angry about political matters, since I generally focus on policies rather than personalities. But the October 17 city council session on the results of their flawed “Family Friendly Vibrant Neighborhoods” survey really got to me. No surprise to me, a substantial majority of the survey respondents did not favor densification of their single-family neighborhoods. After all, people bought into these neighborhoods precisely because of their lack of overcrowding, large amounts of green space and quiet streets. So why would they want to convert to being dense, noisy, traffic-ridden, overdeveloped and overpopulated? This serious lack of support apparently upset the plans of the “progressives” on the council to use the survey results to support their densification goals. So, they responded at the meeting by undercutting the survey, saying that it was not statistically valid. And, strangely, this view was not refuted by...

The issue of housing availability apparently infects people’s brains and makes them crazy. At least that’s what the initial reports on Gov. Polis’s land-use bill made me think. That many Democrats in the Legislature are supporting it just showed me that power corrupts, and absolute power makes you completely looney. So, I actually reviewed the bill’s 105 pages. Here’s some of what the bill proposes, as best as I could discern: All “Tier 1” cities, including Denver, Colorado Springs, Aurora, Fort Collins, Lakewood, Greeley, Boulder, Grand Junction, Pueblo and Arvada, would have to allow the construction of duplexes, triplexes and multiplexes up to six units, as well as accessory dwelling units and modular homes, on all lots in all residential neighborhoods, including HOAs, with only five-foot side/rear setbacks. So, having areas of varying density is gone. Everything is seriously overbuilt! The obvious result of this is that every time a house or lot comes up for sale, deep-pocketed dev...

The city council recently took up the issue of allowing more “accessory dwelling units” in single-family neighborhoods. An ADU is a self-contained apartment within a single-family house or in a separate building on the same lot. Currently, Boulder has significant limits on ADUs, including requirements for off-street parking and density limits, like allowing only 20% of houses in a 300-foot radius to have ADUs. These were carefully worked out several years ago. Now, some council members are pushing to allow all single-family homes to have ADUs, both internal and external. That would allow three units on every lot — two ADUs plus the main unit — though with the proposed 900-square-foot size limit, this could look like a duplex plus another house. And even with a constraint of, say, a maximum of five unrelated people, it would effectively turn every lot into a small condo development, since ownership could be through an LLC whose members change with whoever is living there. Interestin...

Councilmember Sam Weaver made some pretty strong promises to neighborhoods in his 2017 re-election campaign material, “I support sub-community planning, which includes neighborhood-level stakeholder engagement to explore what the local desires are regarding the potential for additional density through zoning changes.”… “I believe that any policy changes that enable increases in neighborhood density must be created in close partnership with the residents of the neighborhoods they impact.” ( sam4council.wordpress.com/responsible-planning ). Councilmember Mary Young also strongly supported direct involvement by affected residents in the Daily Camera story on her re-election campaign. The Camera said: She’s for “thoughtful redevelopment” that’s informed by sub-area planning in neighborhoods. Where some would argue this approach gives veto power, or something close to it, to neighbors resistant to change in largely single-family zones, Young sees it another way.  “I believe that w...

In the June 20 Camera, Mayor Suzanne Jones is quoted instructing citizens who came to speak about the huge senior living complex proposed for 311 Mapleton, “The decisions are whether it meets the criteria, or not, not whether or not we like it.” I appreciate Mayor Jones’ thoughts, but Boulder’s site review process, which is used to evaluate such large projects, is fraught with subjectivity, fundamentally because the “criteria” lack objective standards and limits. The first step is that the council must agree that, “the proposed site plan is consistent with the land use map, and the service area map, and, on balance, the policies of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan.” But as was noted in the recent consultant’s review of the BVCP, policies can be found that support whatever anyone wants, making this policy requirement meaningless. And each “land use” allows multiple zoning categories, so existing zoning can be changed, as this proposal requests. (I have serious questions as to w...

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...

According to the IRS, “Opportunity Zones are an economic development tool — that is, they are designed to spur economic development and job creation in distressed communities.” This concept was part of the 2017 Republican tax cut bill. About 8,700 census tracts have been approved as opportunity zones across the country. Boulder’s opportunity zone was selected by the governor’s Office of Economic Development and our city government employees without consulting the City Council or the citizens. This census tract is about 2.5 square miles, and encompasses the area between 28th and 55th Streets, and from Arapahoe Road to Iris Avenue, with a notch cut out by Valmont and Airport roads. This “distressed community” includes the new Google office buildings, the 29th Street Mall and Boulder Junction. Obviously, this choice was not about helping the disadvantaged; it was about getting investors to dump yet more money into Boulder, plain and simple.(Diagonal Plaza is the only part of the oppor...

According to the IRS, “An Opportunity Zone is an economically-distressed community where new investments, under certain conditions, may be eligible for preferential tax treatment.” “Opportunity Zones are an economic development tool—that is, they are designed to spur economic development and job creation in distressed communities.” So you know, according to our state government, which designated Colorado’s Opportunity Zones, the area in Boulder between 28 th Street and 55 th , from Arapahoe to Iris, is a “distressed community.” And we’re not the only one to have such a bizarre designation. Parts of Fort Collins, Estes Park, and Grand Junction are now OZs. But there are some rural parts of the state included that at least might be genuinely in need. Investing in an OZ gets you some incredibly beneficial tax breaks. If you stay in the deal for 10 years, you pay no Federal capital gains tax on any profit you make in the deal. (Plus, you get to avoid 15% of the capital gains tax...

FAR “density transfer”, used at 1440 Pine and 311 Mapleton: Add underlined language to BRC 9-2-14 (c): (c) Modifications to Development Standards: The following development standards of B.R.C. 1981 may be modified under the site review process set forth in this section. However, land underneath a building or part of a building may not be counted in calculating the allowed floor area for another building or part of a building, and no building or part of a building may be built on land that has been counted in calculating the allowed floor area of another building or part of a building: Spot Zoning, used at 311 Mapleton: Add underlined language to BRC 9-2-19: (e) Criteria: The city's zoning is the result of a detailed and comprehensive appraisal of the city's present and future land use allocation needs. In order to establish and maintain sound, stable and desirable development within the city, rezoning of land is to be discouraged and allowed only under...

Here are a few observations about what was discussed Tuesday night at the Whittier ADU meeting that you all attended. First, I would like to acknowledge Sam for putting in the time and energy to actually try to think through some of the issues and to put together an approach that would accomplish some of the goals without being a wholesale rezoning. But there is a lot more work to be done, as I have tried to lay out below. My concern is that trying to address all this in a council meeting, when the groundwork has not been done properly, and where citizen input is necessarily going to be one step behind, is not going to produce anywhere near the optimal result. The staff work is just not adequate: They failed to identify all the issues, and their arguments are pretty much a replay. And there is no real goals analysis, options development, or critical evaluation. Here are some examples of where significant issues still exist. At the end I lay out an outline as to how yo...